We Need to Talk About Johma Salad Night
Adeline loves food, a lot and often, both at home and out. Usually that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. This week, risking never being allowed to celebrate Christmas or New Year’s Eve anywhere again, she writes about the phenomenon of ‘Johma salad night’.
First of all: I have nothing against Johma’s salads on an ordinary weekday I’m-just-spreading-something-on-my-sandwich-at-lunchtime kind of day. I’d even dare say that Johma makes a more-than-average egg salad, and the chicken satay is pretty tender too. But there are days when the little tub with the red lid, the printed sealing film and the sticky wrapper bring tears to my eyes, and those days are concentrated mainly in the last week of December.
The Johma Salad Person
I’d dare say there are four categories of people: the person who scours market stalls in the morning and adds all kinds of bits and bobs from the enormous spice drawer they obviously have, the person who has no idea how or when such a concoction should be thrown together and ends up sweating profusely in a stuffy queue at the local specialty food shop, the person who transfers supermarket salad into their own serving dishes by hand, and the Johma salad person.
The Urge to Transfer It
As you can imagine, I have Johma-loving friends in my inner circle (I’d dare say I attract them, like yin and yohma), and I don’t really understand that whole Johma attitude. It feels a bit like putting on airs. Great that you took that sequin dress out of the wardrobe for tonight; here’s ready-made salad from a plastic tub. Also lovely that you’re sniffing and gargling with that f-ing delicious wine; here’s ready-made salad from a plastic tub. How nice that you made the effort to come, but here’s ready-made salad from a plastic tub. Whenever I spot Johma recipes on an artfully set table, I always cry a little inside. If the salad is also still in its original packaging, I cry out loud and feel the urge to transfer it.
Love from a Tub
I advocate the ‘if you do it, do it as though no one is watching’ mentality. Say loudly and often that you don’t need any help in the kitchen and tip the tubs into charming little bowls. Preferably, buy those bowls so beautiful that no one would even dare think you didn’t boil, mash, mix and season that egg salad yourself, even if the taste seems vaguely familiar to them. Cover the packaging with all the leftover ingredients for the evening that you did manage to get fresh. What you don’t know can’t hurt you is the motto. Even better, just join the queue at a delicatessen; then a certain amount of love can still flow from the tub to your guests.
Plastic Tubs with Red Lids
The moral of this story: in December, I turn into a master manipulator. That way, we limit Christmas to the hospitality industry and to people who wouldn’t dare let it enter their thick heads to serve salads in plastic tubs with red lids. And we distribute the shopping for New Year’s Eve so cunningly that no one even thinks of a Johma salad.
I’m a snob, yes. A ready-made-salad-hating snob, but otherwise I’m really not such a bad person, because people still invite me for Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
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