cookies & cobb salad

Chocolate chip cookie photo I promised earlier:

They were real buttery.

For dinner I picked up my new favorite salad, the Cobb Salad, from Cranberries. It's a sweet little place to eat, and it's main demographic are ladies who lunch. With your sandwich you get a side of one of their salads. It comes in a condiment cup that might equal a 1/3 of a cup serving, but it could be less. Because the majority of their customers are ladies, they get away with it. I have a hearty appetite, but my mother doesn't, and she refuses to eat there because she shares my complaint about the size of their side-salad servings. And, she complained to them once about their skimpy servings, but it didn't impress them. However, they stay in business because their food is good, and those ladies that lunch are always dieting, or maybe just don't eat much in public, so a full stomach is not a priority for them.

Last week I ate there; had the Cobb Salad. And I am a convert. I've been thinking about the salad all weekend (they're open for lunch and early dinner m-f) and took Ian's absence tonight as the opportunity I needed to bring home this salad; that's my matching tablecloth in the photo. I am not a fan of salad unless it is potato, egg, or chicken salad. And while the Cobb salads I've had in the past were good, they failed to stir my imagination. The usual presentation of meat and eggs and other ingredients leans toward the militaristic, with everything lined neatly into rows. So I begin every bite with the command, "Atten-shun!" And then I devolve into one of those cadences that you might hear in Private Benjamin or Stripes. Those meats in Cobb salads past were cubed or obviously thick-sliced and straight from the Oscar Meyer section at the Piggly Wiggly. You know, suspect, unappetizing. The meat on the Cobb salad from Cranberries is very thinly sliced and I think it may be turkey. I'm not the best at identifying meat products. It wasn't ham or roast beef though, so the only other thing it might be is chicken. Besides the generous portion of meat, this salad is piled with blue cheese and bacon pieces, one of my favorite food combinations. But what really sold me on the salad was its liberal inclusion of avocado. These aren't mere slices. These are quarters. Although, on tonight's salad, I counted three quarters, on last week's salad there were four. That's a whole avocado, and not one of those tiny Hass (or Haas) avocados either.

According to The Food Maven, the Cobb Salad is one of the most famous dishes in culinary history. It was created at the Brown Derby in Hollywood in 1937. Another site gives the date as 1926. Who is correct? One thing is for sure, Bob Cobb created it. That's almost like being named Anna Banana.

Since I consume one to two avocados each week at home, I save the seeds with the notion that I shall grow avocado plants and trees in my kitchen. If I can make it to the 19th Annual Avocado Festival in Carpinteria County, California in October, I'll be in heaven. That's not very likely, so I'll remain in hell. Which ain't so bad. After all, there are several Ramp Festivals in the area, a Strawberry Festival, an Apple Festival, and probably tons more that I don't know about.