When I was growing up, salad bars were the shit.
One would think a salad bar wouldn’t be a hit with the kiddos but it wasn’t the healthy stuff in the salad bar that attracted us.
It was the bacon, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and pudding.
Record scratch.
Pudding??
Yes, pudding.
Salad bar pudding is completely underrated.
Salad bar pudding needs its own Instagram or Twitter account.
I remember when Wendy’s used to have a salad bar. Does anyone else remember this? They also had salad bar pudding.
Want to know a little secret? Thank You brand pudding was what those restaurants used. Don’t ask me how I know this. It’s in the vault with things that if you knew I knew them, you’d wonder why I am allowed to roam freely with the general public.
You can also order Thank You brand pudding from wholesalers in seven-pound containers.
It has a shelf life of approximately 456 days.
Okay, maybe we now know why salad bar pudding isn’t a thing anymore.
Also, maybe I should have named this post I Love Me Some Salad Bar Pudding?
Over the years, however, salad bars have become kind of a thing of the past. Remember Ruby Tuesday’s salad bar? Their brown bread croutons? Sweet Jesus biscuits, those were so good. I remember getting SO excited at the prospect of sitting down at my local Ruby Tuesday and ordering broccoli cheese soup and salad bar. It brought me so much damned joy.
We need joy like that again.
And grocery store salad bars don’t bring that joy, honestly.
Maybe because there isn’t any 456-day pudding in them.
I have written about my love of salads before; the seven-layer salad is one of my favorite ever salads because it reminds me of my salad bar concoctions of the past.
Lotso bad shit but fullo taste.
Sadly no pudding although if I could somehow make that jive in there, you know I’d be working on that.
I also love my steak and watermelon salad. It ties in with the sweet/salty combo that I love (remember watermelon with salt?)
Back when I had lots of energy (pre-menopause), I created a Summer board on Pinterest.
Lots and lots of pins full of summery things like:
I mean, isn’t this what a bathtub is for?
That looks like a lot of work for something that faces the neighbor who blares his Foreigner and Hootie and the Blowfish at 2 in the morning.
Who, ironically, is an HVAC repair guy.
I still want to do this one.
But amid all of my summer ideas that will never see the light of day sat a pin that I didn’t even realize was in there to begin with.
A DIY Salad Bar.
This pin just leads to a website and not the actual salad bar so I am not even linking it here but it’s a cool idea, isn’t it?
If I was going to do it for a party, I would take a page from this picture but for a random mid-summer dinner at home, it doesn’t have to be this fancy.
Since the closest Ruby Tuesday is 40 miles away and it costs 50 bucks to ship the armageddon pudding to my home, this will have to do.
I just got out all of my cereal and soup bowls and put all the ingredients we liked for salads into them.
If you don’t like the idea of all the dishes you will have to do afterward, get disposable paper bowls.
The great news is that most of this stuff, we already had in the pantry and refrigerator but if you don’t, you can totally do this on the cheap.
I really want to love homemade salad dressings but I have never found a recipe I like. I know you all have recipes that are easy and don’t taste like a urine sample. Not that I would know what that tastes like.
The night we had our DIY Salad Bar for dinner, my parents were over and I happened to mention to my mom that this wasn’t my idea but rather inspired by Pinterest. To which my mom said something about Ina Garten and how she always says that it doesn’t matter where you got the inspiration, take the credit.
You know what? I am going to take more credit for things I don’t necessarily come up with.
WHAT??
It could happen.
Wendy’s had a salad bar?😲. I love salads. I looked forward to taking the kids to Chuck E Cheese so I could eat the salad bar. Like you, even as a child. Sigh.
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So did Pizza Hut!!
I ate the salad bar there too. But they didn’t have pudding.
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I remember Pizza Hut. Buffet Betty 👈 over here. 🤣
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I’m calling you Buffet Betty from now on.
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🤣 love it
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🙂
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I loved salad bars in restaurants! And yes, I do remember the Wendy’s and Ruby Tuesday’s ones. Though I don’t recall the pudding. Guess that’s a good thing. There was a salad bar restaurant – yes, that’s all the place was, a gigantic salad bar – that Brian and I used to go to when we were dating, back in the early 80’s. It was on Dempster St in Skokie. It was the bomb and something totally different back then. Gurrrl, you can make your own delicious salad dressings – so easy and they do indeed taste good! Look at the ingredients on that bottled shit (soybean oil and a bunch of chemicals) and you might just change your mind, lol. Though Trader Joe’s has a salad dressing (fig balsamic) that has decent ingredients.
xoxo
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I had you in mind when I was thinking of salad dressing recipes. Like, I need to do just olive oil but I want it to taste less….well, olive oil-ish.
We can discuss this on Thursday. 🙂
Also, a salad bar restaurant is something we need again.
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I used to love salad bars too, but as I got older, I got more and more aware of the amount of potential DNA there is on every surface. From the sneezing to the handles going into the buckets. Blerg. I think being pregnant started it for me, you know how the doctor tells you that you shouldn’t have deli meat and cheese because of the potential bacteria exposure? Also, I took a food safety course about four years ago, and I’ve never been the same. I’m telling you, the world is a bacteria-infested place covered in poo.
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Two words- sneeze guard.
That last sentence is so true. Especially since anti-bacterial became a thing.
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John’s Garage best Salad Bar Ever? And I believe they had pudding? LOL
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OMG, I forgot about John’s Garage. I used to love that place. Didn’t Ponderosa also have a salad bar?
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John’s Garage!!!
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Right?? Back when Hawthorn was a cool place.
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I used to love Ponderosa and Bonanza salad bars. The hubby LOVES salad bars but I have a rule if we find one…dig deep. I move EVERYTHING from the top over to the side and always after 12pm. Two different places with salad bars said never go before noon because you’ve getting everything from the previous day and at noon they have a turnover where fresh is put out. I fondly remember York Steak House in the malls and I HAD to have chocolate pudding (covered in plastic, not on the salad bar though). I can vouch Fudge Stripe smores are awesome as are Reese PB Cup smores.
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YESSSSS. I am exactly the same way.
Omg, I need to try those s’mores. I’ve also seen Rolos inside of marshmallows too. 😱
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Ruby Tuesday and Ponderosa salad bars! Yes!
Also, I haven’t made your layer salad in like a hundred years. I think it’s time it made an appearance.
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I haven’t either! If you make it, invite me over. 😂
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Ok!
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🙂
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I vaguely remember the Wendy’s salad bar. There used to be a steakhouse and buffet restaurant chain here called Ryan’s, and they had the best salad bar, plus a dessert bar. Of course my salads are shitty by other people’s standards, but they had the stuff my family never bought, like pepperoni and green olives. (And that, plus lettuce, cheese, and croutons was my salad.)
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I am not ashamed that I once ate a bag of croutons for dinner.
Or maybe twice.
Definitely not three times.
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🙌🏻🙌🏻
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I was so smart to open your blog in a window on my phone while I had WiFi in Vancouver and could read your post while on a bus, but then I could not comment. Home now and I am loving me some ongoing uninterrupted WiFi.
First of all, I used to love cafeteria style restaurants that we ate at a few times at rest stops while traveling and the best part was little jello cups. I would be all a twitter selecting one for my tray – you know the ones with the cut up jello squares and the bit of cool whip on top. We didn’t get out much.
Secondly, Mom always bought thank you brand apple juice bottles when I was growing up. I didn’t even know that brand still existed.
Thirdly, I grew up with a very picky eater mom so a salad bar was NEVER going to be where I gravitated. When we were home and mom made a salad it consisted of ice burg lettuce, shredded cheddar, a few bites of a hard boiled egg b/c she divided one hard boil egg between like 7 bowls, and french dressing. Seriously.
Finally, I did work at Burger King on Milwaukee in you-know-where town. I had to restock the salad bar at times. The beets grossed me out beyond words. Then, guess what? At a restaurant in Vancouver I ordered a salad and it came with beets. It grossed me out, but I did try a bite (no, I had never actually tried one – again that is how I was raised, we didn’t try stuff. It was all plain Jane eating and being afraid of food) and I ended up enjoying the beets in my salad and ate them all. I must be a grown up.
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I totally forgot about cafeteria-style restaurants! They even had them on the Toll Road in Indiana back in the day. Back when eating was serious, sit-down business. I loved the jello cups too and if they had whipped cream? Even better.
Why do I not remember Burget King salad bars? One of my childhood friends also mentioned the BK salad bar on Facebook (I have a private blog group on FB, email me for the link bc you need to be in there). I too, am not a fan of beets but grew up in a house that loved them.
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I am a professional salad creator. Really, I’m good at anything that doesn’t need to be cooked/baked. I totally forgot about Wendy’s Salad bar, but it was one of my favorites back in the day. While in High School I worked at Ponderosa; not sure if that was just a Florida restaurant, but I was in charge of the salad bar. Yes, we had pudding. What I most remember about working the salad bar was that when I was tired I would go into the walk-in cooler and sit my skinny ass on a 5-gallon bucket of chickpeas. 🙂 I still can’t eat chickpeas.
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PONDEROSA!! I grew up in Ohio and Ponderosa was a thing there as well as Bonanza (same concept, different name).
I remember going into the walk-in coolers at McDonald’s when I worked there in the 80s to get a break from the madness. Looking back, I am sure that was a health code violation.
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Health code violation? I doubt they had them back then. LOL! We have a Ruby Tuesday on the other side of town and oh, how I love the SB! I just know that one day, it too will disappear.
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Go to Ruby Tuesday for me sometime, will you? 🙂
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