Straight Up Salad

The bars of the pack cut into my shoulder blades, the weight felt uneven and set my 15 year old frame off balance. My hiking boots were stiff and awkward on my feet, they reeked of new rubber. I had not practiced walking in them as the thirteen page instructional sheet suggested, and I felt the raw burning of blisters on both of my heels. Our adult guide held a compass out in front of his wire framed glasses and I wondered why he bothered as the destination was not N, S, E or W it seemed, but straight up. We all whined, half because we were in physical pain, and half because we were insecure and it made us feel a sense of camaraderie. The pain I felt was nothing compared to the fear born of knowing that this was only the first day of a 30 day hiking trip. We still had 3 states to make it through on this Appalachian trail. The sun had barely colored the woods with morning and my back felt as though it would break in two. My legs ached and my heels burned and I wanted it to be over. I was crabby. I hurt. I wanted it to end...now. The guide said it would get easier. I couldn't imagine how that would be possible at the time, but he was right. By the third day my pack felt lighter, and my attitude had markedly improved and I was singing my way along the trail, happily commiserating with my peers about foods missed instead of agony felt.

This place, of feeling like things will never get easier, of imagining your future and trying to live it all now, in one moment as the you are now, inexperienced, weak winged, cocooned, I sit on this stump of frustration often. Self-defeat and hopelessness stretch in every direction. The only way out is up, one step at a time, through every ache and pain.

I have not met the person I will be ten minutes from now, and I never will meet her, but I can help to build her. With every step she becomes easier to carry, every word clumsily practiced she becomes more eloquent, with every vulnerability risked she becomes more saturated with love. Like a tree grows to sunlight, she will grow in the direction of all the challenges that will come in ten minutes.

The first thing I ever cooked was scrambled eggs with lemon pepper. I will never forget the woman who lifted my tiny frame onto that chair and handed me a fork and an egg and some simple instructions. She held onto me so I would not fall as I clunked my fork around the bowl, eager to show her that I could be a big girl. Shaking the lemon pepper into the eggs was my favorite part, the reward for a job well done. I used a much larger fork this morning to mix the Greek yogurt into the diced vegetables. It was the kind of fork designed not for eating, but to go on a serving platter, proportionally over sized for my body. As I cut into the red onions, I remembered what it was like to stand before boxes of onions and potatoes when I worked as a prep cook on Saturdays. I was clumsy and inexperienced but eager to impress the chef with my speed. I reflect on these moments as I clear the remaining chopped veggies into the salad bowl.

Dice 1 green pepper, 2 large cucumbers (peeled), 10 radishes and 1/2 head of fennel. Add ~1 cup Greek yogurt and 4 baby red onions diced small. Squeeze in a little lemon juice, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and top liberally with lemon pepper.

Christina's vote: "This salad made me feel like I was being carried along by dolphins"

Yogic Potato Salad

Wearing rubber sandals, I walked to where the potatoes were buried under the dirt. I was unprepared for farm terrain, but the cool earth felt nice against my feet. It was a guilty pleasure, so long as I tried not to think about how this rich soil came to be. My back was burning against my sun baked shirt, but the breezy farmland made it too cool to sweat. My scattered human companions disappeared into rows of crops, which seemed to go for miles in every direction. Every so often a head would pop up, and I would shout my questions at it quickly before it sunk down again and was lost. The bugs were opportunists in this way also, they would wait for a moment of stillness, then land, tickling me and forcing me to stay in motion so that my mind was never really at rest unless I was working. This must be why farmers are such productive workers.
Potatoes. They live in the darkness, their eyes buried in the cool dirt. What must it be like for them to feel the sun for the first time. If someone described that moment, the first moment of light, to a buried potato, would the potato be able to fathom it?
Every time I dug into the sand with my rake and came up with a potato I felt lucky. Like I had just won a prize. The digging was addictive, and soon the rush of finding potatoes made me forget about the landing bugs, and I was lost, like my companions, to the secret world of the garden. I soon began wishing that I had an army to cook for so that I could stay here for hours.

It was a memory. I felt the light hit my eyelids and the muscles of my back straighten as I sat breathing, cross-legged on the floor, the backs of my hands against my knees. "open your arms if you want to be held" a quote by Rumi trails through my mind like a train with no end. The yoga instructor walks delicately over to the window to open the blinds, I can feel her feet as they stick gently to the wooden floor before pushing off. I imagine the potatoes, their journey from darkness, their denial of the existence of light, and then that incredible feeling of light surrounding, blazing, defying all previous reality.

I carry my meditation with me. I bring it home to the kitchen. I am standing, breathing, feeling the green, yellow and purple string beans as I snap off their ends. The colors, so bright that my pupils contract at the sight of them, physically altering me before I have even tasted a nutrient. I can smell the potatoes when they finish boiling, their odor, like the steam that fills a Thanksgiving kitchen.

When the new potatoes finish cooking I pour in the beans and watch as the colors brighten or dim back to green. In minutes I drain the whole pot of beans and potatoes into the strainer and rinse them with cool water. Into the empty pot I pour 4 Tbsp sesame oil. Sesame oil is exotic and sensual. It says I am interesting, I am different and undeniably irresistible. It is compelling, mystifying, it compliments the simple beauty of a fresh potato training the palate not to go searching for butter or ketchup. When the sesame oil is hot, I turn the heat off and add 4 cloves of purple garlic, fresh from the farmers market. I quickly pour this mixture over the potatoes and beans and add 4 small red onions sliced thin.

Then I dress the salad with 1 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp salad vinegar, 2 tsp Ume plum vinegar, a bit of salt. Over the top, pour, 2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds.
I used 6 new potatoes, 3 red and 3 yellow, and 2 cups of beans for this salad. The recipe made about 5 cups.

Christina's vote: "An unusual delight!"

Inspired Baby Arugula Salad

I love arugula. Normally, I will eat it with a little drizzle of olive oil and a squirt of lemon. It makes a wonderful side salad for white fish. It has a peppery flavor which makes it fantastic with steak or mushrooms.
It was a perfect day for cleaning. Last night we stayed up far too late after a full 8 hour day of driving, followed by a concert. I rarely go to concerts anymore, but every now and then a friend from the east coast comes through Minneapolis on tour. Being the only one of my graduating class to have moved to the twin cities (that I am aware of) I feel it is really important to go to these things.
We sat sleepily on some bar stools overlooking an eclectic crowd of college aged kids, tattooed with reflective light from a disco ball overhead. My friend Michael stood on stage looking out with his soft brown eyes and salad bowl hair cut and I was aware of how he had become an adult.
A few months ago I saw a friend from high school play a show. I was amazed by how her cheekbones had grown prominent and her posture confident, I might not have recognized her in the street. How amazing to watch live examples of energetic childhood dreams manifest themselves into fully expressed realities. I feel empowered by their commitment.
I awoke from my sleepy reflections at the sound of the mic check as a small queer person of mixed gender with a 70's mustache spoke into the mic, "Are you guys ready for a gay disco party?" the crowd cheered and then the beat exploded into the walls of the club, ricocheting back towards the group of sweaty dancers. The music was vibrant, the crowd was elated, the performance art was brilliant, I left feeling inspired.
I woke up to the mid-summer sun radiating off white walls. The sound of bartering from the farmers market carries all the way up to our 6th floor window. It was a perfect day for cleaning, and reflecting, and relaxing in the cool shade of our apartment.
The arugula I found in my refrigerator seemed a little tired and not quite as flavorful as I had hoped, so I made a full dressing in lieu of lemon and oil.

The dressing:
mix together:
4 cloves fresh garlic (the garlic I used was not quite dry, sharp yet mild. If you use dried bulbs, use 2 cloves instead of 4)
the juice of 3 juicy lemons
1 tsp white wine vinegar
4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard

For the salad, use arugula as the base green, diced yellow pepper, spicy radishes, chopped tomato, and baby cucumber. Garnish with raspberries and fresh ground pepper.

Christina's vote: "I felt like I needed to handle this salad like a newborn baby"

Jesse's Breakfast Salad

The beauty of the river was demystified by the stench of sewage, incongruent as the gorgeous woman who speaks hatred and slander through perfectly painted lips.

The raw smell of the river wafts in and out of narrow downtown streets like a rat lost in a maze, poking around corners and then quickly withdrawing. Sometimes it charges back and forth on the same block, this way and that, trapped in the narrow streets, looking for it’s way back to the river.

I run down paved sidewalks passed murals on buildings, painted by small hands with dreams of growing big. The messy work becomes an abstract blur as my heart begins ascending into the day’s running adventure. Bounding down the hill I am a child, carefree, arms swinging wild. My reflection projects an adult, controlled, tightly moving, serious attention to form. I am two people in one.

As I climb out of the maze of buildings I have a clear landscape view of the winding path along the river, which is littered with brightly colored shirts, which scatter about like leaves in the wind. Volumes of air moving in and out of my lungs quench my thirst. This is what drinking breath feels like. The Minnesota sky, uninterrupted by mountains, is a giant blue dome overhead. I feel like I am inside a shakable globe. Everything is fixed, a perfectly painted world, and I am a moving toy bounding up the river path weighted so I land proper in the scene.

Nothing beats a good fruit salad after a run like this. Yesterday I went to Tanya and Allison’s house to see their vegetable garden. They had an excess of raspberries and invited me over to pick some. I walked into the yard and saw Tanya standing in what looked like a giant tomato jungle, rake in hand, squinting from the sun. It was their first garden, and, it was quite impressive. They had baby cucumbers, small and pimpled and nestled under leaves like street teenagers waiting to be rescued. They had green beans, so new they were sticky and in their infancy they clung to my tongue. They had spicy mustard greens, whose aggressive flavor hit me between the eyes. The zucchini were my favorite. In the shade of giant heart shaped leaves hides a little village where giant yellow squash blossoms, billowy at the bottom and peaking in a point like a soft ice cream cone, sit atop little green zucchini. They look like Dr. Seuss characters. When Allison brushed the leaves aside to show me the zucchini, I half expected them to gather and sing in whoville chorus. The raspberry bushes were contained in a giant hairnet, I left with a container of beautiful fresh red raspberries.

The fruit salad for today is simple. Just fruit. I used ¼ watermelon (cubed), 1 honeydew melon (cubed), 1 cup blueberries, 1 cup raspberries, 1 cup grapes (halved). Mix and enjoy!

Jesse’s vote: “I liked it so much”

Flavors Unmasked Salad

"I can't wait to write a book under a pen name" I said, as I paged through the Anais Nin book which I had propped against the steering wheel. Christina reclined in the passenger seat, one long pointed cowboy boot pressed against the front windshield of the car. After over an hour sitting in the parking lot of the CD store waiting for Jesse to finish his shopping, the car was beginning to feel more like a tent. Christina likes to people gaze the way some people watch the stars, and at her urging we had parked to face the bar studded street to watch crowds stumble down the road in two's and three's.
They were orange, with fake tans tapered into little shoes and blond hair piled on top like an ice cream cone. They were huge with bulging muscles and tight T shirts, with necks so thick they had to turn their whole bodies to look behind them. They were skinny and blemished, with billowing polo T shirts, narrow waists and sagging pants tied with braided belts. They hung on the arms of each other leaving the bar. They walked briskly, floating heads chattering, propelled by swinging legs walking into the bar.

Christina flopped her head over to look at me and shot me a cool inquisitive look. "Why?" she said.

"..because I think if I had a pen name I would really feel free to express myself" I said definitively, not seeing anything debatable about it.

"I think you are totally wrong about that one" She turned her head back to the street, she might as well have been chewing a blade of grass.

I started to stutter a comeback and then stopped....

Masks. I have always worn them. I build them, wear them, speak from them, without realizing they are there. Then I feel trapped by them. While wearing a mask, I can control how people respond to me. I can be elated when I am sad, indifferent when I am angry, your friend when I am mistrustful. It is hard to breathe from behind a mask, however, and life becomes a distant show and I a disengaged observer. The promise of freedom does not come from wearing a new disguise, it comes from facing fear and being one face.

Earlier that night we sat in the pub eating our pizza and drinking our coke on the patio while the little crowds of hipsters drank micro-brewed beers and smoked. We watched, as a couple who had belonged to the circle next to our table got up to give hugs and kisses on the cheek and say their goodbyes. The pub door had barely finished swinging shut before heads at our neighbors table leaned in close and the gossiping began.
"I don't like her, do you?" One woman said.
Then a stream of she's and he's and they did this, said that etc.. began. They dealt out opinions as though they were cards, emulating the world poker tournament which flashed on the television screen projecting from every corner of the bar.

"Are you going to tell your friends about the argument you had with other friends today?" Christina asked. I had had an argument with some friends earlier in the day. I felt terrible. I wanted relief. I wanted to slander. I wanted to get to my other friends to tell them my story before they had a chance to tell their side. I wanted to win my friends over, to make sure that if sides were created, they would pick mine.

"I thought about it" I said "but no"

Drama is voluntary. Drama is for people who believe that life is dull and needs to be made interesting, that life is too bland and needs to be spiced. In order for flavors to be fully tasted, the palate needs to be trained to sense them. Years of eating food doused with heavy spices can ruin the tongues ability to sense more delicate flavors. I want to try not gossiping, I want to refrain from artificial excitements, so that I can experience the richness of life.

The dressing:
2 Tbsp Sesame oil
2 cloves mashed minced garlic
2 Tbsp sunflower oil
1 Tbsp Rice vinegar
1/2 tsp Ume plum vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar

Dice slice and finely chop a head of green cabbage until you have filled 2/3 of your salad bowl. Mix in 5 large spicy red radishes (cut into half moons), 4 green onions (chopped), and one fresh zucchini (the garden aroma is important, make sure you find some fresh zucchini). Garnish with raw sesame seeds.

Christina's vote: TBA

East Coast Meets Midwest Salad

I gingerly pick up the giant shards of green glass poking out from puddles of cool water made visible by reflections of light. I am reminded of searching for sea glass, ambling for hours with my head hanging down getting lost in sand sculptures crafted by ocean waves.
I used to stand for hours on the shoreline, double daring the ocean to bury me. I wanted to feel the cool weight of wet sand climb over me, comforting me with its heaviness. I wanted to get stuck there forever, becoming a fixture caked with salt. I wanted to feel my skin tan and then weather like the shore houses. I wanted the sun to change me, to bake my hair into streaks and my skin into wrinkles. The ocean only ever dared to bury my ankles, teasing me as each powerful building swell faded to a gentle push at my feet.

I loved how the wind carried away songs, mumblings, and lunacies, filling my ears with wind and water to protect them from the nonsense which vibrated past my lips. I search the floor for the scattered shards of glass, the faint humming of Jesse in the background.

My meditation ends abruptly by the prancing tap of paws. The culprit. Ears back, tail straight in the air, the cat comes to brag before his kill. A San Pellegrino smashed into pieces all over the floor. I squirt chase him away with a water gun. He has bullied the old orange tabby cat into a spot behind the copper legs of the table. Poor old Charlie looks just like a prisoner there. He follows my movements with his head from behind copper bars.

Shells, shrimp, peas, edamame, pasta salad. East meets Midwest. My father grew up on the east coast and my mother in Wisconsin. What better represents this cultural union than a shrimp filled pasta salad? (a lobster hot dish, perhaps?)

This morning, as we drove to pick up her brother Jesse from the airport, the dawn sky burned with pink. Glowing shrouds of cloud against a pink sky in the early morning make me dream ocean thoughts. Christina spoke love for Minnesota which was contagious, it is beautiful, I thought as we wound around the river sleepy eyed, with the crowning sun at our backs.

The Salad:
Boil some water and cook 1/2 box shells. While the shells are cooking, dice 1/2 onion. Mash and mince 2 cloves fresh garlic.
Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a frying pan. Add onions and garlic. Break 1/2 cauliflower into little pieces into the pan. Add some salt, and give a stir. Add 1/3 cup water and allow cauliflower to cook on high until the water is gone (I like it when it still has some crunch, but is not too hard). Check on your pasta periodically. When it is finished cooking, drain it and rinse immediately with cold water to prevent it from sticking.
Cook ~2 cups peeled de-veined shrimp in 1 tsp butter, 1/2 Tbsp olive oil. Add a little salt. After about 4 min pour shrimp into cauliflower and remove from heat. Add 2 more cloves of minced and mashed garlic to the mixture. Add in the pasta, 3 diced green onions, 1 cup frozen peas and 1 cup frozen edamame (shelled). Stir well, allow temperatures to even out. The peas and edamame will thaw, the cauliflower will cool.
Pour yourself some coffee. Wash a few dishes. Relax a bit.
Empty the salad into a large bowl and add 1 diced tomato, and liberal amounts of pepper and your favorite seasoning mix (I used some salt free seasoning mix that Christina's mom sent to us). Add salt to taste. Add 1 cup mayonnaise, and 1 1/2 Tbsp salad vinegar. Chill salad and serve!

Christina's vote: "This salad is rich"

Myth Dispelled Salad

"You never do art when your angry kids, just like with cooking. Never cook when your angry, right Emily?" Dan was a sixty year old man-child with a deep creased brow. His face was stretched from the invisible pull of gravity, whose beckoning had won over his eyelids and refashioned his cheeks into jowls. He wore the garb of a high school skateboarder, and he liked to banter with the kids as though he were one of them. His posture was wavy and loose. He carried hunched shoulders when approaching a group of teenage boys, as if to say "I am not a threat". Atop his large ears and nose rested a pair of 1960's style round sunglasses, like John Lennon used to wear. These sunglasses seemed to protect him from harsh glares cast by eyes rolling and hormonally driven attitude problems. Behind those glasses, everything was rosy for Dan, he had created his own world and he was a star.
He was not really asking me a question. He never pauses for long enough to invite an answer. He often skips over pauses in his speech entirely, drawing out his words to ward off possible interruption. He continues, "of course you never cook angry, because what is in your heart goes into the food. What is innnn yooooouuuur heaaaaarrrt goes innn-tooo the food..." he went on.

Nobody could get past his wall of glasses and words, the building of which took longer than the growing of his ponytail. I tried to look interested in his lecture, not for him so much as for the kids. I felt a sense of responsibility to them, to behave in such a way as to encourage them to behave properly. I was passing down unquestioned formalities, too afraid to question them at this stage in the game. There is a secret one learns when they find themselves standing in front of a lecture hall, or as in the case of my museum trip, when counseling at a summer camp. There are many truths, many paths, many ways. Our leaders are children, there paths go only as far as they have been led.

"You never cook when you are angry" These words resonate. My spoon hits the metal bowl with a clang. Today, I was cooking angry. I saw that the path Dan had cleared drops off into a cliff. I found his words to be false. To cook angry was pure heaven.
Oil spattered hungry for the raw green edges of zucchini. The smooth white insides turned yellow, melting in the steamy scream of oil. My hands were filled with passion as I crushed garlic under the smooth back of my knife. The passion of my anger dissolved into love and I saw they were one and the same. By the time the salad was finished I was laughing.

Try making this salad with any emotion:
Boil 2 cups water, 1 Tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp salt. Add 1 1/2 cups couscous, remove from heat, stir, cover and let sit for 7 min.
In a frying pan, cover the bottom with olive oil. Add 5 small diced zucchini and some salt. Add 4 cloves FRESH garlic (from the farmers market if possible, alive and spicy). When Zucchini has had enough, remove from heat and add 1/2 diced red onion. Add 1 cup re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes. Mix in couscous. Allow to cool a bit, add 1 Tbsp oil, 1 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1 1/2 Tbsp Salad vinegar, 1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar and 1 cup diced basil. Season with salt and pepper.

Christina's vote: "Love in every mouthful"