wilted salad

Hear me out. In this case, the phrase “wilted salad” is a recipe title, not a criticism. You actually wilt this salad on purpose. Full disclosure: it doesn’t turn out pretty. But it does turn out yummy.

This is my paternal grandmother’s recipe, and she taught it to my mother, who made it often when I was younger, so this tastes like childhood to me. But even if I were trying it first as an adult, without the added attraction of nostalgia, I think I would still enjoy it because it’s vinegary, salty, and bacony, three of my favorite flavor profiles.

So, without further ado, here it is. Super easy.

wilted salad

3 slices of bacon
a head of iceberg lettuce
a bunch of scallions
1 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or to taste)

Fry bacon slices until crisp. 

While bacon is frying, remove core from lettuce and tear the rest of the head into pieces, separating the leaves as you go. Chop scallions, including the green tops.

Remove bacon from skillet and drain on a paper towel.

Dip out some of the bacon drippings until you have a couple of tablespoons left in the skillet. Add sugar and vinegar to the drippings and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add lettuce and scallions to the hot pan, turning them so that they get some of the dressing. Add a good pinch of salt and some pepper. Continue turning the greens until they are barely wilted. Crumble bacon and add to the pan. Taste and adjust seasonings, if needed.

I’ve never added hot sauce to this, but I bet it’d be fabulous.

red cabbage salad

So! I'm working on several different posts. Who knows which one will be finished first, or when. In the meantime, I offer a little something to whet your appetite, plus a summer-reading recommendation.

When it gets hot outside, all I want are crunchy, leafy, generally vegetal things. Corn. Tomatoes. Basil. Chives. Lettuce. Zucchini. Half the time, D calls me a rabbit because of my inordinate love for a vegetable plate. (Other times he calls me a hobo because of my inordinate love for sardines.) The truth is, I suspect I would be right at home, crunching on illicit produce all day long in Mr. McGregor's garden.

truffled vichyssoise + butter lettuce salad with lemon-mustard vinaigrette

The first time I ever had vichyssoise, I was sixteen years old and staying in a rented house in the North Carolina mountains for a church weekend with my parents and siblings and several other families. As a first course one evening, our congregation's unanimously elected cook, Marcia, served us a cold potato and leek soup. We ate it out of mugs, sitting at a picnic table in the yard, all of us still flagging from the day's early July heat, which was formidable even after sunset and even at that altitude. Vichyssoise was the perfect food for that evening and its quintessentially blue Appalachian twilight, and Marcia's version was, not surprisingly, the perfect one to serve as my introduction to the dish.

Marcia was one of my first Sunday school teachers when my family started attending church again in 1982. Powell Presbyterian had a small congregation, and some Sunday mornings I was the only kid in the class. Stories have always appealed to me; I often say I'm a sucker for a narrative, which is probably why I became an English teacher. Marcia's explanations of biblical tales gave me a familiarity with the narratives of both testaments that would eventually help me win a partial Bible Scholarship to Montreat College ten years later. (I wrote my scholarship application essay on Noah and the significance of the rainbow's promise). Though Marcia always wore ladylike skirt suits to church, she was no shrinking violet. She had studied chemical engineering in college and then worked for eighteen years as a safety analyst in the nuclear industry, in addition to having raised three sons. Even now, whenever I think of the Biblical St. Paul, I always picture her bearded, intelligent, kind-faced husband of the same name. Marcia was kind, too, yet she was also outspoken and had a certain earthiness: she made my high school church friends and me blush furiously when she remarked baldly, during one youth group outing to her house to harvest peaches from her orchards, "Hmph! Sex is the smallest part of what marriage really is." (I suspect we had probably been giggling and whispering about something along those lines.)