"DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?"

Jul 29, 2025

3 min read

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Salad Saturday isn't real. But Trash Day Tuesday? That's canon.

Original Post Date: 10.12.2021. Revised: 07.19.2025.

Tell me I’m not alone here.

Tell me I’m not the only one who still spends a fair amount of time in the Land of Magical Thinking.

Most of my magical thinking happens in the produce section of the Giant Eagle Market District grocery store near my house. I push my cart—the one with the wobbly wheel that veers left like it’s magnetically drawn to the seasonal plant display—toward the veggie side of the aisle.

I stop, momentarily mesmerized by the mist cascading over the broccoli, carrots, celery, and leeks. The spinach and salad blends glisten like multi-faceted jewels: emerald, jade, peridot.

I should pick up fresh broccoli or asparagus and make myself a wholesome, healthy meal. I won’t, of course. Too much work for one person.

Instead, I gravitate toward the bagged salad section—home of pre-rinsed, pre-chopped, pre-dressed greens lovingly assembled for those of us whose lives are too “busy” to bother tearing apart a head of lettuce.

This week’s selection? The American. I pull the bag toward me and, with the solemnity of a sugar addict on a redemption arc, make a sacred vow: This week will be different. This week, I will eat a salad. I will not allow it to wilt in the back of the fridge like… well, like a bag of wilted lettuce. I will top it with grilled or rotisserie chicken, find a dressing that doesn’t taste like refined gasoline, and bask in the glow of having made a healthy life choice.

When I get home, I put away my family-sized bag of Lay’s® Poppables Sea Salt potato snacks and Perry’s® Hot Fudge Sundae ice cream when I almost forget the salad entirely. With great intentionality, I place it front and center on the top shelf of the fridge, where it will stare back at me like a sad-eyed shelter dog begging to be adopted.

But I have a cold heart and a mean streak. I shove it behind a two-year-old bottle of ketchup and a plastic container of mystery goo that looks—and smells—like a failed third-grade science project.

“I can’t possibly eat a salad today,” I tell myself. “Today is Friday, and Friday doesn’t have an ‘S’ in it. You can only eat salad on ‘S’ days. So, the soonest I can eat this is Saturday. Salad Saturday. That’s a thing.”

Then again, it feels cruel to eat salad on a weekend—especially in the fall. This is the season of sweet potatoes baked with butter and brown sugar, or acorn squash baked with more butter and more brown sugar, or… just butter and brown sugar, maybe with a teaspoon of honey. No squash necessary.

By Monday, the bag is puffed like a sad little hot air balloon. Guilt-ridden at the idea of wasting food, I pull it out. I salvage three small leaves and dive for the carrot slivers that have sunk to the bottom like edible treasure. I drown the contents in mozzarella—so much that a search-and-rescue team couldn’t find the lettuce. I stare at the bowl. I keep staring. Eventually, I grab cling wrap, cover it, and put it back in the fridge.

Sunday, I decide. Sunday is a better salad day. Salad Sunday even sounds better than Salad Saturday. Seriously—Salad Saturday doesn’t make sense.

Now, to be fair, I have eaten salads before. Not just on weekends. In fact, a Chicken Caesar is often my go-to restaurant order when there’s nothing else on the menu I want. But any observant dinner companion will note:

First, I eat the bread rolls.
Then the chicken.
Then the croutons.
Only if I’m delirious with hunger do I touch the greens.

The remaining salad comes home in a takeout container, where it takes up residence next to the science experiment. Until Trash Day Tuesday.

To be honest, my magical thinking isn’t limited to salads. I also plan to start going to the community fitness center. I’m going to do laps in the pool. Just as soon as I learn to swim.

Got a story of grocery optimism turned fridge tragedy?Share your best bagged-salad (or unused treadmill) tale below!