Edible Tulip

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #13 Kohlrabi and Carrot Coleslaw with Raw Ginger in a Smoky Sesame Dressing

Kohlrabi historically hails from Eastern Europe (doesn't it just look German, or say, Bulgarian?) and kohl means cabbage and rabi means turnip. And there's no two better identifiers to distinguish the flavour of kohlrabi then green cabbage and raw turnip. It tastes like cabbage but with the consistency of the white Japanese radish, daikon. It's slightly sweet like turnip but it has none of the nip of raw red radish. It's fresh,  herbaceous and subtle. I peeled a bulb and cut into it and then I stood over the sink and closed my eyes and chewed the flesh trying to figure out its notes. It is reminiscent in flavour of cabbage - slightly spicy, slightly pungent - but it doesn't have the same chemical release that raw cabbage sometimes emits. You know how sometimes after you eat raw cabbage you walk around feeling like you're breathing fire? Kohlrabi has more of a slow burn; it's fresh tasting, with a subtle sweetness followed by a surprising lemony kick.

I had a difficult time finding recipes for kohlrabi at all, but even more so ones that I actually wanted to try or to tweak. I wanted to use it raw and in a salad but not just chopped into something more overwhelming or cut into moon slivers and braised with butter. I wanted to centre it and see if it could not only hold its own, but shine. After chewing on a few pieces, and contemplating its personality, I thought it would match well with raw carrot which is sweeter but also more fibrous.

So this salad dish is a tango of two - grated raw kohlrabi and grated raw carrots - matched with strong tasting herbs like cilantro and mint and basil and blended together in a smoky dressing made with sesame oil / smoked salish sea salt*/ rice vinegar / grated raw ginger / hot pepper flakes / and a squeeze of lemon.

It was so satisfying and complex that I actually went back into the kitchen, took down the hand grater, and re-did the whole process in order to have seconds. I ate 3 kohlrabi bulbs in a single lunch sitting. It's really that good.

* This sea salt is deeply smoky, infused with the aura of cedar wood smoke. Perfect for grilled fish but also simply divine sprinkled on raw vegetables that lean towards the watery or the hot where the smoky saltiness provides just the right balance. But it's a personal taste, and really, any coarse sea salt that you enjoy the flavour of would be just fine.

I am very free-flowing with my dressings, sometimes using an old mustard jar to shake the ingredients together, often just whisking them with a fork in a small glass and then pouring on top of my salad, but mostly adding them directly to the salad and then tossing it all together. I prefer fresh and flavourful and tend to stay away from dairy (or mayo) based dressing, or ones that are too gummy, and by gummy I mean any of the store bought ones that are practically congealed.

Here's a similar dressing I use to make Asian influenced coleslaws but in a more recipe based friendly format. Other dressing combinations that would work: lime and fresh mint; lime-cumin; a curried vinaigrette with a touch of maple syrup; a peanut dressing (made with roasted peanut oil)/soy/chives/serrano chile.

Sesame Vinaigrette with Chili Oil

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1 green onion, chopped, including the greens

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon soy sauce

3 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil + 1 teaspoon dark sesame oil (toasted sesame oil can be substituted for both or you can use just whatever sesame oil you have on hand)

1/2 teaspoon chili oil (or 1/2 teasoon dried chili flakes or 1/2 teaspoon minced jalapeno or serrano pepper)

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #12 Mediterranean Steamed Carrot Salad with Kalamata Olives in a Mustard Vinaigrette

Someone at work recently asked me if salads can be served warm or was that sort of anathema to the concept of a salad. Of course they can!

Steamed vegetables -- cauliflower, broccoli, beets, carrots, as well as legumes and grains, when tossed with a dressing while still hot, absorb the flavours rapidly and robustly and then if you add dense coarse bitter greens like my beloved escarole and they start to gently wilt and take on an incredible toothy sweetness, well, this sort of thing just might knock your socks off.

Steamed Carrot Salad, French-style, for 1

Carrots*, peeled and cut into rounds
handful of parsley, finely chopped
tablespoon of capers
5 kalamata or black sundried olives

Dressing
garlic clove, minced and mashed with a bit of salt
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
ground pepper

I used a metal steamer and placed the rounds of carrots over boiling water on high for about 5 minutes, or until tender. I drained and tossed with the dressing, the capers, the olives and the chopped parsley.

*these came from the farmers market and were skinny and tri-coloured. I used the entire bunch, just for myself. You could get three bunches and serve as a side to roast chicken and rosemary potatoes, or you could three bunches and serve as a starter salad.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: The Beginnings of Great Salads (#8, #9, #10, #11)

I'm a believer in simple honest goodness with big hearted flavour. I have always skirted the periphery looking for glimmers of truth and beauty. I tend to stay away from the meddled middles of things where there's a lot of shake and bake, and puffed up personalities, and talk is cheap.

I also find salad bars a bit repulsive. I don't see how some stale oily croutons with a bit of crusted-over three bean salad and a dollop of mayo-laden tuna salad with a sprinkle of bacon bits on top of some shriveled baby spinach can be called anything but a dog's breakfast. Call me a purist but I believe salads are meant to be composed of ingredients that are not only complimentary to one another but are also simplified in essence to allow everything to fall into easy harmony. Things can still taste zingy and wowzer, but it shouldn't be a full on smorgasbord.

I like to throw together a few basics to get a salad going and it often depends on what I have on hand rather than what I need to go out and purchase. If you keep a relatively well stocked fridge, making lunches like these will be a cinch.

Things I always keep around: sugar snap peas, jars of nuts (sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, black and white sesame seeds, almonds, cashews), jars of dried fruit (cranberries, currants, apricots, figs), radishes or kholrabi or daikon, grape tomatoes, beets/beet greens, bags of carrots (whole, not baby), yams, bags of washed lettuce (romaine, leaf, endive, escarole, radicchio -- never the baby lettuces, too tender, too wimpy in flavour, not enough robustness to carry other ingredients, let alone a dense dressing), jars of dried beans (garbanzo, small navy, du puy lentils, black, adzuki), tins of tuna in water, whatever is seasonal at the market - salad turnips, heirloom anything, cukes, corn, green beans, aasparagus... and always clusters of whatever herbs look good depending on whatever season it is: parsley, mint, basil, tarragon are my favourites with thyme and oregano close follow ups. Not a big cilantro fan, unless it's chopped densely and added to an Asian slaw. I don't keep a ton of cheese on hand but I always have Parmesan and feta.

In the freezer I always keep on hand edamame, the wee green peas, kernal corn. In the pantry there are 5 different kinds of vinegar (red balsamic, white balsamic, white wine, tarragon / champagne, apple cider) and 3 different kinds of olive oil (light, extra virgin, fruity). I have a total love-in for mustard and keep several bottles of varying eccentric pedigree rattling around my fridge.

These are the building blocks of your salads. They are the foundation you gently keep adding to. They are the essence of what eventually you decorate with your own flair. It's about discovering what you love and then finding ways to keep it around.

Salad #8 begins with chopped radishes, sunflower seeds, cracked briny green olives, and sweet grape tomatoes. I tossed in delicate bits of arugula and rugged hearts of romaine and dressed with a lemony vinaigrette and some crumbled feta.

Salad #9 begins with simultaneously steamed edamame and asparagus spears and cauliflower florets which were drained and tossed in a creamy herb vinaigrette. Everything is still warm and it just soaks up the dressing. Deeelicious!

Salad #10 begins with grated brussels sprouts and garbanzo beans cooked in a vegetable broth giving them a bit of sweetness and complexity. A little bit of sliced apple would be good here but I added thinly slivered red cabbage, chopped hazelnuts and shaved Pecorino cheese. I seasoned lightly with a fruity olive oil and fresh lemon juice. 

Salad #11 begins with beautiful heirloom beets thinly grated. I added grated red beets, grated carrots and slivered fennel. Then I tossed in a ton of chopped parsley and mint and made an orange mustardy vinaigrette. Crumbled queso fresca cheese would be good, or cured black olives in oil, or even chewy sweet raisins. I'm not kidding. Try it.

Salad dressing recipes listed below.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #7 Chickpea Salad with Mango, Feta and Radicchio (and radishes and sicilian cracked green olives)

In the winter, when I'm desperate for flavour—robust, genuine, just past tart and blooming into sweetness sort of flavour—I try to find salads that can feed the almost desperate need for colour, vitamin c, contrast. People's imagination seems to tune off with the diminishing sunlight and suddenly iceberg lettuce with grilled flank steak and crumbled blue cheese is de rigeuer again, circa 1978.

But that won't do. Not for me, anyway. When I want a salad that tastes like something eaten at the counter of a fly ridden diner, I'll make a homemade coleslaw in a yogurt and horseradish dressing and pack it in a picnic basket and take an afternoon drive. Just for the heck of it. Food is like that. It moves you to impulse.

The lunches I take to work every day not only feed me but they make me happy. Look at that picture. How can you not take off the cover of your large glass tupperware container and not grin at the sight of the explosion of colour. 

In many ways, I like to keep things complicatedly simple, if you know what I mean. Flavours—sweet, sour, salty, tart—should blend and merge almost magnetically, and definitely without effort. The bite of a red radish is the perfect foil to the occasional overly-saccharine sweetness of mango. When the flesh of the fruit releases itself gently under your thumb, eat it. Don't wait for it to soften too much because it will ultimately carbonate and taste rotten to your tastebuds. In this salad, we've also got heat (radish) and sweet (mango; avocado could be added or substituted for the mango).

Now we need salt. Crumble a course cheese like feta or cube halloumi or smoked mozzarella and include. Sometimes I raise the sodium quotient another notch and add small sicilian cracked green olives. I love them. They are small morsels and they are slightly bitter but they are ridiculously delightful. If you're not a fan of the olive, disregard and move on.

Now think of the robust raw vitality of parsley. Purchase the coarse Italian kind and chop it roughly. Grape tomatoes add more of that addictive tart/sugar factor but could easily be omitted and if they're rubbery, they're downright ruinous.

Garbanzo beans (white beans would be ok here too) add heft and protein. I've started cooking my own from dry and I will not go back to canned—too mushy, too tin-tasting. Instead of chickpeas, or in addition, you could try roasted sunflower seeds or raw pepitas. To get ridiculously wild, toss in some dried currants. The odd bite of sweetness will blow your mind.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #6 Grated Beets and Carrots with Mint

I love a grated salad, a sort of avant-garde take on the old coleslaw. A few of my favourite vegetables to grate: carrots, beets, kohlrabi, cabbage, daikon radish. A food processor makes quick work of the whole business. Sunday afternoons I take the machine down from the top of the fridge, affix the right hole-y blade, peel the vegetables, cut them into large pieces and then press them down through the chute. I'm a lean mean wood cutter. After 10 minutes, I end up with a week's worth of grated vegetables ready to toss into salad. I squeeze the water out with my hands and package them in a tupperware.

Kohlrabi and carrot are especially good with either black sesame seeds or a sesame oil/lemon/soy dressing, or both.

Beets--colourful, sweet, earthy--are a nice contrast to bold salty white cheese (feta, goat); nuts (raw sunflower, pistachios, honeyed almonds); and peppery greens like watercress or arugula; or lots of fresh chopped herbs, mint and basil in particular.

Here, I tossed the grated beets and carrots with some diced celery, a bit of chopped red onion, lots of fresh mint, some currants and a handful of sunflower seeds. I added ground himalayan sea salt, a bit of white balsamic (the sweetness of balsamic is dynamite with the beets and a bit of course salt), olive oil and then tossed to coat. Avocado chunks would be pretty tasty here too. Then I tore up a handful of washed* red leaf lettuce, buttery and tender, and folded everything into itself. Amazing. Delicous. Lunch in 5 minutes.

I exclusively make my own salad dressings but I also, for the most part, when eating lunch at home just drizzle a vinegar (rice, balsalmic, white wine) and then an oil (canola/olive mixed, light olive, extra virgin olive) and then add ground pepper and course sea salt and that's it. It's delightful and fresh and perfect.

People tend to complain that salad doesn't fill them up but if you eat it like I do, in olympic sized bowls, and you add elements of goodness in addition to  base of leafy greens: cooked legumes, edamame, corn, chopped tomatoes, cheese, nuts/seeds, chopped dried seaweed, dried fruit (cherries, apricots, raisins, currants), crumbled cheese, roasted leftover vegetables, steamed cauliflower, you can be surprised at how much you eat and how great you feel. The servings of salad I take to work are seriously downright embarrassing. People are like you eat all that? in one sitting?

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #5 Smoked Tofu in a Honey-Orange marinade with Grape Tomatoes and Chives

Tomatoes are hit and miss in the off season but I find the wee grape ones—a notch smaller than the cherry tomato varietal—always have a bit of spark; they are firm but flavourful and they pop when you bite into them creating a small explosion of tart sweetness. I use them a lot in salads because they're such a great acidic balance to many of the other ingredients I love: tender corn, warm earthy legumes, salty hard cheeses, sea salt, soft savoury lettuces and toothy bitter ones.

This particular pairing of tomatoes with tofu might be a little unorthodox but it works in a surprisingly wonderful way. I prefer smoked tofu for a dish like this where you want the tofu to actually mean something and not just lurk in the shadows as a protein stand-in. The smokiness provides additional depth and I like deep. I also broil or bake it until it not only browns but it also slightly hardens except for the interior which remains soft and chewy.

 

I used chives in this salad because they were a bright irresistable green at the market and I like their mild onion taste but a lot of finely chopped parsley would be good too. As would some chopped celery fronds if both the produce and the herb sections look dismal. This happens sometimes in the winter.

I'm always thinking of my tongue and my taste buds as a palette where I'm juggling the definitions and desires of salty and sweet, bitter and heat, four of my favourite things. This is the reason why I love salads—more than perhaps cooked food—because the flavours are so tangible and raw and distinct.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #4 Toasted Corn Salad with Mint in a Lime Cumin Dressing

They always say "write what you know" but that's hard to do because often we don't know what we know and we're in constant pursuit of bigger, more elaborate themes -- drama, sabotage, despair, love -- anything that might make our life worthy of being writerly. We forget the details that make our lives "ours" and we lose sight of the significance of the smaller gestures we make, the ones that are genuinely our own.

Occasionally we pull back and get a glimpse of the small, monumental, meaningful things that keep our lives moving forward and for me that's food. It's what I see, what I'm inspired by, what I make, what I harvest, what I eat, what I carry with me wherever I go. I've worked  a lot of jobs over the years and I had a revelation a while back that it wasn't what I was doing at these jobs that held significance or import or effect, it was the food I ate every day. People asked me about things, what is that, they'd say, or how do you make that, and then one by one they'd be trotting by my desk showing off homemade salads. Look, they'd offer, look what I made today. It was hugely gratifying. Just like when I worked as a chef at an art retreat centre for a few summers and some of the guests were terrified of a vegetarian meal but then as the days wore on and the lively, colourful buffet was devoured, they'd come into the kitchen and say, I liked that, that bit of wonder with the whatever in it, how did you make that. And then my blog was born and I kept writing about salads and eating large amounts of goodness and here, grate this, chop that, toss a bit of this in too, and you might find happiness like I have in a simple harvest.

In the summertime, when I visit my folks, we eat from the land. They have plots of gardens and we dig up potatoes and beets, pluck beans and tomatoes, trim the lettuce patches and harvest whatever herbs look healthy and ready to go. In August, we eat a lot of corn. It's sweet and tender and easy; we toss it on the grill or in the oven or boil a few cobs. But it's also a perfect ingredient for any time of year. Frozen corn can be revitalized by steaming it and then toasting it in a hot skillet with oil until it browns, carmelizes, becomes chewy and perfect.

This side or salad is a rip off of Yucatan street food where you get a coal burned cob seasoned with chili spices and lime and butter. With a beer, it's lunch, or at least a late afternoon snack. And it's pretty much one of the best things I've ever eaten.

Cooked corn taken off the cob and tossed with fresh herbs, baby tomatoes, spices like toasted cumin, and tossed with coarse sea salt and olive oil or butter is a wondrous thing. Although corn is good with squash or beans in a chili, tossed into a creamy risotto, or made into a polenta cornbread, it's also pretty magnificent on its own two sweet feet.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #3 Steamed Cauliflower in a Caper Vinaigrette with Parsley and Thyme

Most vegetables have different personalities when they're cooked: braised radishes become sweet, subtle, downright alluring; broccoli eaten raw is often wooden and uninteresting but fried in peanut oil with cashews or tossed with rapini in sesame oil it can be a magnificently earthy conduit of flavour; and cauliflower -- the wall flower at the vegetable dip party, white and bulbous -- turns tricks when roasted or stewed in tandoori spices or pickled. Even if you don't like pickles, you will like pickled cauliflower. Trust me. It's addictive.

This cauliflower salad isn't so much pickled as steamed and then, while hot, doused in a dense vinaigrette with capers for extra acidity and bite.

And, when it's cooked just enough that it loses its cruciferous burn, cauliflower absorbs ingredients swiftly and dutifully. Refrigerated, this salad retains its zing and vibrancy for a few days although I like it best just cooked, still steaming.

Great with grilled white fish or tossed with pasta and toasted breadcrumbs.

Cauliflower Salad with Parsley and Thyme in a Caper Vinaigrette**

1 large cauliflower, broken into florets

2 garlic cloves, mashed/pressed/minced

1/2 cup chopped parsley

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (run your hands down the stem, the leaves will shed easily)

1/4 cup grape tomatoes, quartered

3 tablespoons capers, rinsed

3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

red pepper flakes

salt

** Garbanzo beans are a personal choice but great if you're looking to make this a salad lunch.

1. Place a steamer in the bottom of a large pot over one inch of water. Place the cauliflower in the basket and bring to a boil. Steam for one minute, lift the lid for a few seconds, then cover again and steam for 6-8 minutes, until tender. Drain and rinse under cold water for 2 minutes and set aside in a colander to continue draining. 

2. In a large bowl, mix together the garlic, parsley, thyme, tomatoes, capers, vinegar and olive oil. Season with the red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate at room temperature for an hour. Serve warm as a side to grilled fish. Serve cold as a salad on a bed of mixed lettuces.

Makes 6 side portions or 3 single portions.

p.s. Grow herbs. As much and as many as possible. Then experiment. You can't reproduce the vitality that fresh mint or basil or lemon thyme bring to a dish, especially the simplest of dishes like sliced tomatoes or tossed greens or grated carrots, and in the fall when the first frosts hit your sage will still rally and you can casually toss some into your mushroom risotto. Herbs, in a pinch, especially for simplistic palettes, can add just enough punch to make a dish interesting.

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #2 Lentil Salad with Grated Sweet Potato and Black Olives in a Curried Dressing

This is a salad for a winter day: a dull, drab January day in need of resuscitation. It has spark and colour and enough weirdness to arouse the curiosity of a co-worker: radishes and black olives?

Once, I had a friend - we've lost touch, haven't spoken in years - who married young and lived with her husband in an apartment above one of the most popular Chinese restaurants in Toronto, on Spadina Ave. There was a large deck, perfect for midnight summer soirees, and a hammock that hung between the bedrooom and the living room. At 3 a.m., when I was stumbling out onto the spit-strewn smelly sidewalk, there was always a line up out front of the restaurant. The place would be packed. Back at the party, they were still calling down for the special order of "green tea" which meant budweiser in cans in a paper bag at a premium. But apart from all that, what I remember about her, and we always remember something about the people we meet, was that she liked to go to St. Lawrence Market on a Saturday morning and she liked to buy fresh sesame covered Montreal bagels, chewy and sweet, and then she liked to eat the warm bread with salty black olives and crunchy hot red radishes. I was pretty sure she was onto something.

I love lentils. They're like perfect little morsels of earthiness. This salad uses the smallish brown Eston lentils (although these days I'm cooking the tiny black beluga ones and then combining them with a slightly larger chewier brown lentil. I like the contrast). Any lentil would work, but avoid the big, fat green ones. They're better served in a soup. Lentils shouldn't be mushy. They should act like a sprinkling of nuts, something dense, dark and wonderful.

Legumes typically go well with a lot of different flavours. Last winter, I couldn't get enough of a salad that I took to work all winter long: lentils in a mustard vinaigrette tossed with a generous amount of escarole lettuce - the sweet, bitter, crunchy sort - and just before eating I'd heat it in the microwave for a minute until the lettuce just barely began to wilt and then I'd toss it all together: the steaming lentils, the pungeant vinaigrette, the almost cooked greens, and it was, I'm not kidding, one of the most incredible things I have ever eaten. It was France. It was moss. It was eating the most delectable thing you dug up from the ground. 

50 Salads for Everyday Eating: #1 Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Toasted Pecans with Greens in a Warm Whiskey Mustard Dressing

January. If there's a time to commit to eating more greens and reds and purples and experimenting with new vegetables (kohlrabi, daikon radish, napa cabbage, pea sprouts, Jerusalem artichoke...) and perhaps giving old hangups a new chance (brussels sprouts, beets, cabbage, zucchini...) then now is it. I have some tips to help you along.

• Wash your vegetables as soon as you get home from the grocery store. Toss them into the sink, fill it up with water, and soap, let sit, drain, then spin dry everything and put into large ziplock bags. The stuff will keep perfectly for a week and be ready to use when you want it.
• Another idea, when you buy things like oversized good looking carrots and rustic beets, and have good intentions, but then they get lost with the busyness of life, and the stuff turns limpid in the crisper drawer, here's a solution: just set aside half an hour one weekend afternoon and get out your food processor with the grating blade. Peel the carrots and beets and then process away. Squeeze out the excess water from the grated vegetables and then store them in a tupperware to add to salad with nuts and dried fruit and salty cheeses all week long! Perfect!

Meanwhile, here's a salad for you, delicious for fall and winter when brussels sprouts and nuts are a welcome hearty addition to salad.

This salad makes enough for about 6.

Melt some butter or olive oil in a shallow baking pan in an oven preheated to  400 degrees. Toss about 1 lb of sprouts and 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts in the butter with some salt. Roast until the sprouts are golden and the nuts fragrant, about 12 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, organize your lettuces. Winter ones are especially wonderful with the warm sprouts and nuts and the heated dressing. Think frissee and endive, escarole and radicchio. Add freshly chopped herbs like chunks of Italian parsley or leaves of oregano. Salty shavings of pecorino or Parmesan would be good too.

Make a salad dressing that is robust: 1 tablespoon whiskey seed mustard (regular dijon will do just fine, minus the kick of the whiskey!), 3 tablespoons white wine/tarragon vinegar, 2 tablespoons water, 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1/4 cup minced shallot (or green onion), 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Prepare in a glass jar or ceramic bowl so you can microwave it for 2 minutes before pouring over the salad. I like to serve the dressing hot because it slightly wilts the winter lettuces and it's a magnificent flavour burst: bitter endive with sweet warm whiskey and the heat of a fine mustard. But if you're going with traditional lettuces then avoid a warm dressing -- it'll make short shrift of the lettuces and you'll be left with a soggy mess -- and choose a simple oil and white wine or sherry or balsamic vinegar.

Prepare a generous amount of greens in a large wooden serving bowl. Add the roasted but slightly cooled nuts and brussels sprouts. Heat the dressing and add enough to just coat everything. Keep tossing until absorbed.

Dried cranberries are great here too. As are roasted heirloom colourful beets.

Go for it. Think large. Think wonderful.

INTRO to The Salad Series: 50 Salads for Everyday Eating

Welcome to a bit of a revamp of Edible Tulip for the time being. This website over the past seven years has occasionally ventured into left field; luckily I like it over there, in the west wing, and I happen to also love fields. But I lost my focus a while back. I started writing about crazy shit -- insect copulation, lunar eclipses gone haywire, the odd disappointing run in with a stranger -- but 2012 has kicked off differently. I spent 6 months this past summer digging up my own dirt and writing until dawn. Then I got a great editing job with normal day loving people and I'm back craving the idea of carving words and worlds out of what I know. And as I keep saying, what I know is this: ever since I worked as the head chef at an art retreat centre up near Georgian Bay seven years ago, I seem to have been surreptitiously and unexpectedly changing the world, one person at a time, one work lunch at a time, through salads. Call me nuts, but it's true. So, that's what I'm doing, come hell or high water, I'm writing about arugula and mango and why they're a perfect match or why a bit of mizuna in a hot sesame dressing may shake your socks off or why toasting fresh corn in a pan will make you a happy satisfied person even if the rest of your life is falling apart. I'm not going to say trust me, but heck, why not? The greatest joys are often found in the smallest gestures. Go back to the wild, my friend. Suss out the truth in food and you will not look back. That, that I do know.

 

sultry snails, september sunlight

I've been reading a book called Swampwalker's Journal A Wetlands Year by David M. Carroll. He nightwatches a lot cause that's typically when all the action happens, under the cover of dark, when things go slither and crick in the vernal pools, marshes, floodplains, peatlands. I get it - the compelling company of insects and birds, weeds and willows is enough to wonder why you ever spend time with other people; they're so comparably boring in their toe gazing. I went to bed reading about muskrats and minks and woke up just as dawn broke. I took the dog through the wet grasses where the sugar maple has already started to turn towards fall and into the forest where we climbed a muddy hillock and stood in a grove of deciduous trees all dappling and lit from behind. The sun clung to the moisture bits in the air.

We walked the gravel path through the brush that smells like licorice when you rub bits of its white granular seeds between your fingers. The dew was still hanging about. And the snails, holy p'jesus they were hanging off tiny weightless twigs antennae outstretched gooey bodies wrapped around edibles (they eat with their stomach, through their stomach, they wrap themselves full body across a line of dead growth and then scoop it up like a manna ray folding into itself) mama snail baby snail lover snails waking from a honeymoon sleep with the sun on their back. People kept jogging by me as I crouched in the ditch wet to my knees glasses foggy in the morning breath of the ravine surrounded by thousands of snails but nobody looked up. Or sideways, for that matter.

It's a barely traceable amount of time - between darkness, dew, dappling, dream and sunlight burning down, things disappearing, crawling back under cover. All summer I've tried to get out at the in-between time, the momentary middle place, but it's hard to stalk - the sunlight arcs in new movements now.

I saw Robin Hood around 6:45 a.m. in a black felt hat on a rickety bike coming around a corner, singing. I shit you not.

Apples. So long summer. It's been beautiful.

the praying mantis and headless sex + the cigale and songs from the dead

I'm thick in research and reading a book called Social Life in the Insect World by J. H. Fabre, who is a hoot of an observational academic, and published in New York in 1918.

There's a meditative mysticism to his writings: it often happens, especially during the hours of the sultry afternoons, that the insect, intoxicated wtih sun light, shortens and even suppresses the intervals of silence. The song is then continuous, but always with an alteration of crescendo and diminuendo. The concert lasts a whole round of the clock. But if the sky is grey and the wind chilly the Cigale is silent. 

Two of the strangest bits in the book involve dead insects and the vigor of the physical self until full evisceration. Read on.

Take a Cigale but newly dead and make it sing. Nothing is simpler. Seize one of the muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series of careful jerks. The extint cri-cri comes to life again; at each jerk there is a clash of the cymbal.

Regarding the female Praying Mantis after copulation: during the day, or latest on the morrow, he is seized by his companion, who first gnaws through the back of his neck, aaccording to use and wont, and then methodically devours him, mouthful by mouthful, leaving only the wings. Here we have no case of jealousy, but simply a depraved taste.

Fabre brings in a second male and introduces it to the newly fecundated female. He writes, the result of my inquiry was scandalous. The Mantis is never sated with embraces and conjugal feasts. After a rest, whether the eggs have been laid or not,  second male is welcomed nd devoured like the first. A third succeeds him, does his duty, and affords yet another meal. A fourth suffers a like fate. In the course of two weeks, I have seen the same Mantis treat seven husbands in this fashion. She admitted all to her embraces, and all paid for the nuptial ecstasy with their lives. There are exceptions, but such orgies are frequent, he notes.

It is clear his research took a toll on poor scientist Fabre: I have worn myself out in trying to procure the indispensable complements to my female specimans. For I once surprised a male, apparently in the performance of his vital functions, holding the female tightly embraced - but he had no head, no neck, scarcely any thorax! The female, her head turned over her shoulder, was peacefully browsing on the remains of her lover! And the masculine remnant, firmly anchored, continued its duty!

I love this book. It's pure poetry.

bzzzz

Talk about a hive of activity out there this morning. Not to mention, a wee bit of mating (that's 4 beetles on one purple loosestrife stalk!). I also met an absolutely lovely couple out for a stroll and if she remembers the name of my blog - because it is a bit of a doozy - and can find me, then HI!

Colour Series: R E D (wychwood green barns)

Since I was practically on vacation all July-long traipsing through the Adirondacks taking ferries rock jumping the shores of Lake Champlain walking in the woods everywhere in Creemore river stomping black fly swatting sitting on horse flies OUCH August is the month of flogging myself with a cat-o'-nine-tails (don't ask) starting now so the long weekend is just another series of days spent at the writing table. But I hope you are somewhere lakeside with the scent of pines and good food and good friends. There's nothing better.

I woke early today and went to the Wychwood Farmers Market. I was feeling sort of blue the melancholy of mid-summer dreams and the strange tug of disappointment and my cat had disappeared and I feared the worst which involved the 9 raccoons living in the tree at the back of my property. I pictured the limp carcass of my sweet gray tabby hanging from a bare tree branch but it wasn't the case after all because when I got back from the Farmers Market my mood had brightened - all that cheerful red - and he was mewling at the back door.