working lunch

Jenny Lewis is so good. Jenny always inspires me and makes me feel kind of psyched about the world, and that is important in middle age. Also, the opening line of one of her albums is "I fell in love with a beautiful boy on the black sand." I like to listen to music while I work; hence the title of the post.

Here where I live, there are salad bars wherever there are offices (and artist studios). Is it this way around the country? Around the world? I like to imagine the salad bars I frequent are specifically New York-metro. The ingredients are frank. The salad tossers never judge.

This is the salad I have ordered over the past 15 years from salad bars in Times Square, Long Island City, Gowanus, and Newark.

• Spring Greens
• Shredded Carrots
• Grated Cheddar
• walnuts 
• dried cranberries
• egg
• chick peas

• salt (in Newark it is Himalayan pink, but I'm not picky)

• Olive oil
• Balsamic Vinegar

This is a protein packed salad. It is super filling on purpose. I suspect the reason a lot of people don't share in my salad enthusiasms is that they think a salad should be restrained. I reject this premise. Salad should be filling, delicious, and worth craving.

Some things I love about this salad: the oil binds the boiled egg, chick peas, and cheese into a delicious, pasty filling that works really well with the woodsy walnut crumbling between the molars. Especially when my dental work is up to date! The egg should be sprinkled with grainy salt. I love a good solid rough salt over my salad. The kind you can hear yourself chewing. The dirty sweetness of a carrot is occasionally eclipsed by the sugar-tart zap of the chewy dried cranberries. I literally scrape my plastic fork along the bottom of the clamshell to scoop up the residue.

I choose spring greens because they have that spicy, dirty, lettuce-y flavor.  And they are delicate to chew. Romaine in this case would be too crunchy -- combatively crunchy with the walnuts and carrots. Spinach is not my jam, unless cooked with paneer and cream and spices. At a frank NY-metro salad bar, there are no other greens on offer.

Coming Up Roses

I was young and wild once. Amazing to recall. And when I was 22, salad changed my life.

I alluded to this salad in a post from 2011, but have tiptoed around it since. This is it, the first. The great un-locker.

I don't know what to call this salad. The coming of age salad?

Let's call it the Coming of Age salad. 

Here is the recipe:

• spring greens
• the leaves of a large bunch of fresh cilantro
• walnuts
• mandarin orange segments (canned or fresh)
• Annie's Shitake and Sesame Dressing

Optional 

• buttered whole wheat wrap/tortilla

My brother introduced (this) salad to me, one night, visiting from Colorado, or Bend. He was recently vegan, and eager to share some of the delicious new foods he had discovered. He is the one who took me to the store and bought the ingredients and showed me how to pull the little cilantro leaves off of the bunch, stack them and slice them into tiny ribbons. He encouraged me to use a lot of cilantro -- the leaves of a big wet bunch.

That first night, I piled the salad onto a buttered whole wheat tortilla. I put so much filling on the tortilla that I had to compress the greens to wrap the thing up. I had to grip the wrap assertively to keep it from expressing its crispy innards. I remember every bite, viscerally. The tension of the buttery wheat bread breaking open, full of cold, crispy, slightly wet greens. The flavors were woodsy and tart and juicy. The textures were unusual; sluggy mandarin, candy sweet and mooshy. The walnuts, their thunky wooden crunch. Full of the strange and appealing essence cilantro flavor that just kind of delivers you to wherever your there is. Maybe it is hard to describe because it was an herbaceous salad. Isn't that a trendy food word. But yes, it was an ethereal salad full of earthy flavors -- mushrooms and walnuts and cilantro. If it weren't for the bright and colorful squish of canned fruit, I think it would probably spontaneously decompose its consumer, turn her into a wood-nymph. 

I had never before that evening stood at my counter top plucking, slicing, draining, and rearranging items from the grocery store into something that tasted quite that special. It was a turning point.

I made Coming of Age salad often that year, though I always rushed, inadvertently including the wooden stems of cilantro. I often overdressed it, by accident, hurrying through life. I blush to think of all the strange and magical evenings that unfurled as my belly was busy digesting Coming of Age Salad. I had moved to Portland in July of that year; on a lark, alone (well not really, I had my dog). I was an east coast girl. After I got there, following a six day drive, just me and dog, listening mostly to Bob Dylan and Nick Drake tapes, I made friends in strange places like Fred Meyer and the pizza place where I worked. I met Portland in a twilight violet haze of perfection.  Nick Drake was playing in the first coffee shop I visited. Portland and me were meant to be.

Thinking about those four years makes me wistful, and giggly, and slightly mortified. There were high highs and low lows. I was young and wild. Out of hundreds of potentially regrettable nights of fun and self-discovery, I particularly remember meeting Erica at a show at EJ's on 15th and Broadway when  I wore a knee length, triangle shaped skirt I had bought from the thrift shop on Hawthorne. I tucked into its waist a white button down shirt, and wrapped a scarf around my neck. On my feet I wore knee high black boots from Delia*s, made of some fake leather plastic.  I told my best Portland friend I was channelling and outfit I remembered from Fashion Plates.

I just did an image search and I found her:

* * *

It is not so easy as it seems to visit oneself 20 years in the past. To consider myself without my beautiful children and strapping, strong husband by my side gives me vertigo.

So many salads since that first night. Cilantro and walnuts were my gateway.

Summer Bummer

“It’s never too late to be who you want to be.” Lana Del Rey

Driving in my husband’s Ford Escape on a hot steamy morning with the dogs. It is heartening that this summer there are kids all across the world listening to Lana Del Rey’s new album. As for me, I am 44.

When I was young, I'm pretty sure Lana's music could have easily changed the trajectory of my life. I am romantic and the right song or scene in a movie could propel the making big decisions. That's changed now. Lana’s black beaches are ruined, and all I can do is lament on her behalf.

My husband and I bought a dilapidated mansion last fall. It is a little bit grand. I think it is wonderful. There are overgrown flower gardens and the trees that seemed inconsequential on the day we came to live here now drop heavy orange and pink blossoms onto the mossy cobblestones. There is a lot work here to be done.

So I'm listening to Lana, driving my dogs, heading for the reservation where we can walk and walk, and I am suffering: 

Last month, in the midst of a group show in Brooklyn, I surprised myself by quitting my job. For twenty years I have been an artist, but on a day in late June, sitting at my computer manning the gallery desk, with a clear view of the Atlantic Avenue McDonalds, I gave my two weeks notice. The decision felt impulsive, as all decisions do. But I knew what I was doing. My future, for that split second, was perfect and did not include an art career. Later I moved all of my stuff out of my big louche studio in Newark and drove it home in my busted minivan, hauling everything up to the attic of the mansion my husband and I are restoring. In so doing I walked down two flights of cement Newark stairs at least twelve times, and up three flights of wooden mansion stairs eight or nine times. All of this walking up and down staircases aggravated my left knee, where I have advanced arthritis under my kneecap. The knee swelled to the size of a volleyball, but the pain never came. Until I tore the hip flexor just above it a week later in what I fantasized was an unrelated accident, but of course was all part of the same problem. I joke that I need a total leg replacement. I am lying in bed now. I have ice on the front of my hip, the back of my hip, and the front of my quadriceps.

I took the dogs for a hike this morning, against any kind of good sense. They’ve been lolling around the summer yard for two weeks while I wait for the stabbing, burning pain in my groin to abate. They have taken to barking and shitting the rugs.

It was early enough that the fog hadn’t burned off yet. The woods were steamy and quiet. There were only a few cars in the parking lot. I walked in suspense, waiting for the knife-sharp pain. I listened to Lana Del Rey on my phone, through ear buds. The pain was substantial, though less than a week ago. I thought about Elizabeth Smart, hiking at knife point through the Utah woods. I thought of every woman left for dead, who had to figure out a way out to sunlight and the open road. I figured out that if I tightened my lower abdomen 100%, the pain in my hip was less. I figured out that my dogs behave better when they can smell significant injury.

When I listen to Lana, I can locate my earliest awarenesses of truth: my mom in her bright blood-violet cotton column dress, suntanned and freckled, tapping the beat of Judy Collins on my sternum as I sit on her lap, 1976. The crackle of the album on our big cabinet stereo. “My parents cannot stand him because he rides the rodeo. My father says that he will leave me crying. . . ” Tiny stars embossed in the dirty white ceiling upholstery of our VW square-back, driving home from the beach with sand in my swimsuit. Rosemary Woodhouse in her little felt hat and yellow shirt dress. Holly Golightly.

There’s a steep short hill just before the parking lot shows up through the trees on the left. As I hobbled up, tightening my gut, breathing deeply and thanking god I had made it back to the car without pain that would indicate re-injury, a really pretty song started with a Spanish guitar riff. To my unexpected delight, Lana crooned “God Bless America and all the Beautiful Women in it.” Though we have never met, we are simpatico. I lament her ruined beaches, and she blesses my beauty.

My daughter will be seven next week. Last week, when we were driving home from the pool, and I thought she had fallen asleep, I sneaked a look over my shoulder and she was leaning back in her swimsuit, gazing up and out of the window. Lana was singing about Love, and Nina was still awake.

"Tuna Melt on Rye with Swiss Cheese and Tomato"

I'm still a salad girl. I still consume a lot of salad. The one I love right now the most is from the pool club snack bar. House Salad. It consists of crispy wet iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, a lot of shredded cheddar cheese, sweet cucumber cubes, grape tomatoes, and the greasiest home made croutons you've ever seen. I take the croutons off the salad first thing, and pile them on the red plastic tray. My daughter and I eat them long after the salad is finished. The House Salad dressing is some Italian that is smoother and more puckery than anything I can come up with at home. Red wine vinegar, oil, herbs. It comes separated into two layers, gold and pink, in little plastic ramikens with tops on.

Sometimes I get a scoop of tuna salad on top of my house salad. Tuna salad has replaced leafy salad as my staple.

At home I make my own: solid white albacore in light vegetable oil, with a blob of mayonnaise, a scoop of sweet hot dog relish, and a sprinkling of dried cranberries. I figure out that the trick to delicious tuna salad is to stir it for a really long time. I pile my tuna salad on a slice of wheat bread, and bake it in the oven with a thick slice of jarlsberg on top.

Out in the world, I order it take-out  from a cafe in town. Exactly as described in the title. Sometimes the owner asks if I want my regular.

When I was a teenager my best friend and I marveled that my mom sustained herself on a diet of fish stick sandwiches and gin and tonic. She ate exactly one sandwich at lunch time every day, for what I recall being the entire decade of the 1980s. She didn't eat much else. The occasional block of Cadbury Fruit and Nut from the freezer door. So it was a kind of wild moment a few months ago when I realized what I had become. If I skip my tuna salad for a day, I crave it like a feral cat.

Salad 2015: My Sneha

I can hardly believe that I am back after a four year Y2K Salad hiatus. What prompted my return? My shrink gave me a book called Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth, and whilst flipping through it I literally thought, "Oh my gosh I used to blog about salads!" 

I have a 2015 salad to share. 

It is off the hook, and not for the faint of heart. 

You will need:

• 1/2 bag Fresh Express Veggie Lovers salad mix. This mix crucial: crunchy pea pods, roughly grated carrots, the chew of red cabbage. 
• 1 avocado, cubed
• a sprinkling of cubed brie, not too much
• one layer of Fresh Gourmet Crispy Onions, lightly salted variety
• one dollop of Patak's Original Sweet Mango Chutney
• walnuts!
• a pour of olive oil
• a splash of balsamic vinegar

What to expect:
The strange and thunderously appealing texture of a flake of crispy fried onion, chutney-cemented to a hunk of walnut, all smashed up with  a  chewy leaf of of lettuce stuck to a hunk of fatty brie. Burnt brown cinnamon mango at delightful odds with mild chewy cheese. The vascular crunch of the center of a romaine leaf, the pop of a pea pod. A layer of shredded cabbage, grated carrots, fried onions clinging to the edge of the bowl, for which you will want a spoon. 

I endorse extravagance of ingredients (and all things!), but "my sneha" needs to be absolutely dominated by lettuce to make palatable the heft of avocado, chutney, and brie. 

Food and love are intertwined. Sneha, in Hindi, is "love, " "oil," and "fat." This salad I will call "my sneha," because you have to be brave to love. 

New Salad! Summer oh-eleven!

Let's get right to it:

mixed spring greens with spinach, out of a bag
one whole ripe room temperature avocado, cubed
4 strips microwave bacon
a dusting of sliced honey roasted almonds
sea salt to taste
balsamic vinegar
olive oil

This salad requires a lot of lettuce, packed firmly into the bowl. You need to be able to sink your teeth  into the tightly packed greens. I microwave the bacon for longer than intended so that the wafer thin strips become crumbly and brittle, and I  bash them up over the top of the lettuce. Then I cube the avocado (ripe, room temperature) in its skin and spoon out the cubes onto the layer of bacon. Then salt. Then the almond slices. Then the vinegar and oil (generous amounts of both.)

This is an exciting salad for me because it marks some kind of metabolic return to the tastes of non-pregnancy. My baby is nearly a year old and, remarkably, all my tastes (and other physical processes) seem to finally have returned to normal. I am endlessly fascinated by the weirdness of procreation and all the unexpected impacts pregnancy and child-birth have had on every aspect of my life. One of which is that for the past 20 or so months, balsamic vinegar has tasted like astringent. Super harsh and pucker-y. Not delicious. Not even palatable. Until last week, when I was moved to pour it all over this new salad and omg, delicious delicious delicious. Salty, creamy, sweet, smokey. The almost peanut-buttery flavor of the bacon and oil together. The slight sweetness of the summer Mexican avocados in perfect perfect season. The dense chew of the spinach, the grit of the salt, which sometimes tastes almost sweet in combination with the greens and the vinegar.

Tofu Caesar with Double Honey Mustard and Chinese Noodles

This is a salad that absolutely changed my life:

• Romaine lettuce
• shredded carrots
• 4 x 2 inch slabs of dense, cheesy tofu (not cooked, but definitely denser and less slimy than the bricks you buy at the supermarket. I imagine they used extra firm tofu and then pressed out the moisture with paper towels before slicing, a trick I learned from my brother.)
• shredded Parmesan
• Chinese noodles
• 2 pours of low fat honey mustard dressing (I like a well-dressed salad.)

Procured from the salad bar at my gym.

I lost about 50 pounds eating this salad after vigorous workouts, on a near-daily basis, over the course of a year. At the end of the year, about 40 pounds into the weight loss, I met my husband.  It was June of 2002, in Manhattan. The ne plus ultra romantic time of my life. My husband fell in love with me at my very prettiest, which is special to me, though not exactly unorthodox.

I am not a fan of weight loss in general. Personally. Culturally. I am not of the cult of thinness, nor do I think women should waste any energy spiffing up the bod for objectification. However. . .

I lost 50 lbs that I had gained after quitting smoking two years before.  I replaced cigarettes with weed and snacked non-stop for 15 months, until, one day in August of 2001, a tiny red stretch-mark appeared to the left of my belly button. Quitting smoking is probably my proudest accomplishment, the thing that seemed most impossible before I did it. The fast weight gain and weight loss that followed didn't really phase me, though the numbers speak for themselves. I gained, then lost, a lot of weight.

The most notable thing about Tofu Caesar with Double Honey Mustard and Chinese Noodles is that it was so immoderately delicious and healthful, and so readily available, that I never felt like I was actually working to lose weight.  I would whip up to the gym from graduate school, bust my ass on the elliptical, and then eat my salad on the way back to school. Often I bought a second of the exact same salad for dinner or a late night snack. (After a few hours in my bag, unrefrigerated, the salad settled into a warm, wet mass. Just as delicious, but about half the size of the fresh version and much, much, more dense.)  I loved that salad. As with all of them, I can taste it now. My mouth is watering. Heavily dressed with tangy honey mustard, crunchy with carrots. The earthy, meaty tofu.

When something is so good for your body that you get used to how good you feel when you eat it, then when you think about that food the happy feelings are, like, not so much about the flavors, but are somatically rooted to your corpus. Its food-love on a whole other level. I loved some salads long before Tofu Caesar with Double Honey Mustard and Chinese Noodles, but no other delivered me from past to future in such dramatic fashion.

Also, everyone should fall in love in New York at least once.