I don’t know if it’s because I grew up among immigrant adults or if reading Dante’s Inferno in high school taught me that there’s an entire circle of hell for the wasteful, but I absolutely dread not finishing a meal. If I come to your house, you serve me dinner, and I don’t finish it all, I will literally think about it for the next 24 hours. It doesn’t even matter if the cooking was bad—I just can’t stand leaving anything on the plate. I am always John Candy in The Great Outdoors eating every single piece of steak, even the gristle. That is why I find the overuse of greens on sandwiches to be especially disturbing. If I wanted a salad with my sandwich then I would have ordered one. Instead, I get a sandwich with a pile of leaves on it, and I feel obligated to stuff them all in my mouth.
Getting the feeling that somebody went outside and raked whatever was growing in the garden onto my sandwich is one thing; what’s even worse is the truly disturbing amount of tasteless, worthless shredded iceberg. At this point I’m convinced iceberg is a weed that covers the planet, and perfectly decent sandwich makers just get a steep discount on it, thinking it will add some crispness to the finished product, when all it does is make the sandwich taste wet or dirty, or usually both. The madness, I say, must end.