#pizzasallad

Mimosa Salad!

At first glance it’s nothing to write home about. It’s fruit salad, okay. Peach, pear, apple and pineapple… so the production team has never had a mimosa, okay, stupid, but not an arrestable offence. (Firable, sure, but not criminal.)

An unusual choice of fruit perhaps, but fruit salad nonetheless. Maybe they have a variety of salads, and the more obvious combinations of fruit/names have already been done.

Okay, all reasonably above board. Until you glance over and see the identical packages with pictures of cabbage and carrot, proudly declaring Coleslaw. And you begin to wonder…

You flip it over to the ingredients list, hoping against hope that it isn’t dressed in mayonnaise.

Oh you naive fool. Have you forgotten what culinary hellscape you inhabit? The tastebud wasteland you were foolish enough to abide?

It’s mayonnaise.

And not just mayonnaise.

A terrifying mustard/vinegar/cayenne/turmeric mayonnaise fruit salad nightmare. With bubbles.

Is it also fizzy? Is it just whipped? Is it yet another example of poor food handling and this particular item has been left on the sun and is starting to ferment?

(That happens a lot here. [fun fact, when you complain that the cream you bought is expired because it’s solid and has a bad smell the shop assistant may tell you that’s what cream is always like. They’re not just trying to save the company money. At that shop cream is always like that. The refrigerators are always at about 7 or 8 degrees.] A lot of stuff is just expired all the time.)

I ask a passing shop assistant what manner of beast this is. Is it sweet? Savoury? What’s it for? What possible dish could this accompany, i hesitantly enquire, already dreading the answer, but not quite knowing why.

And she answers brightly, with no apparent understanding of the horrors they have wrought, “It’s kind of sweet, kind of savoury. People buy it for barbecues, picnics, since it’s pre-made.

“It’s also good on pizza.”