Project the Second: Salad Project

2010-08-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Our last-year crush, Mark Bittman, likes to list. So do we! A match made in heaven.

Last year he came up with a list of 101 Summer Salads; we read the list and intended to make a few but mostly went out for Indian food or made scrambled eggs at home. This summer, however, we had to start packing our lunch. At first it was boring sandwiches all the time, blah blah blah, until inspiration hit & we decided to project-ify lunch. Aha!

THE CHALLENGE
Five lunches a week. Gotta be portable & non-melty, as we lack a cooling apparatus. Preferable if ingredients aren't too exotic or expensive; best if we can purchase them at the farmer's market. Salads should last in the fridge for a week without getting weird or smelly or mushy. Finally: tastiness is key.

THE METHOD
Every Saturday we chose 2 of the 101 salads, purchased ingredients at farmer's market & grocery store; Sundays we cooked em up; during the week, we brought 2+ salads in Tupperware to eat at lunch and gross out the kids.

HOW HAVE WE GROWN?
The recipes are written in a chatty style, and lack normal information like number of tablespoons, cooking times/temperatures, etc. The idea, we suppose, is that these salads are tossed together with an easy, summery carelessness. This makes us anxious, but we like to think of things that make us anxious as opportunities for growth. In making these salads, we have learned to trust our own instincts. Also we have learned the value of going to the farmer's market with a list, instead of just aimlessly browsing. Finally, our definition of "salad" has expanded far beyond the traditional lettuce/vegetable/dressing format. We can't even remember the last time we ate lettuce!

THE SALADS SO FAR

1. "Cube watermelon and combine with tomato chunks, basil and basic vinaigrette. You can substitute peach for the watermelon or the tomato (but not both, O.K.?). You can also add bacon or feta, but there goes the vegan-ness."

See what we mean about the chattiness? Oh, Mark. Anyway: did the peach/tomato version of this for our blog party. Everyone was wary of the vegetable-fruit combo (for the purposes of this blog, the tomato is a vegetable), but they were wrong because it ruled. This salad is like a bowlful of summer and is quite juicy. As for the "basic vinaigrette," we just did balsamic + olive oil + shallot + pepper + a little more basil, and that seemed fine... but does this salad really even need a dressing? I bet it'll get kind of mushy by tomorrow. More of a dinner party salad than a keep-in-the-fridge-for-a-week salad. Easy to make, mostly just involves chopping.

2. "A nice cucumber salad: Slice cucumbers thin (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), toss with red onions and salt, then let sit for 20 to 60 minutes. Rinse, dry, dress with cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard; no oil necessary."

Cucumbers are nice in the summer because they're like water in vegetable form. We recommend this salad for those who are thirsty but appreciate the good tangy flavor of a good mustard/vinegar combo. Tastes like it would go well with cole slaw. Lasted all week, probably because we avoided fat/old cucumbers.

3. "Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft."

"Plenty"? Perhaps we underdid the pepper, and the lemon on this one. Still, carrots + blueberries + sunflower is not something we would have come up with on our own, so we give Mark much credit on this one. We forgot to toast the first batch of sunflower seeds and that was a mistake. The toasting is crucial for crunch reasons.

The kids were VERY suspicious of this one, mostly because they couldn't figure out what the blueberries were doing. "Are those sugared?" Marquez asked.
"Well, they're fresh blueberries, so they have all their natural sugar," we replied. She made a face like this was the wrong answer.

But she's 17, who cares what she thinks!With fresh, sweet carrots and fresh, non-oozy blueberries, this salad is a champ. Put in more blueberries than you think Mark intended.

This is someone else's Flickr photo of this salad:

TO BE CONTINUED!

Project the First: Blog Project

2010-08-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

We have time so we have to fill it. What do we fill it with? Projects!

On the 6-hour drive to camp when we were 11, we decided to teach ourselves how to curl our tongues. With dedication and practice, success was attained, and a lifelong dedication to self-improvement and empowerment through projects was begun.

For the purposes of this blog, a project is a task or collection of tasks that result in betterment of self and/or larger community. Project outcomes will be measured through scientific self-analysis via blogging. And now: we begin.

Project Project

Project the Second: Salad Project

Project the First: Blog Project