Salads

It's spring! It's spring!

Well, okay, I just went to let my dog Jed in and it was hailing. But still, it's nearly April. Nice weather has to come soon. And when warm weather comes, few things satisfy my appetite like salads. The fact that I've got World Class Gardeners next door (No, really, they are World Class. They fly around the world teaching permaculture -- permanent agriculture techniques. Take a look: ?Permaculture Activist) really expands my salad possibilities; last summer they were selling me grocery sacks of mixed organic baby greens for $4. They also introduced me to fresh pea shoots, which are utterly addictive, and they often knock on my door with garden surplus. Oh, joy!

So as the weather warms up and produce comes down in price, salads will be featured here nearly every day. After a winter of little in the way of salad but cole slaw and cauli-rice salads, I can barely wait.

I was thinking of this because I was flipping through a cookbook as I ate breakfast (leftover Ham Kedgeree with two fried eggs on top, yum!) It's one of those spiral-bound cookbooks compiled and sold to support one charity or another. This one was put together in 1981 for the Indiana branch of the American Cancer Society. And flipping through the salad chapter at the beginning of the book, it became clear why Indiana is among the top 10 fattest states in the union.

It appears that the Indiana tradition of "salads" consists largely of dishes made with sugared gelatin, Cool Whip, pie filling, sugary canned fruits, frozen juice concentrate, marshmallows, sweetened condensed milk, and the occasional gratuitous cup of sugar. I got thirteen recipes into the salad chapter before I found a single recipe that wouldn't be more at home on the dessert table -- and even that recipe, a spinach salad, has 1/2 cup brown sugar in the dressing.

Don't get me wrong. I love Indiana. We moved here not because of jobs or local family, but just because we wanted to. I've never felt more at home anywhere in my life than I do in Bloomington, and I have every intention of dying here (some time around, oh, 2075.)

But calling this sort of thing "salad" is a travesty. I found myself checking not only Indiana's obesity status, but also our rates of heart disease and cancer. Turns out they're among the highest in the country. I cannot help but think that this sort of recipe plays a part in those statistics.

It's bad enough to eat sugary trash. It's far, far worse to eat it in place of vegetables. The mind boggles at the idea that someone could eat, say Cherry Salad -- which consists of canned pineapple, sweetened condensed milk, frozen whipped topping, and canned cherry pie filling -- and think, "Oh, good, I've had a salad with my dinner. Now, what's for dessert?"

(Parenthetically, I must mention the single most egregious recipe of this kind I've ever run across: Snicker-Apple Salad. That's right, you cut Snickers bars and apples into chunks, and toss them with a nice dressing of Cool Whip. There's also "Pretzel Salad" -- a crust made of crushed pretzels and, God forbid, margarine, topped with cream cheese, sugar, and whipped topping, then a layer of strawberry gelatin and sweetened, frozen strawberries. Atkins wept.)

Be honest with yourselves, please. Salads consist of vegetables, or possibly fresh fruit. You know, stuff with vitamins and antioxidant phytochemicals. I suppose you can mix shredded cabbage and carrots with sugar-free gelatin if you're looking for a retro kick, but if the resulting dish is more gelatin than vegetables, I'm not sure it counts as a salad. Have another vegetable with it.

But anything that's more sweet junk than vegetables is NOT a salad, it's dessert. It's also a carb nightmare, but then you knew that.

The other class of salads that do not work for us is the starchy salads -- potato salad, macaroni salad, stuff like that. These aren't sweet, but they pack as big a blood sugar wallop as the "Dessert Salads" -- after all, starch is sugar -- it's just a whole lot of sugar holding hands. Potatoes, at least, have a few vitamins, but white pasta has no redeeming nutritional value whatsoever.

Happily, I have yet to try a potato salad recipe that didn't come out just fine using cauliflower in place of the potatoes -- and, of course, the nutritional value skyrockets as the carb count plummets. Macaroni salad is less adaptable. You could use Dreamfield's pasta, but blood sugar tests tell me that I, at least, shouldn't eat the stuff often, and of course it has the same vitamin and mineral content of white flour pasta, which is to say very little. I haven't tried shirataki in pasta salad yet. I just don't care enough for pasta salad to make it with something so pricey. Still, if a bunch of you write me and tell me that you're weeping in frustration at the lack of macaroni salad in your life, I'll consider trying it.

But for the very most part, your salads should be made of vegetables, the occasional fresh fruit, and perhaps a toasted nut or two. You can label sugary or starchy stuff "salad" all you like; it won't make them nutritious. Or low carb.

Here's a salad that has both spinach, more nutritious than which it is hard to get, and a bit of orange. The results are truly delicious, and will do fine things for your body, too.

?Spinach-Orange Salad
Wonderful with a simple steak, or with grilled seafood.

8 ounces triple-washed spinach or baby spinach
1 naval orange
1/4 medium red onion
3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon orange extract
1/2 tablespoon Splenda
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper

Place your spinach in a salad bowl. Peel the orange, separate the segments, and cut each segment into three pieces – do all this over the spinach, so that any juice that drips gets added to the salad. The bits of orange go in, too, of course! Slice the onion paper-thin, and put it in, too.

Pour the olive oil over the salad, and toss until every millimeter of the spinach is gleaming. Now whisk together everything else, adding the salt and pepper to taste. Pour this over the salad, toss again, and serve immediately.

4 servings, each with 8 grams of carbohydrate and 2 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 6
grams. 2 grams protein. 125 calories.