A phrase once used to look fondly upon a time of youthful naivety and uninhibited pleasure seeking was actually coined by Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
"My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood, to say as I said then!"
Cleopatra uses this infamous metaphor to describe her green or emotionally immature and cold (passionless) relationship with Julius Caesar.
When I think of my own salad days I am taken away from my current love of crisp, cool greens and brought back to the 1970s when everything, including my beloved salad, was as contrived as the orange plastic furniture of the day.
I remember my first run in with the Jell-o mould salad that left me horrified by the sight of peas and carrots cruelly captured inside the confusion of whether Jell-o was a side dish or a dessert.
Apparently, salad could no longer just be vegetables tossed with wild abandon and seasoned with salt and lemon or vinegar. The control freak chefs/food scientists of that day were so caught up in the process of creating a dish that everything was taken from its natural state and processed into something more complicated that sat neatly on your plastic plate.
I couldn't be more thankful that today's chefs have gone back to the basics of keeping food as real as possible, and enhancing natural flavours has taken root over the need to overly process God's original creation.
The origins of the art of salad began as early as the Roman and Greek empires who ate mixed greens with salt and oil and either lemon or vinegar. The word salad comes from the latin "Sal" for salt which then yielded the form "salata" which meant salted things or Herba Salata which meant salted herbs.
The term salade turns up in Old French and the late 14th century English beholds salad or "salet."
We all know the importance of salad in our health regiment and every culture has its own idea as to whether it should be eaten first or last in meal order. Early medical authorities, Hippocrates and Galen touted the belief that raw vegetables slipped easily through the system not obstructing what was to follow, therefore they should be consumed first in the meal.
Others - I won't mention any names - place a higher importance on the taste of wine and believe that the vinegar in the dressing messes with the flavour of wine thus bumping salad to the final course.
This debate still continues and some today say salad gets the digestive juices flowing and ready for a heavy meal while others say eating it last can curb your cravings for dessert.
Personally, I have never met a salad that gets in the way of my love for after dinner chocolate just saying.
The differing types of salads today are as varied as the cultures that make up our great planet. Almost every culture has its own version more or less.
It comes down to the dressing that makes each unique with a few variants on ingredients. From The rich eggy thousand Island dressing of New York's summer island destination to the paprika-laced mayo of Russian dressing, one will find a representation of world flavours to compliment their daily salad intake.
Prairie French dressing
Ingredients
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, halved
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
Directions
In a jar with a lid, add oil, Worcestershire, garlic, salt, paprika, mustard, pepper, thyme, tarragon and vinegar. Cover and shake well. Refrigerate for one hour before serving.
