Desperately Seeking Salad

OK, I admit it; I'm having a bad day. And not just because I spent more than two hours this morning at the DMV waiting to hand in a form that corrects the spelling of my name on my car's title which, when it arrived Saturday, read:

ADAM SANYK

Why do people find my last name so difficult? It's four measly letters. It's spelled exactly as it sounds. It's even a word in the English language! Why do people insist on making it "Shank" or "Sanky" or "Sanka" or "Sanyk?" WHY, GODDAMMIT?!?!?!



No, it's not just that. This moving-across-the-country-and-starting-over-from-scratch thing is hard. And although I am very happy living with Boy Wonder (not to mention his roommate, Catwoman), the job search thing is starting to bum me out in a big way.



The problem is, I'm trying to follow two separate and completely unrelated career paths simultaneously. On the one hand, I'm trying to find something -- ANYTHING -- here in San Diego that will earn me some money on a regular basis. I don't really care what it is at this point; I just need to get out of this apartment and start earning. If not, one day soon Boy Wonder will return from work to find me passed out on the sofa in a house dress, a casserole burning in the oven, an empty bottle of Valium by my side.





At the same time, I'm trying to pursue this showbiz thing, which is even harder and far more nebulous. I have exhausted pretty much all my L.A. contacts at this point. In typical L.A. fashion, each one initially wrote back immediately to say, in essence, "Yes! I want to help you! Call me!" And then when I did they said, "Oh, I can't talk now -- let me call you back." And then they didn't.





Ever.





Boy Wonder keeps telling me I should just drive up to L.A. and spend a week there. But somehow showing up in an enormous city where I've never been before -- in a '97 Passat, no less -- with no predetermined plan and shouting, "Here I am, Hollywood!" seems like a less than ideal plan.





So all of this is wearing on me and stressing me out. But none of it bothers me as much as this one simple, unavoidable fact:





There are no build-your-own-salad places in San Diego.





Shocking, but true.

Regular readers of this blog know how important a ritual my daily salad is. They also know how much I hate frisse. In New York, build-your-own-salad places are a dime a dozen. Every deli, every bagel place and even most supermarkets in Manhattan have build-your-own-salad counters.

But not so in San Diego.

In fact, the very concept here seems to baffle people.

"Oh, you mean a salad bar?" they'll say when I try to explain it."We have those. You should go to Soup Plantation."


I don't know what the hell Soup Plantation is. The very name frightens me. I picture a bunch of slaves mixing giant, steaming terrines of soup under the hot sun.

But that's not the point: A salad bar is not a build-your-own-salad counter.

At a salad bar, you have to actually touch the ingredients yourself -- after everyone else has touched them. At a BYOS counter, you dictate the ingredients you want in your salad, and then the attendants toss them all together for you in a giant silver bowl.

You're given an endless number of choices, beginning with the type of lettuce -- romaine, spinach or mixed greens (often including the dreaded frisse). In the better places, like the Food Emporium on 8th Ave., the toppings are kept ice cold, and at the end you choose from a veritable cornucopia of dressings.

In San Diego? Completely unheard of.

You know what I ate for lunch today? Something called a "House Special Salad" at a greasy fast-food Chinese place called "Pick-Up Stix." It consisted of fried, breaded, sweetened chunks of chicken, candied cashews, a couple tiny smidgens of carrot and iceberg lettuce topped with honey-soy dressing. Yes, it was completely delicious, but it was also the nutritional equivalent of a Big Mac!

One more month of eating like this, and I will be as big a house.

Perfect to go with my house dress.

Sanyk out. ♥