Hey,
I have been writing but chicken (or tofu) about posting. Mostly because my posts have been more about medicine and less about food and I'm more confident about my cooking! I won't even "go there" how busy things have been and the demands of the hospital. It'll always be there and I need to work on balance. Lame.
However, I did make an amazing salad the other day I actually took a photo of before I ate it. I thought to myself, "I kinda feel bad for eating this good when the rest of my coworkers are eating fried chicken sandwiches and limp fries for lunch from the cafeteria." Meanwhile, I snuck outside in the 75 degree sunshine and sat on the steps of a green space area watching joggers near a river and bathed my tired body in some fresh air. It was a welcomed relief from a hectic, long day. And my belly appreciated the nourishing, tasty food.
Salads are a perfect venue for produce performance art. I call this a "Found Object" salad, because I think the best salads come from objects you find around your refrigerator (assuming you have more than pickles and mayonnaise in there!). If you approach a salad only expecting to have lettuce, cucumber and tomato then you will only "see" those things in your fridge. Worse, you will overlook other produce-assets in your fridge and run out to the store and get what you expect a salad to have. If you approach salad making instead as elements of color, texture, flavor and nothing else, then you are free to create whatever you want.
Of course, you also have to think of nutrition. I do believe than most salads need to have fat and protein (consider nuts, cheese, beans, etc.) or else you will be hungry in an hour (to put on my doctor hat, this is actually a physiologic fact: fat and protein empty slowly out of the tummy but carbs, which is what a salad is will be gone from the belly in 1-2 hours tops).
True, I do like to start with some kind of green (my painter's palate if you will--though this is not a hard and fast rule), that's about the only "rule" I have. The particular salad that inspired this post had something creamy, acid, sweet, colorful, crunchy, fatty, high in protein. Don't think of a cucumber as a cumber, think of it as "white crunchy cool." Make a haiku salad! Then, you work on presentation (cutting your veggies or fruit on a diagonal or very very small, toasting nuts, etc.). The only limit is your mind.
I'm not going to post the recipe, that just goes against what I wrote in the previous text. But I will post a photo. Then, inspire yourself with your own produce performance art. Making food and eating should always be this much fun.
