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:

I have a new blog

This project is now complete. I have begun a new blog, called "Leafy Reader". Leafy reader is a collection of short stories inspired by love and produce. I hope you will visit my site and join me in my journey as I discover and re-discover the amazing and expansive landscape of freshly grown foods.

http://leafyreader.blogspot.com/

Salad 90: Fireworks at High Tide Salad

His skin was brown like leather, his hair oily and straggly and dusted with sand, as though he had been a victim of shipwreck. He began each day before the sky's Great Metamorphosis of gray to green to blue; before the heat of the morning cooked out the calm cool of night and attracted gymnasium sounds of tourists.

They came with polo shirts and knee high socks, smelling of suntan lotion, smothered by mineral shade and cabana umbrellas. They wanted the feeling of home and the idea of beach, the TV version of life. The earlybirds who lived vigilantly, certain that somebody else would take the best spot if they didn't get it first, sometimes arrived in time to witness the man sculpting. He ignored them, mostly. He played aloof. They would never know how much he needed them, how he hid in the shade of the lifeguard post and watched their faces for reactions to his work.

The children were always the first to notice. Their little faces exploded in radiance at the sight of the giant alligator, or life-sized mermaid carved intricately out of sand. The young ones had lips painted with purple kool-aid and orange Popsicle, which opened and flowered into smiles. Their fathers, with fresh combed hair, parted crisply to the side, wearing beach shorts tied with drawstrings and walking in flip flops, lost themselves when they came upon his enormous beach tarantulas and hummingbirds. They simply stood, mouths gaping, silently wondering who and why. The women swooned. Contrary to the men, they seemed to get louder and louder as they closed in on the details of the sand creatures.

Every day, the ocean would come, and wash away the sharp edges of his fish. His mermaids would melt, his tarantula would return to the beach out of which it was born. He would watch as the tide climbed up the dry sand. It would begin with the toes of his carved princess who sat looking out over the waves as if searching for passing ships, or the nose of a giant diving dolphin. The water would lap up to the edge, and in that moment, the artist would surrender himself completely.

The next morning the artist simply moved down the shoreline and started fresh. Every day, he looked to the beach, trusting his foundation for wisdom.
"What forms would you use me for to create today?" he would say.
Always the beach would answer.

The dressing:
whisk together 4 Tbsp olive oil, 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, 1 clove minced garlic, a drizzle of lemon juice (add tarragon if you like).

The Salad: My purpose in making this salad was to treat each individual ingredient with respect to it's nature before bringing them all together to work as a group. Heat some water to boiling and blanch 1/2 bunch of asparagus for just a min or two. Drain and rinse with cold water. Heat another pot of water to boiling and blanch 8 quartered baby bella mushrooms (or crimini). Drain and rinse. Scatter some diced romaine tops onto a plate. No dressing is needed for the lettuce, because the dressing from the veggies on top will drain down. Now toss each ingredient individually in the dressing and place decoratively on the plate. 1/6 purple cabbage, 3/4 cup garbanzos, 3 diced carrots, 1/2 head fennel, mushrooms, asparagus. Top with 1/2 avocado drizzled with lemon juice.

Christina's vote: "this salad gave me a sense of identity"

What Do You Do With Abundance? Salad

It is Saturday and the weather woke up stormy. Clouds gathered in an ominous purple sky. When I put on my running clothes I felt like a small child. I had 21 miles to cover before lunchtime and I was sure to get poured on before the adventure was through. I returned my ipod to it's home in the drawer and felt instant pangs of separation anxiety, like a child divorced from her baby blanket. I began to worry. Would I get bored, cold, lonely, struck by lightening? Worry was interrupted by surrender and I chose to focus on using this silent run to pretend I am a tourist and take mental snapshots of the sights. Storms make fantastic imaginary photography subjects. In order to keep form, I imagine wheels where my legs are supposed to be. These wheels seem to power my imagination further, and soon I am propelled into various adventures of lives not yet lived. At mile 16 it started to rain, and the water felt warm and cleansing. The air was like tea steam and inhaling it was like drinking in leaves. I began to think of the vegetables at the farm stand, how they must be speckled with earth from yesterdays rain. I remembered cooking in southern New Jersey, how at this time of the year bags would appear in the galley overflowing with vegetables looking for hands willing to take on the challenge of cooking them.

Squash, zucchini and eggplant. They seem to proliferate faster than people can get rid of them.
Perhaps you have had them before as a part of a vegetarian entree ordered at a fine restaurant in lieu of the escargot. The pasta primavera was a little bland as you recall, but the chef did manage to cook the colorful vegetables on your plate to lovely perfection.

You have had them in Japanese restaurants, sitting around the lovely little fish pond watching the goldfish pick specks of floating vegetation from between the slimy penny covered rocks. A plate of crisp tempura at your place setting revealed edges of purple, yellow and green from where the batter was torn open, and you proudly announced that you could identify every vegetable on your plate.

You remember liking the eggplant Parmesan and batter fried zucchini that you would order from the Italian restaurants, and the ratatouille cooked out of a vegetarian cookbook at a friends.

Here is a salad featuring these three abundant characters (summer squash, zucchini and eggplant), to add to your collection of memories.

First salt the eggplant. Slice off four giant circles and lay them flat on a paper towel. Sprinkle them with salt and let them sit for a bit, until they begin sweating brown liquid from their pores. You are helping them to detoxify. When the beads of perspiration have gathered into little puddles blot them with a towel.

Slice them into bite sized pieces. In a frying pan, add 2 Tbsp olive oil and 1/2 cup sliced red onions. Allow the pan to get really hot before adding the eggplant. After the eggplant has been added, it is time to start moving quickly. Keep an eye/nose/ear on the eggplant, so that it doesn't burn. If your knife skills are iffy, you may want to turn the heat down.

Mince 2 cloves of garlic and add to the eggplant. Now dice 1/2 yellow summer squash and add it to the pan. Dice 1 small zucchini and add it in. The order is important. Cook everything to your preferred texture (I learned today that Christina likes her eggplant thoroughly cooked while I like mine a little firm. It is very disconcerting to watch someone literally spit out their first bite of eggplant after you have just worked to make it just the way you like it. If you plan to cook eggplant for an audience you are going to need to wear your thickest skin.) When it is done, turn the heat off and allow the vegetables to cool. Add some diced cherry tomatoes, quartered.

The dressing (This sauce is really good on sandwiches or as a vegetable dip): Mix together 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 1 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar, 8 drops soy sauce, 1 tsp thyme (or some chopped fresh basil).

Christina's vote: "This salad made me feel generous"