The Uberbusy Mom Salad

I woke up this morning with a sense of duty. I had things to accomplish, and I was going to systematically check them all off my neatly organized mental list. I fed the cats: Charlie gets wet food Sasha and Eugene get dry food so I put Eugene and Sasha in the other room, but just as I put Eugene IN Sasha ran OUT. I put Sasha in and Eugene ran out. I put down Eugene and picked up Sasha, I put down Sasha and Charlie ran in...I Shoo out Charlie, shut the door and..whew! Everybody was now in their proper place, so I fed the cats and went for a run. 

Running took longer than anticipated because I kept running (literally) into people I know and I had to stop often to chat. I got home, put the dishes away and started working on my thesis. 

Every two seconds I thought of something important that needed to be done. I sat down, I stood up to fold towels, I sat down, I got up to make iced tea, I sat down, I got up to wipe off the counters. 

By about noon I started to get hungry for salad and headed to the grocery store. 

The majority of my shopping trip was spent on the telephone. I balanced grocery bags precariously on my wrists while smashing the phone between my shoulder and ear so that I could keep talking all the way to my door. I switched on my bluetooth the second I got in my house. While I made the salad, Eugene pawed at my ankles, dove into the grocery bags, and tried clawing his way up my leg. "what's that?" I said "I am sorry, I gotta go, my cat is getting into everything and I need to get this salad made" I hung up the phone. 

The phone rang again "hello, oh hi Mom... yeah I can talk I am just making salad" 

At this point Eugene dove at my ankles and desperately started biting. 

"ouch!" I said, "Eugene is BITING me!!" 

Suddenly, at that very moment, it hit me. Child or no child, husband or domestic partner, full- time housewife or full-time grad-student, I.. have become... my mother.  

Memories of being a little child tugging out on my mothers nightgown while she laughed and cried and shared all of her deepest thoughts with her 20 closest friends. one. after. the other. on the telephone came rushing to meet my awareness as I looked into Eugene's desperate little attention seeking eyes.  

A few days ago we were over at a neighbors house. The neighbor had a little girl with long tangles in her hair who jumped up from her cereal bowl in front of the TV to perform the giant imaginary stage in the bright lights of childhood the second we walked through the door. Her mother, excited to have some adult company, started telling us about the paint job she had just done while her daughter flailed and tugged and gradually escalated her cries to a loud MOOOM. The mother calmly turned to her daughter and said "baby, please! I am trying to have a conversation" and then turned back to us and said "I swear, she never wants to talk to me unless I have company over". 

The way of kids and cats is to do everything in their power to ensure they are number one at all times, and because they are cute, we have no choice but to abide. 

So for all the busy moms, here is a salad you can enjoy. If your really, really busy, substitute a store bought poppyseed dressing for the homemade one (but the homemade one doesn't take too long, and you can keep the kids busy by giving them the rest of the blueberries or having them help you shred up the lettuce). 

The dressing:

6 Tbsp canola oil

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp honey

1/2 very small yellow onion, or start with 1/4 (you can always add more)

2 tsp yellow mustard powder

1/4 tsp salt

blend together in a mini cuisinart or using a hand blender (or the magic bullet, or any other pureeing device you may have ordered off of a midnight infomercial or at a mall demo)

After you blend, add 1 Tbsp poppyseeds

The ingredients for this salad came from a friend's garden in Indiana..not literally, but in theory. Start by rinsing and shredding a head of lettuce. Use spinach if you have it, or green leaf. I had some red leaf so I used that. 

Add 2 cups diced sugar snap peas

Add 3 diced carrots (I used the third one for garnish)

Add 1 sliced avacado

1/2 pkg of blueberries

Christina's vote: "I never thought I'd like blueberries and snap peas together, but wow! I could swear I saw them tango!"