January 3, 2011
Smile Though Your Heart Is Aching
Women laughing alone with salad (via @anarchivist): Photos that set me to thinking.
They are the stuff of tragicomedy. The Unbearable Tragicomedic Lightness of Salad, or, When It’s Just Not Enough and It Ain’t What You Want.
And they set me to pondering a Unified Field Theory of Dinner and Dessert.
Deron explains his rejection of citrus desserts by way of reference to the deflation he felt as a child on those days when, on returning home after a hard day’s play, he asked, “What’s for dinner?” and the answer came, “Salad.”
Salad is not dinner. Citrus is not dessert.
Not enough. Not what you want. Salad does not equal dinner nor does citrus equal dessert.
I speak as a lover of salad and as one who can take or leave that which broadly accepted opinion recognizes as dessert.
Salad is not dinner — not even, I suspect, for vegetarians and vegans. Salad is a course enjoyed either before or after the main course of a meal, be that meal meaty or no.
But “the fundamental question of dessert remains a puzzle,” says Nicola of edible geography. (Thanks to @StanCarey for the link.)
Nicola ruminates on Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker article about dessert and comes to no definitive conclusion, but her musings propel me toward a grand explanation that yokes together the unsatisfactory natures of citrus-as-dessert and of salad-as-dinner.
In other words, a Unified Field Theory of Dinner and Dessert.
It’s almost enough to break your heart.
I’m working on it.
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The short version: What constitutes dinner? And how do we finish it?
It needs an aria.
Something in the manner of “Vesti la giubba.”
I’m odd, I know, but I do think of salad as dinner. If it’s a good salad, that is, and includes nuts and cheese and fruit along with greens. Yum.
I’ll serve as your token anomaly.
You know, I’m heavily influenced by my recent night out with Wagner but I’m just seeing it in the context of a Hegelian operatic dialogue.
Cindy, I do know a Chicago neighborhood trattoria where salad is dinner — and not by virtue of being laden with meat and cheese and eggs. So I am really just messing with the Idea of Salad as commonly accepted and as put forth commercially as a trigger of female delight.
But you are more than welcome to serve as token anomaly, so long as I can be sergeant-at-arms.
Lucy, I am wondering whether a tragi-comic salad aria might be incorporated into a Faustian opera.
Make it so.
Okay, I understand–normal salad isn’t dinner. But you should still be sergeant-at-arms. And parliamentarian. Those are the best jobs.
I can and have made a salad a meal, and skipped dessert. Unfortunately, I haven’t been making those choices since six weeks when I was 9 lbs. over my goal weight (180 lbs.). This morning I weighed in at 205.4. (25.4 over my goal.)
I’m back on the salad wagon, I’m not a sweet eater, generally, but if I give in to “the munchies” I will not stop.
I’m a believer in eating your fill of vegetables. It’s hard to go wrong that way.
Sorry, I would have gotten to this sooner, but I had to run to the Cedar Hill Home Depot to get replacement shingles for the ridge on the NE corner of the house where the Mulberry tree we had to cut down two years ago rubbed away when the wind blew because the Home Depot here said they had, but didn’t have, those shingles in stock, and neither did any of the other half dozen Home Depots in the Dallas city limits, and we had that one rain in the past six months or so, that unlike the other two dozen or so since I noticed the repair needed to be made, went ahead and allowed enough moisture to drip onto the newly mudded, sanded, and painted sheetrock next to that one light in the kitchen. Then, the blade on my box cutter was dull so luckily the local Home Depot had those and once I lugged all that up to the roof with the confiscated/borrowed/stolen ladder I found at the apartments next door that had gone missing from the second Michael Miller who lived in the house next door a few years ago, the nail gun jammed like permanently, so I just snipped a bunch of pre-coiled roofing nails I had been saving for just this task with a pair of wire clippers, and went ahead, after I trimmed all the corners of the shingles with the new blades, and just went ahead and hand-nailed the new shingles in over the section I had scraped away. God, I’m famished! What’s for dinner?
I wanna eat, godammit!
Rocket leaves with a light garnish of parmesan shavings.
Lucy, I like it that most English-speaking folk speak of “rocket”. I don’t know how or why we in the US fixed on “arugula”.
Deron! I made you a nice salad and some lemon sorbet for dessert!
Rocket tastes best with a citrus-based dressing. That’s the truth.
Deron! So you’ve been playing hard all day and what you want is Dinner, right?
I recommend the taqueria at the gas station on Sylvan Avenue.
Deron doesn’t want a citrus-y salad nor lemon sorbet. He’s a Texas man. He’s not from the North.
Enough food constitutes dinner. I don’t care what it was, if I haven’t had enough of it then officially I haven’t eaten. I need a rule just so that I can understand it.
Phil, what if you had to choose between enough food — consumed in a car (moving or stationary) — or not enough food served properly on china set upon a table?
Which would constitute dinner?
Thanks Cindy, I’ll be right over after my five pound burrito from Tacos Chanos.
Well, food eaten whilst moving (other than Liquorice) never happens anyway so I refuse to consider it. I would happily eat the lean portion it just wouldn’t be supper. The evening would be incomplete. I’d probably go to bed early and be wakened with a growling tummy in the middle of the night cursing and longing for breakfast to come around!
Soon the whole world will be on the American (Las Vegas) Plan and anyone anywhere will be able to go out for breakfast in the middle of the night — or phone to have it delivered.
How about a large salad bowl of vegetables juiced into one large glass of green liquid which ends up being dinner because you forget to eat anything else after. I don’t understand the why of it but it does happen.
Accidental dinner.
The fundamental question of dessert remains a conundrum.
Why dessert?
Related: Why, by current convention, sweet?
Why dessert indeed. And sweet? I just as soon have another dollop of beef gravy on white bread.
For the record, I haven’t done that in years.
I think a good dessert would be your basic Yankee cornbread crumbled into a tall glass of milk and eaten with spoon, personally.
When Dining Out, my finale of choice is: something a little sweet but not too-too (a shared fruit tart is nice) + strong coffee (ideally, good espresso) + good Cognac or Armagnac.
Don’t ask me to explain. I suspect it has to do with titrating drugs in order to balance their effects.
Ooh, what differentiates Yankee cornbread from Rebel cornbread (asks the Rebel-raised girl born of Yankee parents)?
You know good and well the difference, Shelia Joe. Yankee cornbread has sugar in it, Rebel cornbread does not. I mean, why call it cornbread when it is really a cake.
You understand you have provided me with the chance to beat a very dead horse here.
Sugar and consistency. Northern is sweet and cake-like. Southern is salty (a little) grainy and crusty. (The crust is the best, get a corner piece.)
Also, southern is good in a glass with butter-milk poured-over for dessert.
I wrote that before I read yours, Cece. Just for the record.
Rick, Mother makes her cornbread in a big black skillet for that crust consistency. Takes it out of the oven and flips it. It is a skill, I tell you.
Rick, you have every right given your origins, my friend.
Mom made hers in a cake-pan lined with bacon grease. (Though in the past before I remember, it might have been an iron skillet). The bacon grease might be the salty-bit?
I really didn’t know, Carole, or at least I didn’t remember! It’s what you might call one of the lacunae in my learning (or my memory).
For the record, I have only ever made Southern cornbread. Can’t abide that sweet johnnycake.
I guess that somewhere in the back of my mind’s recipe file, I knew about this. But I’ve never baked sweet cornbread, so it just did not register.
Rick, I like your suggestion of southern cornbread with buttermilk.
I enjoy nutty oatmeal (from steel-cut oats) with plain, unflavored yogurt for breakfast, so that’s where I’m coming from.
Northern cornbread don’t satisfy.
Yes, that would make it taste salty, Rick. The Iowan calls it “sour.” But that’s because he is used to cornbread swamped with sugar. Some southern corbread is made with buttermilk. Delicious.
I like plain yogurt too. Can’t stand the flavored stuff.
Mmmnh. Real yogurt-y yogurt.
So how do we explain the affinity of many Southerners for cold sweetened tea? Insufficient sugar in they cornbread?
And then they’s the sweet cole slaw.
I reckon it’s all to balance out the unsweet cornbread and the different unsweet beans that aren’t like those Yankee beans with molasses.
You are asking the kind of question the Iowan has asked me now for 20 years. Things like, why do southerners cling to the Rebel flag but are the first to stand up and salute the American flag? Why was that guy out partying like a fiend with his never-empty flask in hip pocket leading singing in church the next day? Why do you crackers insist on sour cornbread, then wash it down with iced tea sweetened with a pound of sugar?
It’s complicated…
I guess this means that even though I am a transplanted half-breed, I am a real true Midwesterner.
Sometimes — if you are not born what you are — you become what you are.
I don’t like sweet cornbread. I want it cooked hard in a skillet to go with my pinto beans. I might put some real butter on it.
Does it count as salad if you roll it in a big flour tortilla? Here’s my favorite roll-up: fresh spinach or rocket; sun-dried tomatoes; swiss cheese; fresh mushrooms; honey mustard dressing.
Exactly, Shelia. You can fight it but it probably doesn’t matter.
Now that is the best, “sour” cornbread made in an iron skillet with a big helping of pinto beans. And collards with peppered vinegar.
And your wrap counts, Daryl. The tortilla is sort of the croutons. I have taken to having my favorite veggie burger salad-wrapped, so to speak. The folks at Elevation Burger will wrap it in lettuce leaves instead of bread.
Danny made mustard greens and black-eyed peas for the new year. We found some vinegared peppers at the market. (Not quite the same as Mom’s home-grown hot peppers pickled in vinegar, but a suitable substitute.) Heavenly! Danny put tabasco on his, he found ‘em more palatable that way. (He is an Iowan, with a southern bent, because-a me.)
Because we ate ‘em, we’ll enjoy prosperity and luck in the new year. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Daryl, I love beans of all kinds. Black-eyed peas ain’t far off that mark, you know?
My Dallas friend Steve made red posole for the New Year. He threw some cabbage into it. I wish I could have been there to share.
Beans, peas, they are all the same. Very good! I was reading up on cow peas recently. Also known as crowder peas or field peas. They were always in our garden. Way back, the wealthy people ate English peas while the field hands and sharecroppers ate cow peas, which were originally grown here as feed for farm animals. But they actually are healthier because they have a lot of protein. Plus, they are nitrogen-rich and farmers grow them to enrich poor soil. I forgot the best part. Field peas or whatever you want to call them are delicious!
I did not eat peas and greens this year, Rick. But I buried money. On New Year’s Eve, you bury a small amount of money and announce, “I am burying my poverty.” Then on New Year’s Day, you dig it up and say, “I am uncovering my wealth.” You never ever spend that money. Although you can give it to charity.
I like hominy, too, Shelia. More so than just plain corn, even. Which really annoys the Iowan.
Gawd, I just read back through this thread. I’m still chuckling.
And I buried and unburied money this New Year. Hope it works. I think I just uncovered a new source of money. If it comes through, it might be enough to cover the back taxes the IRS is after.
I’m gonna be struggling till I have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
Oh, Gurl! Struggling is the best part? I’m not sure what I meant by that. Something about being alive.
Lots of us be struggling, and that’s a fact. Still thinking it beats the alternative.
By which I meant: Let’s keep on keeping on.
Amen.