Salad Days, Then and Now.

 

 

All the photos were taken by me and many of the salads were my concoctions but some of the fancier ones are from restaurants or cruise ships from my travels. 

Shakespeare gave us the phrase “salad days” for youth. Green in judgment, untested, a little reckless, tasting everything for the first time. It’s a lovely image. This August, though, I’m living a much less poetic version of it.

 

 

We live in a coach house that’s over 100 years old and was never retrofitted for proper air-conditioning. And this summer felt like one big heatwave. Salad days isn’t a metaphor anymore. It’s just what’s for dinner, most nights, whether I feel romantic about it or not.

Here’s the part that surprised me. This isn’t a new problem, and it definitely isn’t a modern one.

Long before refrigerators and window units, summer eating in places like Tudor and Stuart England was shaped almost entirely by necessity.
It wasn’t just England, of course, but France and the rest of the western world.

 

A hearth fire going all day made the whole house hotter. Meat spoiled quickly once the temperature climbed, so heavy cooked dinners weren’t just unappealing in the heat, they were genuinely risky.

 

 

What people reached for instead was raw. Foraged and garden grown greens like lettuce, sorrel, dandelion, sow thistle, and purslane.

Salt and pepper were added it for flavor and herbs  like parsley, chervil, chives, mint, and thyme, tossed in for brightness.

 

 

And something sharp to wake it all up, usually oil paired with vinegar or verjuice, a tart juice pressed from unripe grapes or crab apples.

 

 

None of that was trendy even though it sounds like some modern vinaigrette salad. It was common sense in a heat wave, worked out generations before anyone had a fridge to fall back on.

 

 

It’s timeless, and while every generation puts their own spin on it, perhaps some years it might be balsamic vinegar or sesame oil, good old olive oil Goes back thousands of years.

 

 

 

I like sitting with that overlap. Picture it, not a tidy composed bowl but a rough handful of bitter leaves and pungent herbs on a wooden table, dressed simply and eaten because it was sensible, not because it photographed well.

 

 

 

Bitter, sour, oily, herbal, all at once. That combination is a pretty good stand in for youth itself, actually. Contrasts feel sharper when you’re green. Judgment is still forming. Everything tastes new, including the things you don’t like yet.

 

And this year, that’s not a metaphor for me either. It’s just what August tastes like, heat and all.

 

 

There’s something steadying in knowing people have always eaten this way when the weather demanded it.

 

 

The dandelion and sorrel weren’t chosen for symbolism, but they hold up as one anyway. Bitter greens for the lessons that build a little backbone.

A sour dressing for whatever clarifies what you actually want. A scatter of herbs for the small, easy pleasures that get you through. Occasionally a boiled egg or a sliver of cheese when you need a little extra protein.

 

 

Transformational Salad

It’s whatever you want it to be.

 

 

Prepare a simple “transformational salad” and eat it slowly. Mindfully.

Use the act of tasting as a prompt: notice which flavor you resist and which you welcome.

 

Ask, What lesson tastes like that bitterness? When did I learn to appreciate this sharpness? Which small sweetness have I overlooked? The ritual links body and attention and makes the metaphor tactile.

 

 

Transformational Salad (modern, Tudor-inspired)

• Mixed bitter greens: a base of lettuce plus dandelion, sorrel, or arugula
• A handful of purslane or peppery leaf,chopped parsley and mint
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice, pinch of salt, cracked pepper
• Optional: grated hard cheese or a hard boiled egg
  Toss gently, taste slowly, notice which flavors speak to you.

If you want to try it simply: a base of bitter greens, a handful of herbs, olive oil, and something properly acidic, vinegar, lemon, whatever you have. Nothing composed, nothing precious.

Salad days, then and now. Some things about summer, and about being green, apparently never change.

Five years old, fully confident, no idea what I was doing or was it the beginning of old soul wisdom. Salad days, indeed.