Lettuce Rejoice

Salads. I need a few salads. A Cobb would be good; it uses everything I've already got: bacon, eggs, chicken. A Greek salad might be nice but that won't work because I don't need the feta cheese or olives or pepperoncini for anything else. Maybe a taco salad... I'd have to get tortillas as well as one of those frying basket thingies which forms the tortilla into a bowl but it would be easy enough to make. I'm already making chili and I'll have nacho chips. The veg -- lettuce, tomato, onion -- could simply ring the plate, then fill the basket with more salad and chili, top with cheese, under the salamander, dishes with salsa, sour cream and guac.

But now I've got to get tortilla shells. I could always put quesadillas on the menu. A simple veggie quesadilla with spring onions and tomatoes, and a version with meat, just chicken using the same chicken breast I've got for the other salads and tenders. That could work.

So there need to be basic salads, some basic veggie: mixed lettuce, tomato, red onion for garnish, cucumber, shaved carrots and various seasonal stuff. Need a couple of dressings: blue cheese, Italian, some sort of balsamic vinaigrette. And every single dressing is one more pain in the ass that I have to make and find room to store in the fridge. How the hell do I make an Italian dressing which matches the kind that I like from of the States? I can't get Kraft Foodservice items here so their Zesty Italian is out, which means I have to figure out how to replicate that.

So along with three salads I'm now looking at possibly a fourth which is only halfway salad, and on top of that I then have quesadillas to the menu. The quesadillas are easy enough to make and don't require any ingredients I don't already use elsewhere. They're cheap, tasty and offer a completely different direction while still remaining "pub grub", at least to some degree. The ones with chicken will use the same marinated chicken breast I'll use for the salads and chicken tenders, and if I do steaks, I can marinate that meat, too.

Steaks... do I want steaks? Yes I want them but are they feasible?

I'm trying to get away from the software industry with a restaurant and inside four days I've already got feature creep. I half expect the building's owner to talk to me about "harmonizing synergies" when we meet in a week or two.