A Definitive Salad

I regularly read a blog written by my friend Kate Outside the Square and today she has posted about defining moments in her life. She comments that these moments usually happen and then subsequently you realise that they were defining.

This started me thinking. I have another friend - yep 2 friends - who is a neighbour of Kate’s. Well, I guess I should explain, sitting in my little part of the world in south west France it seems like she is a neighbour. Kate is in Australia and my other friend, who, as far as I know, doesn’t write a blog, lives in New Zealand. So like I said, virtually neighbours.

Anyway, this friend of mine, who lives in New Zealand, has another way of thinking about these things. She often says that she is "making memories". So one friend looks forward and makes memories and the other looks back and finds defining moments.

This is great for me because the diversity gives me the choice.

Today I had a quiche for my dinner, accompanied by a small salad and I thought as I ate it that I was making memories. Maybe in the future I’ll look back and say it was a defining moment in my life. I hope so.

You see, what you don’t know was this was a simple meal, it was an incredibly tasty meal, but to me, it was also, an important meal.

The quiche came out of a box from the local supermarket. Yes, I know, I should have made it and I agree, I do live in France and there really isn’t that much to making a quiche, but I was busy, I was getting ready for some guests to arrive and I was a bit lazy.

So I opened the cardboard box and took out the quiche. In defence of myself, I can say that the quiche was made within about fifty miles of where I live.

The salad that accompanied it was the sort of salad I like. Again, it was nothing very special, a few lettuce leaves mixed with some mint and some basil. Some peas, a few chives and a red cabbage leaf were thrown in as well and, to pep up the taste a little, I added a couple of onion stalks, a garlic leaf and a couple of radish. So, as I said, the sort of salad I like but nothing special.

Except, this was very special.

You see, the salad contained a few lettuce leaves from my own garden, the mint was from the pot of mint growing outside my door. The basil was from my own collection of a few herbs, as were the chives, and the chive flowers. The red cabbage leaf was taken from one of those red cabbages I bought and blogged about earlier this year. The onion stalk was picked from the onions growing in my veggie bed, as were the garlic leaves and radish. The peas were not quite ready when I picked them from my plants. I even tossed in a few walnuts, which were picked last autumn but are still beautiful.

Yes, everything that went into that salad had grown right here in my kitchen garden, on a piece of ground that only 6 months ago was grass. Well, to be fair, not the walnuts. They grew on three trees that have probably stood there for about a hundred years but now find themselves in my garden.

So for me, today, I made some memories. I ate a great tasting salad. The very first dish entirely grown by myself, ever. I really hope I look back in the years to come and remember it and maybe, Kate, this will become one of my defining moments.

Ian