STEPH DEROSA: AWESOME SALAD FOLLOWED BY SOMETHING NOT SO AWESOME >>>

Strawberry and Chicken Salad

Mandolin Cafe

Price: $6

Rating: four out of four croutons

Amongst the bustle of kitchen expansion construction, daytime internet surfers, and small, friendly meetings, I found myself comfortably perched at my very own roomy table where I set up shop for the day. Although Mandolin Café has a steady stream of constant traffic, it is rare you will find yourself in an uncomfortable seat. After a fun conversation with Mandolin’s manager, Sarah Jane, some typing time in front of my little laptop and the deafening pounding of kitchen construction â€" my appetite (and headache) had risen to its limit. I perused the deli case and found the most colorful item available to order. When Sarah Jane refused to sell me her pink hair and informed me that it was not part of the lunch selection, I opted for the Strawberry Chicken Salad instead.

Description: The base of Mandolin’s Strawberry Chicken Salad creation begins with a spring green/romaine mixture that leans more toward the greens, less toward the romaine. This I love. Nothing is worse that the crunch of those tasteless white romaine ribs amongst a flavorful and tender array of spring greens, but I understand when restaurants feel the need to mix the texture up in order to please everyone.

On top of this green bed lies fresh, juicy, and perfectly ripe strawberry slices and extremely flavorful blueberries mixed with blue cheese crumbles and strips of roasted chicken. Homemade Italian dressing can be found on the side in a small cup â€" right where it belongs.

Taste: PERFECT. As I stated in the above paragraph (stop skimming and read it thoroughly, lazy ass), the fruit was ripe and generously flavored. Rarely do you find fruit in a salad that isn’t white and flavorless, so this really surprised me. Did they secretly inject the fruit with vibrant color and flavor-enhancing yumminess? I guess we’ll never know. It doesn’t really matter to me, because that stuff was delicious, regardless.

The blue cheese crumbles did nothing but add to my love for the fruit, and contrasted the sweetness as if it were a long-lost cousin from Oklahoma that you weren’t allowed to talk to growing up because of your parents’ fear of inbreeding, but you always enjoyed their company so you called them on holidays anyway. And let’s not forget about that chicken. It had that roasted taste, and it was juicy. It was a win-win salad for all.

Conclusion: It’s at this point where I’d like to test your reading comprehension and leave this part up to you to figure out. Go back to your crazy Van Halen days, sing a little “Hot for Teacher” ditty, and recall those literacy skills you might or might not have picked up on in your stoner days of lower education.

Fine. Here are the Cliff’s Notes: I loved the salad.

[Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, 253.761.3482]

Dressing on the Side

Grrrrr. I’m still pissed off about what went down with the Girl Scouts of Western Washington last week. Let me try and simplify for you all:

I was a co-leader for my daughter’s Daisy Girl Scout troop this year. (Don’t laugh. I loved the kids, but was horrible about being on time and remembering tasks.) I did it because there was no troop at the school and the only way she could be involved was if I volunteered to do it.

When you’re a leader, you have employed people who sit in a main Girl Scout office and are the “Area Managers”. (They get paid.)

The ladies who are “Area Managers” at the offices of Girl Scouts of Western Washington are lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

For the past year, I would receive upwards of 20 e-mails a week that were forwarded to me and had nothing to do with me. This sucked because my inbox would become unnecessarily cluttered, and I would waste time reading through these long, forwarded e-mails only to discover that they have nothing to do with me. And you know those forwarded e-mails how you have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll just to get past all the times it had been forwarded and everyone’s e-mail it’s been sent to? Yeah, it was a lot of scrolling and bullshit just to get to an e-mail and read it and realize it had nothing to do with me, my troop, or Daisy’s at all. It got to the point where some leaders weren’t even reading the e-mails before deleting them, and would ultimately miss the ONE that was meant for them.

So thus began the battle.

For months I asked repeatedly for the “Area Managers” to please put their e-mail addresses into groups, and please only send me e-mails that had to do with Daisy troops. They said no. I would receive 4,000 more unnecessary e-mails, ask again, and they would say “NO!” again. This went on for a while until I finally asked to be taken off the e-mail list.

Want to know their reason for not putting the e-mail addresses into groups?

Let me quote:

“ I simply do not have time to sort through the e-mail before distributing them. I ask that you just read them and delete the ones you don’t need.”

So basically their time is more important than mine. I’m a volunteer, they get paid, yet I have to do the work. What a bunch of lazy bitches.