Fresh & Fridge Salad

The Job: Make the freshest salad possible without leaving the apartment.

The Mark: Yummy, sweet yellow peppers from Whole Foods - The vegetable was just sitting there in the crisper, almost begging to be used.

The Seductive Scent: dark basil plant on windowsill, also from Whole Foods - I took a few leaves. No one saw me.

The Scavenger Hunt Booty: pre-washed red radishes, and pre-cut white-with-green-splash cucumber - Yeah, somebody else did the work. But, if I didn't take it, it'd end up in the trash. Probably. Waste not, want not, and what not.

The Staples: Team 1, The Fridge: grated parmesan, mixed-pitted olives, feta, pickled peperoncini

The Staples: Team 2, The Pantry: sea salt, olive oil, sherry vinegar

The Rejects: limp mesculun lettuce and dry, chicken breast leftover from yesterday's Taco Night - I'm a artist, not a junk man.

The Sensual Break-down:

Color: bright yellow (pepper), yellow-green (pepperoncini), dark green (basil); red, highly contrasted with white (radish)

Texture & Sound (Crunch): peppers; radish; long wet slivers of cucumber

Texture, Slippery or Smooth: emulsifying effect of grated parmesan & feta crumbles when combined with vinegar & oil; feel of rotating oil-soaked olives on tongue as they resist the teeth

Scent: Basil (proof there are forces for good in the universe)

Taste buds: salty (cheeses, olives, anything pickled), mildly sweet (pepper); mildly bitter (radish); sour (peperoncini, vinegar) tempered by oil.

The Salad: So good, I ate it before I remembered to take a picture for The Whatever Cook.

Image: Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation

Comfort food is associated with childhood and home-cooking. For me, it includes Portuguese and Mediterranean dishes -- the food that permeated my childhood.

Comfort foods engage many sense receptors: our taste buds, our sense of smell, our sense of texture, how a food feels on our tongue and fingers, our visual sensibilities, even our hearing. Consider: snap, crackle, and pop.

It's moist. It's got enough salt/seasoning, and fat to make you feel satisfied after eating one serving, though we may want to go back for seconds if we ate quickly, and didn't give our bodies time to feel a natural sense of fullness.

The Portuguese used to take three hours off from work -- 12-3 pm -- to eat the main meal. Perhaps in some places, they still do. To my dad, eating standing up was akin to sacrilege. [The spiritual life of food is a post for another day.]

Some examples of my comfort foods:
Steaming chicken soup (NEVER low sodium);
Mom's salad made with vegetables from her garden, including crunchy cucumbers, hand-torn lettuce, and seasoned by hand with oil, red vinegar, salt, and pepper (Mom literally coats the ingredients by hand);
european-style french fries, slightly soggy and salty;
caldeirada, a slightly spicy seafood stew similar to zuppa di pesci or bouillebaise;
chicken legs cooked in almost any form;
and fresh bread with a crisp crust and moist insides.

I used to scoop out, loosely ball up, and eat the bread’s guts like it was candy. When my mom and dad discovered hollow loaves of bread, they would teasingly demand we search the house for a rat.

Did you notice my pattern? I want texture and salt. If you took salt away from me, I would collapse (probably literally because I have low blood pressure). Salt is my family entitlement. It’s what I happily ate as a child.

Not surprisingly, our minds respond positively to happy memories, and memories from childhood are the most powerful. Sensual memories from childhood are deeply embedded in the most primitive parts of our brain. They’re the last memories to go.

When we get what we want, we become happy, however temporarily. On a rotten day, a sensual, nostalgic meal gives you a slice of heaven. Eat the slice. Life really is that simple.

[See: scene when The Critic first tastes ratatouille in eponymous Disney movie for a fabulous illustration of the power of nostalgia and family-friendly sensuality.]

Next UP: Easy Food Explained

Creativity Can't Stay Down: Picante Strawberry Salsa

My new year's resolution was to give up cooking. Seriously. I try to learn too much new stuff on my own. (Jewelry making, marketing, Hebrew, etc.) Plus, theoretically, I'm writing a book. Then there's My Quest for Meaning, which is, I admit, a major drain on productivity. (See: Woman of the Verge of a Mystic Breakdown.)

Oh, and the two kids. MY PLATE IS TOO DAMN FULL.

There is only so much change a human can accomodate in a short period. All change is stressful. Admittedly, not all stress is bad. But, consider, you too are human. Blah blah blah. Routine! That's the secret to success, no matter what motivational books might say. Establish routines, and stick to them. Have a bedtime routine. A morning routine. A laundry routine.

Because it's the only path left for me to try, I embark on a quest for normalcy and routinization. And so, cooking or creativity in the kitchen must go. It's too hard for me to follow recipes, or even remember more than one step at a time. Know thyself. Recognize thy kyptonite.

Keep it Simple Stupid/Students/Sonny. First, I tell myself, organize no-cook meals for the kids. My teenage son creates a two-week meal schedule. I sign up for regular time to get deliveries of groceries from Fresh Direct. I set up Google Calendar. Baby steps. I starting looking at my Google Calendar daily. (This month's goal: try to look at calendar on weekends too. Sigh.)

But, normalcy is practically impossible. I don't stick to the approved menus and shopping lists. In fact, most of the time, I don't even carry shopping lists with me. I do impromptu stops at stores because they were "on the way."

Ah, attention deficit disorder: I don't know if I "really" have you, but, if the symptoms and remedies match up, does it really matter? A distraction by any other name would pull me away just as fiercely...

Strawberry Salsa

I buy too much Fresh Direct hot salsa. It was on sale. I know I shouldn't succumb to buy 2 & save gimmicks. Rationally, I know. "Where are the Nachos?" my husband asks. Who thought of nachos?

I buy too many strawberries, which I bought on impulse Saturday along with other fruits and vegetables. They looked so good. My son asked for strawberries. My small child requested we stop the car now! and buy a healthy snack from a Manhattan vendor. Am I to stay on schedule and say NO? So we circled and circled city blocks until mommy gave up and double-parked.

So, I scan the refrigerator. Too much hot salsa and too many strawberries. Eureka! Add the chopped sweet one-day-before-rot strawberries to Fresh Direct hot salsa. Serve on Sweet Potatoes chips.

I'm back. The Whatever Cook. Though probably not so much with the "cooking." Creative food things for people with short attention spans.