Take a bunch of fresh things, of the leafy/ veggie/ fruit sort.
Wash.
Pick. Peel. Seeding optional.
Add a Protein:
hard boiled egg
cheese
bacon
sliced meat
nuts
Greens – pick, wash, chop or otherwise make small enough to fit on a fork and into your mouth. WHY are so many salads with leaves bigger then the bowl?
Fresh herbs – easy flavor add.
Dress. From a bottle or olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper . A little mustard makes it nice.
Maybe a carb layer – croutons/a little cold macaronis/leftover rice.
Meal in a bowl.
The moshav (agricultural village) of Sde Warburg, Israel, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest lettuce salad, weighing 10,260 kg (11.3 short tons). The event, held on 10 November 2007.
I didn’t exactly spend my birthday all Pilgrim style.
Not a single spoon…..and I’m OK with that. Instead there was
Pretty Spinach Salad with Salmon
The distaff cohort of the family – meaning Sis, Mom and Me – went to Isaac’s on the waterfront – because, seriously, when you live on the coast you should eat with a view when you can .
It was actually the day after my birthday – my UnBirthday, and I was fine with that, too. There are so many more UnBirthdays in a year to celebrate…..
We began with individual preambles about what we were choosing and why, and then commented on all the choices and the specials, and asked questions about the choices to Sue, our heroic waitress, and the commented all over again when the food came and then gave commentary as we were eating….typical Italian meal.
This makes food sound like sport, but really, it was great, good fun. Sue was a delight and seemed to be having almost as much fun as we were.
There something about a leisurely meal out in the middle of the day, that wafts of having not a care in the world….and we had an ocean view to boot. No troubles.
On Tuesdays many places in Plymouth are closed, especially in February, the official ‘it’s probably gonna snow so let’s just stay in’ month.
We did not take a single photo of the food. Which is a pity because it sure was purdy, and the light was great and the view fantastic.
My salad was….
HUGE
and a study in green and pink, a lovely bowl of spinach tossed with a light dressing, teeny-tiny nubbins of bacon and cheese and olive oil and lemon juice….and on top of this pastoral springtime loveliness was a beautiful, hot, cooked to perfection salmon fillet.
Imagine this fillet cooked to perfection.and piping hot on top of a bowl of green, green, greens. Such a large piece of salmon I thought I’d save half, but ate maybe ¾ – still enough left to be worth saving and made another (less piggy) meal.
And talk
And talk
And laugh and laugh…..and then coffee.
Sue not only was able to figure what we wanted, what we wanted saved, and saved it, but had overheard enough of our chatter – OK, not that difficult – to figure there was a birthday girl and brought a birthday surprise.
Ice cream with whipped cream and chocolate sauce and a candle.
Sue also started sing the Happy Birthday song, loudly and with spirit.Mom and Sis chimed in, in parts no less.
Having been raised with these people, I merely smiled, and nodded, and gave my Queen of England wave to the the rest of the lunch crowd. patiently waiting to eat whipped cream with chocolate sauce.
I love blue berries. Usually I just eat them. Occasionally I actually leave enough or buy enough more that I make something. Blueberry pancakes. Blueberry Betty and Buckle (not to be confused with Betty Buckley..
Betty Buckley in Cats
Blueberry Cobbler. Blueberry Pie. Blueberry corn muffins. Blueberry tea-cake ….or was that a pound cake? Lemon pound cake with blueberries???? And Jordan Marsh Blueberry muffins….coming down the escalator, with box tied up with blue twine, hoping to NOT eat them all on the bus, so there would be more then crumbs in the box by the time we got home.
A Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin….a fresh one from the original recipe from someone who used to work there AND it was on the news, so it must be true
I want to search for the recipe, but I’m not baking in this heat. Turn the oven on? It already feels like the oven is on.
Wasn’t there a blueberry sauce for ice cream????
Blini with blueberry sauce…blueberries cook up just fine.
I’m resisting some serious cookbook/paper file searching, because in THIS heat, salad is the most cooking I’m doing with the berries.
And there aren’t enough left for a pie, so I’ll just have to eat them, and then I’ll go to the Plymouth Farmer’s Market and buy more.
Genius moment. Blue cheese dressing on a salad …..with blueberries on top.
Two Blues!
Now about this salad…I actually saw someone at work do it. He had the greens, and blue cheese dressing and then he dumped blueberries on top….
total lunch envy moment.
And evidently cases of SCURVY are up….so I should really eat MORE fruit. 1 cup of blues has 14.4 mg of vitamin C. An orange has about enough for a whole day of C (a woman needs 75 mg – an orange has 70).
Anyhow, I don’t have scurvy, not even close.I just want more blueberries !
SOOOOOO
I tossed some blue cheese, some blueberries and some smoked almonds on my greens…
Gorgonzola -the blue I happen to have on hand
…the squishyness of the berries made the nuts seem even bigger and harder then they are. It was like there were bones in my salad. Next time: chop the nuts.
But smoked or spiced nuts are the way to go, to balance the richness of the blue cheese and the sweetness of the blue berries.
A little bacon would not be amiss. Fresh croutons could make the whole thing a meal.
Two blues with bacon and bread – salad of the week at ChezMoi.
Oaks and Blueberry Bushes – Georges Lacombe – 1905 -Indianapolis Museum of Art
Golden treasures I contain,
Guarded by hundreds and thousands.
Stored in a labyrinth where no man walks,
Yet men come often to seize my gold.
By smoke I am overcome and robbed,
Then left to build my treasure anew.
What am I?
A beehive
Bees – honey bees, not bumble bees – were introduced to this continent. We don’t tend to think of them as invasive, because without them the apple trees (introduced) and orange trees (introduced) and many other fruits and veggies would just not thrive.
Bumble bee
honey bee
And without honey bees we’d have no golden treasure of honey.
Mmmmm – honey.
Radish-Celery Salad
one large stalk celery, sliced very thin
4 or 5 radishes, sliced very thin
celery leaves/parsley leaves, chopped finely – it should be one third radish/one third celery/one third leafies
optional – one teaspoon capers OR chopped olives OR not
Slice, chop and mix together.
A little salt and pepper.
Dressing – 1/2 teaspoon whole grain mustard
1 Tablespoon wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Mix the honey and vinegar into the mustard. Drizzle the oil in until all blended. Pour over the sliced/chopped radish and celery, toss well.
Other add ins or leave outs – chopped shallot or onion or minced garlic – just to season. A little shaved Parmesan or Romano cheese is good, too.
Serves one.
I eat this alone; on crackers; on a bigger leafier salad; on a microwaved baked sweet potato…did you know that salads started out as condiments? When the baby greens and radishes start coming out, I cut the honey out…an sometimes the dressing altogether.
inspired by a Radish-celery salad in the Boston Globe, February 27, 2008 – Jill Santopietro
Now it just so happens that I like my carrots in sticks to pick up dip – or hummus if I want to appear virtuous or in soups or in cakes but almost never boiled and served as a side and never never frozen and unless maybe they’re for a cake….carrot cake with cream cheese frosting…mmmmm…..and there’s a carrot upside down cake I’d like to try, perhaps in a savory version…..
And salads– I really like a carrot salad, because they can usually be made ahead and travel well and still taste good, if not better.
And because of my recent moves and the power of the Internet it seems as if several of my go-to carrot salads of the past 20 years are more or less versions of the same carrot salad.
Which just proves that good is good.
It was a page from Vegetarian Times from February of 2004 that led me to the website that helped put 2 +2+ 2 more carrots altogether….
This is NOT the correct cover for this story…but it is the official sample cover on the Wikipedia site
SOOO – Paula Wolfert in C0uscous and Other Good Foods from Morocco (published back in 1973) had a several carrot salads : a spiced, a sweet and a grated.
out and about since 1973
and then the story in Vegetarian Times in 2004 in which Crescent Dragonwagon mentions that the Moroccan Carrot Salad in The Passionate Vegetarian is a version from the Paula Wolfert… and here I’ve been toggling between each of them, Lo these many years….here’s link to the CD (CD for Crescent Dragonwood) version of
There are so many things that can be salad…..really – like
Potato to make Potato Salad
Tuna for Tuna Salad (this tuna is named Charlie)
Fruit in fruit salad
even kale can be a salad
Kale and Chickpea Salad
But the mostest salad I’ve eaten in my days is a lettucey, leafy greens base with stuff in/on/around and topped with
Dressing
Dressing that increasing came in bottle form…..
Ken’s Blue Cheese Salad Dressing is one of my faves.
Ken’s reminds me of steak and baked potato and a side salad. Now I mostly eat it without the steak, and I’m as likely to put it on the potato as the salad. But when there IS steak it is also good on leftover steak – a thing I did not know existed in the world until I moved out and away from 4 brothers – in a sandwich with sliced tomato the next day for lunch. Excellent good, in fact.
Jars replace bottles in the late ’80’s and ’90’s as even better salad dressing.
My son is a Ranch Dressing lover, so this was on our table much of the ’90’s
But this is the Ranch Dressing he really wanted, so these packets were part of our pantry for years…
Newman’s Own is my current bottle of choice. Bottle are convenient to carry to work for lunch salad.
The supper salad – the home game, versus the away game lunch salad – was increasing dressed in the bowl, like I was taught in ’60’s, but with more variety, like in Red, White and Blue Salad, which I had thought I had already shared, but it’s not showing up here when I searched for it…so here it is, possibly again
RED, WHITE AND BLUE SALAD
2 cups red cherry tomatoes (or grape tomatoes or big ole vine ripened tomatoes, chopped and equal to the grapes)
2 cups white grapes
Optional: ½ cup roasted and chopped nuts
Dressing:
1 Tablespoon Blue cheese
1 Tablespoon wine vinegar
3 Tablespoons yoghurt
2 Tablespoons oil
1 garlic clove
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
Put all dressing ingredients in blender and blend (use a food processor if you prefer. Creamy, rich, tasty goodness.
Put aside.
Wash and dry the fruits. Cut the cherry tomatoes and grapes in half over the bowl you toss them into.
Top with the dressing and mix.
Top with chopped nuts if you prefer.
Dorry Baird Norris. Sage Cottage Herb Garden Cookbook. The Globe Pequot Press. 1991, 1995. p.267
Sage Cottage Herb Garden Cook Book by Dorrie Norris
Mason jars are good to mix salad dressing in – NOT the salads, which need bowls or plates.
Once upon a time salad was leafy green….mostly that meant iceberg lettuce
and tomatoes came in packets – except when they came from the garden.
And salad dressing was a verb, what my mother did after the potatoes were mashed and before we had to wash our hands to sit down to supper,
The lettuce was ripped and put in the salad bowl, and then the tomatoes were cut on top. Cukes – peeled and sliced. Cut in half to make half moon or in quarters to make little triangles. Radishes – sliced and added but not always.
No fancy radishes – red on the outside and white on the inside radishes
Not a lot of fancy ingredients – olives always got their own dish, croutons didn’t show up until the ’80’s – salad was salad and not much more.
Now do I remember the order of what comes next?????
Oil, a circle around, not too much. And not EVOO, this is before Rachael Ray. Our oil often had
Wessonality
Toss.
Sprinkle the salt –
When it rains, it pours
Sprinkle the pepper
Sprinkle the dried basil
More tossing.
Wine vinegar – just a little.
Not balsamic, not artisan, not fancy, salad was for supper not showing off.
Toss some more.
Put the bowl on the table, wash those hands and sit down at the table.
Things got fancier in the ’70’s…..
Good Seasons Dressing Mix – with cruet included
Up until a few minutes ago, I’ve been calling this Good Seasonings Salad Dressing.
Good Seasons, of course was the gateway bottle to the Wishbone and Kraft and Kens Dressings that would flood the market – and our table – in the ’80’s…
Carrot top was a phrase that confused me as a child. Why were redheads ‘carrot tops’ when it was pretty obvious that the tops of carrots were
GREEN
And why doesn’t any one make a toy top shaped like a carrot? They’re nearly ideal…..I did find carrot shaped furniture
Carrot Chest Punkin Patch Interiors Is it just me or does this look like it could topple on these kids without warning?
Back to carrots.
So the carrots have been sitting in the fridge bin for about as long as they might and still be carrots and not compost.Time to make something.
I had a recipe note that I’ve been meaning to try. Recipe isn’t quite the right word.It cleans up to this:
Carrot and fresh Cranberry Slaw
Carrots – 4 cups
dried cranberries Fresh cranberries
Apple cider vinegar
oil
Fresh ginger
Shallot
Fennel – ¼ med bulb
I admit, even for me, this isn’t much to go on.I switched out fresh cranberries for the dried because 1) I like them better and 2)I also had some.
I was totally in love with the fresh ginger and the carrots together.
I had a shallot and this seemed like a good place to park it, ditto the dregs of a fennel bulb.
But it needed something more….
Trimmed and peeled the carrots and got out the handy dandy grater that I bought at Woolworth’s when I first moved out of the ancestral abode ever so many decades ago -sooo last century
The Woolworths in Plymouth Center, several decades before I went shopping there.
Grates more then cheese – stale bread for bread crumbs, carrots and cabbages for slaw, the occasional knuckle, ect.
Grate the carrot
Add the cranberries….a couple of handfuls – I picked through them ( a good berry bounces) and rinsed and dried them first. Or used the dried cranberries.
Two or three handfuls should be enough
Chop the shallot.
shallots are between onions and garlic in the taste spectrum. Substitute as you wish.
If you don’t have fennel you might use celery
This is also known as Florence Fennel – a little more anise then celery; good crunch, too.
Chop and add.Mix and mingle together Smelling good.
Cut and peel a thumb sized piece of fresh ginger. Avoiding cutting your thumb.Grate or chop finely and add.
This is more ginger then I used, but if you like things zingy
Now for oil and vinegar…..apple cider vinegar is a good choice, and I had a bottle out.
And then I remembered….I had purchased flavored oil and vinegar from Omega Olive Oil at the Plymouth Farmers Market in the winter, but between the snow and the fire and the relocation I had forgotten….where are they now?
Blood Orange Oil and Ginger Balsamic Vinegar……now this bowl is singing good..
Sometimes it’s the little things that make something go from good to great. These carrots were tops!
Tradition has Abigail Adams making a lovely meal of poached salmon, new pease and potatoes for her darling John back in 1776.
On July 4th.
The Adams, Abigail and John
Or maybe not.
They weren’t in the same city that day….darn those letter writing people of the past so we know where they were on particular days!
Or maybe this whole tradition is a New Nostalgia thing.
At the World’s Fair in 1964 in New York City they were serving authentic oldie timey food and this meal was one of them. …
but I think it goes back a little further then that, because my Nana made or craved this very same same meal a lot earlier in the 20th century then 1964.
To help make my case:
However, I happen to own a copy of the American Heritage Cookbook published in 1964 and I don’t see a reference to Abigail Adams at all. In my edition it simply says: “From the earliest days it has been a tradition all through New England to serve Poached Salmon with Egg Sauce, along with the first new potatoes and early peas, on the Fourth of July. The eastern salmon began to ‘run’ about this time, and the new vegetables were just coming in.”
And this – poached salmon with Egg sauce, new potatoes and early peas – are exactly the meal I helped my Nana cook on a Fourth when she had moved down near us. Or maybe it was when she was in Senior Housing in Mattapan….it was a teeny tiny very modern gallery kitchen with hardly enough room to swing a cat in, which was definitely NOT like any house she had lived in before. Now this Mid-Century kitchen layout is called
vintage
but it’s like Starksy & Hutch vintage, and not vintage vintageSo I went over and we poached a piece of salmon, not a whole fish, and made egg sauce (she had this down, but I believe Fannie Farmer was her source) and quickly cooked the peas and potatoes….we might have been drinking TAB…
Was it the saccharin or the cyclamates that forced this off the market?
But poaching a salmon is a feed a crowd type of meal, and if you’re not feeding a crowd,you’ll want something smaller and kinder to your purse AND since so much Atlantic salmon is now farmed, so is a source of moral and culinary concern, I started using canned Pacific salmon and went to a complete and total B-plan several years ago.
My inspiration was :
I admit – I bought the book for the title.
One of the salads in Lettuce In Your Kitchen is with salmon and new potatoes…I added a few fresh peas and topped it with a hard boiled egg and Green Goddess dressing…
And thus a new tradition is born, based on layers of old ones.
So I eat the traditional foods, in a newer way. And think about Nana and Abigail Adams and Fannie Farmer and wouldn’t it be one terrific table if they were all around it, eating Poached Salmon, Early Peas and New Potatoes.
Melt one-half the butter, add flour with seasonings, and pour on gradually hot water. Boil five minutes, and add remaining butter in small pieces. To be served with boiled or baked fish.
p.11
Farmer, Fannie Merritt. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown, 1918; Bartleby.com, 2000.
Hey, if it rhymes for Popeye it can rhyme for me! (Popeye rhymes ‘finnach’ with ‘spinach’ – same deal, different dialect)
And by the Finnish….I mean actual people from Finland.
These guys…
Henri Alen and Nicolas Thielon from American Food Battle
Nicolas loved his pilgrim clothes….he thought he looked like a Musketeer, as in Three. And, The Three Musketeers did take place in 1627. In France and not New England, but still,
Nicolas could jump right in with the 1974 Three Musketeers crowd, right in between Michael York and Richard Chamberlain
And, spinnage or spinach, was one of the dishes I prepared. It looked like this:
Spinach with eggs; German School, 17th century. Notice also r0asted quails
“Divers Sallets boyled.
Parboile Spinage, and chop it fine, with the edges of two hard Trenchers upon a boord, or the backs of two Choppin-knives; then set upon a Chafingdish of Coales with Butter and vinegar. Season it with Sugar and a few parboyld Currans. Then cut hard Egges into quarters to garnish it withal, and serve it upon Sippets. So you may serve Burrage, Buglosse, Endiffe, Suckory, Coleflowers, Sorrell, Marigold-leaves,Wintercresses, Leekes boyled Onions, Sporragus, Rocket, Alexanders. Perboyle them and season them all alike: whether it be with Oyle and Vinenegar, or Butter and Vinegar, Sinamon, Ginger, Sugar, and Butter: Egges are necessary, or at least very good for all boyld Sallets.”
-1615. John Murrell. A Newe Booke of Cookerie. Falconwood ed. p. 15.
Quick run through for this Wicked Wayback Wednesday…
Spinage is, natch, spinach
These trenchers are a kind of a knife, as are the Choppin knives – when I first saw this I thought they were Chopin Knives , and I was pretty sure that Chopin wasn’t around in 1615…
Frederic Chopin, 1835 at age 25 – nope, he wasn’t around in the 17th century
Anyhow, chop spinach. Because of what happens next, even better, start with frozen chopped spinach and save yourself the trouble. When it’s cooked, drain the spinach. In fact, put it on an old clean towel and wring it out over a sink. Seriously. Squeeze that moisture out. I added 1/2 pound fresh sorrel to the almost 2 pounds of spinach as it was almost cooked down. Sorrel doesn’t need much cooking and it really perks up spinach. The New York Times has this story on sorrel in the spring. (click on the link ) I’m going to try keeping some indoors this winter…..more on that later…. and I’ve never had trouble keeping sorrel all summer and into the Fall. Keep using it!
Sorrel – Rumex acetosa. Oseille in French; suolaheinä in Finnish; acetosa in Italian
Put some butter in a heavy pan. By some, I mean a lot…Add the drained, wrung out chopped spinach/sorrel mass. Put more butter on top. Over low heat, let the green stew up in butter and what’s left of its own juices.
Add currants – not the fresh ones, the dried ones. Parboil them first (just put boiling water over them for a few minutes – dried fruit is not as dried as it used to be. And that’s a change in the last 30 years, not the last 400). Raisins are really too big – currants are much nicer in this.
Raisins V. Currants . Sometimes, size DOES matter.
Add a splash of vinegar. How much depends on how much and how lip puckering your sorrel is, if you’ve added any. Add a little more butter on top, put the lid on the pan and keep it on low heat, stirring it about every now and again so nothing sticks to the bottom and all the spinach soaks up all the butter. Add more butter if it seems dry. Don’t be afraid of butter!
Hard boil some eggs. You’ve got time. Keep the green a-stewing.
What? No spinach? No worries – use borage, bugloss, endive, chicory,cauliflower, sorrel, calendula leaves , cresses, leeks, onions, asparagus (let me note here that in my opinion it is a crime against Nature to puree asparagus) rocket or arugala, and alexanders . This recipe is a master recipe – a whole class of salad, for all seasons of the year, covered.
Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) are a kind of wild celery, still found in the English countryside
Taste and season with cinnamon, ginger, sugar, vinegar and butter – all to your taste. Make it taste good. Your opinion counts!
Pile up on a serving platter and garnish with those hard boiled eggs, quartered. Serve hot, or warm, or at room temperature. What the painting doesn’t show is sippets – slices of bread toasted or fried in butter. You knew there’d be more butter, right?
Still Life with Salmon, Lemon and Three Vessels Meléndez, Luis Egidio Copyright ©Museo Nacional del Prado
Foodways Pilgrim 