Eating grass

Coming from Asia where we usually cook all our vegetables, it was unusual for me to see Canadians eating salad - lots of it. It's not like we Malaysians don't eat salad at all, but it's at a very small quantity - a side dish. When I first saw some of my female caucasian friends eating salad as a meal, it struck me as very odd.

Odd because firstly, I was unaccustomed to eating green salad the way Canadians do - lots of uncooked vegetables such as lettuce, brocolli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms and such. No carb, and very little protein (meat).

Secondly, eating just a green salad for a meal? That seems to me like they're on a diet or something. It doesn't seem like a hearty meal to me.

But as I live here longer, green salad is just part of the Canadian lifestyle, and so I took some of it, but, not as an entire meal.

I was with some friends at Wendy's sometime ago, and she was gushing about how good their Mandarin Chicken Salad is. I smiled politely, but kind of wanted the old-fashioned hamburgers the guys were going to order. But, I thought to myself, I might as well try it out, and maybe I might really like it. Guess what? I really did like it, and funny thing was, I couldn't even finish the entire salad bowl because there were just too much 'grass' in it (and I have to admit I'm a slow eater too).

Now, where did the 'grass' part came from?

As we were sitting down chewing (lots of chewing) on our lunch, she asked me how my salad was. And in my honesty, I told her how I always thought of green salad as how eating grass was like - well, it seemed that way, right? And the guys laughed so hard, and now they can't eat salad without thinking of themselves as cows grazing on grass!

I've recently noticed that I'm beginning to fix myself green salad as a whole meal, more and more often. And, that really surprises me!

Well, at least coming to Canada has a great impact on me in my eating habits - I now enjoy eating grass! That's quite an achievement, eh!