Flavor Tornado Salad

As I write this post, I am walking 2 mph at a treadmill desk. It is amazing. The desk, which can be raised or lowered at the press of a button, is about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. That is plenty of room for my papers, and my coffee. I could probably even fit a couple of coffee pots on here. The only drawback to this setup is the location. I am in a tiny room in the heart of the library at the VA medical center. In order to be able to use the desk, I have to sign up in advance. Thinking back to a recent experience where I had to complete an exam that required 12+ hour days sitting at a computer, I have to wonder why no one invented the treadmill desk sooner.

During the sedentary month, my back would often ache and my mind would feel stale. The blood would pool in my legs, and my whole body, right down to the toes, would feel swollen and sore. I had to wear arm socks to keep my elbows from bruising. I kept thinking 'I can't believe people live like this.'

I dream of a future where the word desk chair is filed in the graveyard of technological archives, along with the camcorder, the 8-track, and the telephone chord. The chair will be looked back on as a historical torture device, once revered as a symbol of cultural pride, like the corset or the Chinese lotus shoe (which was used in foot binding). It may seem extreme to compare the desk chair to the lotus shoe, which often caused young women to have broken toes and severe disabilities later in life. However, I feel that it is a valid comparison. My reasoning is not entirely scientific, but I did gather some evidence. Christina and I once had a discussion about the prevelence of pain in the American population, she insisted that most people live with pain, I assured her that they do not. The discussion resulted in the formation of a bet. She bet me that if I asked everyone who came through the coffee shop, most people would confess to living with pain. I wish I could say that I won the bet, but I did not. The most common source of pain described was the lower back. The most common job: the desk job.

Here is a link to the treadmill desk http://www.treadmill-desk.com/

This salad is simple and elegant. I added lemon to it at first, and so it was too tart. Christina added soy sauce to hers and brought the tartness down. Then she stood and watched me taste it, and waited for my response. She looked like a proud kid showing me a report card. It was the cutest, but I couldn't let her know I thought so. In the dressing I left out the lemon and the soy sauce, but If you want some more complex flavors, add 1/2 tsp lemon juice and a few drops of soy.

Champagne truffle dressing
1 Tbsp white truffle oil
4 Tbsp grape seed oil
1 1/2 tsp Champagne vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 baby green onions
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp fresh thyme

The salad
1 head red leaf lettuce
3 carrots quartered and sliced
1 small tomato
6 asparagus spears

Christina's vote: "I was swirled by a tornado of flavors"

Spicy Caprese Salad

When feeling uncertain, uncomfortable, or socially awkward, I find that the best thing to do is to wash dishes. I am not the greatest dishwasher, for which I blame my mother because, growing up, she always offered to wash the dishes if I cooked dinner. I stood in the back of the coffee stand at the farmers market. It was one of my first days on the job, and though I was hired to coordinate demos and report on the radio, I found myself eagerly offering to wash the dishes almost instantly. My boss, who has a background in marketing, likes to introduce me to people, and heavily emphasizes my education. While my credentials may be impressive to her, the farmers know better. To the farmers, the hours that I spend sitting at my desk reading, or researching articles online, represent hours missed working with the plants. To them, my degree program is more a symbol of my lack of experience than of my high qualifications, even though I am studying nutrition. So said the cheese man, who is a former researcher and biochemistry PhD. "No offense" he said "but I make it a point not to hang around with you university types anymore. You don't realize how much you don't know, and are missing. I was a researcher, but I got bored with that. I gave it up to study cheese. Cheese is a moving target... blah blah blah blah" he went on. 'You don't understand.' I wanted to say 'I'm not like them. I'm one of you. I just haven't settled in to my place here yet.'Instead the words came out like this, "Could you excuse me, I have some dishes to wash" and I backed away slowly. In the kitchen I overheard a farmer telling my boss's daughter about high tunnel farming(see link below for article on high tunnel farming).

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/516927.html?nav=5562

It is because of high tunnel farming that we have Minnesota tomatoes, grown outdoors in the ground, this early in the season. We also have chubs, which are basically pickling cucumbers grown past their regular harvest time. What we don't have at the farmers market right now, are pickling cucumbers. Why not, you ask? The answer is that nobody will buy them now, because it is not pickling season yet. Food is one area where our culture is slow to catch up with our tecnology. When a new food product is engineered, cultural rules must be abided if the product is to sell. "People seem to forget that their local farmers are trying to make a living, sometimes we have to get creative. People won't buy pickling cucmbers now, so we grow them out longer and call them 'chubs'". The salad below was made with high tunnel tomatoes, which can be found right now at the farmers market. They are delicious!

Spicy Caprese Salad (The watercress gives it spice. If you don't like spice use arugula for a peppery variation, or sorrel for a lemony one.)

1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Add salt and pepper
Whisk in 1/2 cup slivered basil
2 chopped garlic scapes
1 slice diced red onion
1 cup chopped watercress (for spice)

lay out mixture on a plate and add 1 sliced high tunnel tomato. Serve with toast.

Christina's vote: "This salad made me feel right-justified"

Mermaid Tales Salad

I leaned with all my might against the heavy wind and the force of gravity. The boat had tipped us sideways, kissing her rails to the water. Like an older sibling she teased us, threatening to dump us out and let us fall into the ocean. I knew she wouldn't let us fall, but my hands gripped tightly to her wire shrouds and my toes clenched her fiberglass deck through rubber soled shoes, just in case. I was seven years old, and proud to be a sailor. My mother shouted out at me from the cockpit, volumes of her worry laden voice were seized and escorted away by gusts of wind before they reached my ears. Every so often I could hear a faint
"always keep one hand on the shiiiipppp..", but even when these words reached my ears, they were muffled by my awe. I was mesmerized by the churning, thrashing, dull blue-gray horizon, and the smooth, white sails which were snapped tight. The tell tails wagged approvingly at the authority of the wind. Then there was the sound. Rhythmic like breath, gentle like rain, we rose and fell to the sound of our crashing bow.
"Ready about?" My brother was at the helm. I rushed back to my mothers worried arms.
"Hard to lee" We turned through the eye of the wind, and for a moment the boat went flat and I could feel the wind's breath on both of my ears. Then the ship leaned to the other side. My father took my hand. He smelled like sunscreen and cold air.
"Why don't you go and hang your legs off of the high side, and look for mermaids?"
"Okay!" I said, and I scooted out onto the deck and hung my legs over the side and stared into our foamy wake.
Years later I am still looking for mermaids. As it turns out Christina's mother is a mermaid artist. Born in Minnesota, miles from the nearest ocean, she found herself compelled to create mermaids. They emerged from the depths of her imagination, in all shapes and sizes, with the most curiously beautiful faces. They are too gentle not to be real. As I was going through my salad pictures for this post, I spotted a picture of one of Catherine's mermaids, and I decided to make her this salad to remind her of her home in the sea.

View Catherine's mermaids: http://www.catherinestenhjem.com

Mermaid Tales Salad
Boil water and add about 1/4 tsp salt. Cook pasta for about 10 min, then drain and rinse with cold water to prevent it from sticking. In a large frying pan, add
1 Tbsp olive oil and
1 Tbsp white truffle oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
cook for about 3 min, then add the pasta. Cook another 3 min, then remove from heat and dump into a bowl. Add
2 garlic scapes, diced. Put the pan back onto the burner and add
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 head rinsed swiss chard
2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp water, cover with a lid and turn the heat down. Cook until wilted. Remove the lid and let the moisture evaporate. Add the chard to the pasta. When the salad has cooled, add
1/2 yellow pepper
1/2 orange pepper
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1/2 cup diced basil
fresh ground pepper
Place in fridge and adjust seasoning before serving (you may want to add more oil and vinegar)

Christina's vote: This salad stirred me.

I Dream of Island Ranch Coleslaw

I dove my spoon into the shredded cabbage and kohlrabi. I was feeling clever, having just created a rendition of one of my favorite salads in town, a coconut lime coleslaw. The version I made is tropical, but with a hint of garden. I think it is best described as an island ranch dressing. I poured the creamy dressing into the spicy-sweet slaw. It folded over itself in beautiful ribbons, then sank into the porous shreds, glazing the carrots with darkness the way water changes sand. Just then, tiny whiskers interrupted my musings, and a nose poked into view. My eyes followed the little white nose up to triangular grey ears, then back to look straight into the most intensely curious eyes I have ever seen. I cocked my head to match his, and held my gaze as he looked from me to the salad and back again. He seemed so happy to be sitting there watching, that I considered going back to my cooking and leaving him on the counter.

Then I noticed the paw. It was poised and ready to dive. It looked like a snake about to strike. I blinked my eyes wider, and zoomed in on the tan burnt auburn stains on the white fur. My eyes walked further, uncovering a track of brown splatter which led to a drip stained mug whose rim was now tracing the counter. I looked back at Eugene. His eyes bulged guiltily. Clearly he had helped himself to some coffee, and now he was planning to help himself to some salad. I dove for my water gun while shouting "NOOOOOO". He turned his head. The snake paw drooled brown. I shook the gun, sloshing the water ominously. He flinched and ducked. He left me no choice. I fired.

Eugene sat on the floor, licking the water off of his legs. He frowned at me, put up his tail, and pranced away. I continued scraping the bowl with my spatula. Since the first time I read Alice Waters "Fanny at Chez Panisse" I have fantasized about having a child who would sit with me while I am cooking, and to whom I could pass along all of my kitchen secretes. I would set the child on the table in a large salad bowl, and spin the bowl from time to time to keep them pacified. I suppose I should have been more specific in my dreaming and imagined that the child be human and not so naughty as to stick their paws into the salad.

Coconut lime dressing
2 heaping TBSP coconut cream (open a can of coconut milk and just scoop out the creamy part)
juice and zest of 1/2 lime
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
lots of fresh ground pepper
pinch salt
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon-thyme (I have a plant of it that I got from the farmers market)

Kohlrabi slaw
in a food processor, shred 2 medium peeled kohlrabi and 6 peeled carrots. Add 2 diced garlic scapes and 3 green onions (with a tiny bulb on the end). Dress with coconut lime dressing.

Christina's vote: "I could taste melodies in this salad"

Beet-en and Fried Salad with E Scape dressing

The thick, humidity had been hovering for days, and the sky smothered our little city under a blanket of rainclouds. In the dim light the heavy leaves brightened and came alive, like pages of a comic book illuminated by flashlight. I lumbered through the intermittent, heavy raindrops, stepping my boot down awkwardly on the pavement to protect my heel from the piercing blister which tore at my ankle. Many of the veterans at the hospital have the same labored walk, probably from grenade blown limbs and amputated gunshot wounds. My injury was a casualty of gender and fashion. I felt absolutely ridiculous. I let the world turn into a jungle around me on the drive home. I turned where the trees arched over the road and allowed them to engulf me into there once skeletal arms. I was exhausted. I was hungry. It was late.

A hard day of work is refreshing, when your mind and body have been pushed to the edges of your own ego, forcing you to dangle your fingers and toes into the surrounding abyss. Your hair blows through the winds of the unknown, and you don't even try to tie it back. You hope that it will gather lofty messages, and bring them to you so that you too can fly freely around this earth. These messages cannot be contained within the confines of an ego.

I got home and opened my computer. The letter finally came. I didn't get the fellowship I had applied for. I turned into a perfectionistic 7 year old, throwing a tantrum. I began compiling a mental list of my failures. I felt like giving up on school, but instead shared my thoughts with Christina and allowed her to put them into perspective.
"Don't be one of those people that never appreciates what they have." She said. That made me laugh. I said those exact words to her yesterday. I love my life, and I can't stop showing up for it just because I have skinned pride. As I began peeling the beets, I went through my list of failures, mentally erasing each one and replacing it with a gratitude.

E SCAPE dressing
1 tsp raw dandelion honey (it melts like butter and turns bitter tongues sweet)
2 tsp white wine vinegar (it just sounds fancy)
1 tsp ume plum vinegar (a deliciously salty, lovely flavor)
2 diced garlic scapes (crunchy, independent child of garlic
1 tsp french basil (As I poured it into the bowl, I thought of Diane Boutin and of my trip to Quebec, I demanded that Christina and I pack up our things and move to Canada at once. She just started at me and slowly chewed her beets.)
lots of ground black pepper (it feels good to grind)
2 Tbsp olive oil (flavor matters, make sure your oil is fresh and to your liking)
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice (lighten up, it's summer)

Beet en and Fried Salad
Slice thin:
2 small golden beets
2 small red beets
2 small candy striped beets
4 thin carrots
In a frying pan, add 1 Tbsp olive oil and the gold beets. Add 2 small cloves minced garlic and 1 sprig rosemary. Add a pinch of salt. Pour in about 1 tsp mirin and saute for about 4 min. Pull the beets out with a slotted spoon and add the candy striped beets, 2 more cloves minced garlic and about 1/2 cup water. When the candy beets are soft, pull them out with a slotted spoon and add the red beets. Cook to desired texture and remove.
Toss 2-3 cups arugula in 1/2 the dressing and pour onto a platter. Toss the beets and sliced carrots in the rest of the dressing and serve (warm or cold).

Christina's vote: "This salad can do no wrong"

It's about time for more salad

"Hello, I'd like to speak with Annie please."
"Yeah. Hang on a moment. ANNIEEEE" The woman's voice was blase with a hint of crabby. It was not at all what I would expect from the mother of a responsible high school girl scout, especially one who was mature enough to organize a health and nutrition day for her troop. I peered around the pristine church basement. The face of my cell phone was glued to my ear, causing my cheek to burn and my ear to sweat.
"Hello?" said the young voice.
"Hi Annie, I am here. Where is the group?" The heavy grocery bag pulled at my left shoulder and cut into my hand. I set it on the ground, balancing it against my leg to prevent the long green carrot tops that were bursting out of the top from tipping the whole bag over. I could hear the low drone of the pastors voice whispering through the cracks of the room where a Sunday service was taking place. The thought dawned on me that it was a little strange for a group of girl scouts would be meeting in a church on a Sunday for a workshop, but having never been a girl scout, I wouldn't know how these things work.
"Um, actually it was yesterday." She said.
"What!!!??! But your email said the 20th. That's today! I am here today!"
"Yeeeah, we didn't know where you were. Sorry. I didn't email you last night. I meant to."
I had driven through traffic. I had been to three grocery stores. I had been planning for days, researching the origins of different foods. I was going to do a mindfulness exercise with them. We were going to taste-test organic and conventional apples, ethylene vs high tunnel tomatoes, whole carrots vs baby carrots, and foods with hidden salt. I walked out of the church and into my car with the mixed bag of desirable and undesirable goods and emotions.

There is something about a cow pasture that makes me forget that cars are for getting from one place to another. The sky was gathering puffs of cloud, and knitting them into one large white blanket. The streets were flawed with evenly spaced bumps that gave my wheels a rhythmic industrial clank, like the sound of pistons pumping. I thought about machinery, and imagined the robotic arms picking unripe tomatoes on an industrial farm, sending them down a conveyor belt to be gas ripened with ethylene. I imagined the crates being loaded into a truck, tossed and stacked like mail. I took out one of the bright pink tomatoes and brought it up to my nose. Nothing. It felt greasy in my hands. This is the tomato we have come to know. I took out the other tomato from the farmers market, grown in a high tunnel. It felt soft in my hand. It never would have survived a robotic arm, or being packed, stacked, and thrown around in a crate. It was hand picked, and delivered to me at the farmers market. I know because I met the man who picked it.

A large clang jolted me as my wheel skipped over a hole in the road, and I came into the realization that I was driving aimlessly. The heat was steaming the fragrances out of the strawberries sitting in the passenger seat. I felt bad about missing the girl scouts, but recognized how good it felt to have the intention of going. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out my phone, opened up the text window, and sent a message to Christina.
"I think it's time for another round of 90 salads" I wrote.
Her message came back instantly.
"finally"

Strawberry rosemary balsamic vinaigrette
1 1/2 cups small sweet strawberries
1 1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
1 tsp mustard powder
pinch salt
tsp pepper
2 Tbsp grape seed oil
1/2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 tsp white wine vinegar
Blend together the strawberries and balsamic, and transfer into a small saucepan. Heat for 4 min over med/high heat. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients.

Salad
mixed baby greens with 1 cup arugula and 1/2 cup cilantro
1 cup sugar snap peas or snow peas
1 cup diced purple cabbage
1 cup strawberries for garnish
1 cup dry roasted almonds
Garnish with goat brie if desired

Christina's vote: "Don't see how it could get better than this, but I am sure it will."

Iron Fork Amateur Competition

Video by George Prine: