My Dinner of Late

I've been making salads for dinner on almost every night I eat at home throughout the summer. These aren't darling summer salads the likes of which are dusted onto restaurant plates as frothy warm weather appetizers, and they aren't the ranch dressing-soaked salami-fests scooped into plastic containers at every ubiquitous lunch deli Third Avenue can endure; they are just mine, and just right. I perfected my ideas about the dinner salad this week, and had my friend sarah over to taste the results. Here it is:


Spinach. I've mixed arugula in, but I like the impression, false or true, that uncooked nutrient-rich greenery will counteract the pint of Puerto Rican rum that I'm drinking with dinner.



Red onion, perpetually the most flavorful ingredient that I shed a tear over. Ask Mother Barry about her ingenius dicing trick. Hint: IT'S DICED BEFORE IT'S SLICED.



Grape tomatoes, a summer treat that bursts with flavor and resists the mealiness that its giganto brethren acquire so easily.


The only things I don't put a lemon in are hot dogs and my homemade Ben-Gay.


Cheese, piave in this case. I don't know from cheese, but if it can be grated, cubed, tumbled, folded or otherwise included in a salad without it all dropping to the bottom, it's all good for this recipe.







Shrimp! It's a meat in a salad, but it's not greasy or heavy! If you think crustaceans feel pain, you can sub in some hard-boiled eggs. It's all protein, y'all!

I don't have a big salad bowl, so I throw it into a pot, drizzle some vineagrette and a bit of olive oil over the mess, put the pot cover on and dance for the length of a Harry Belafonte song. Sure, it's not rocket science, but in one pot I make a cool and rejuvenative dinner salad that puts a delectable cap on another workday spent surreptitiously browsing for tail on CraigsList while the boss tries to the nail the Davidston account. Minus the unflattering blocky hips and frizzy chemical-treated hairdo, I'm Rachel Ray with chest hair.