A quick salad

Threw together a salad tonight to go with some soup. (More on that later.) It got thumbs up from everyone involved in the dinner (i.e. me and Brian). Really tasty and I'll definitely make it again. You need:

-Mixed baby greens/spring mix/whatever. Greens should be tender and with a sharper taste - arugula and radicchio and stuff on that order.
-A handful or so of unsalted dry roasted peanuts, crushed. (I think I'll try this recipe again but with walnuts.)
-A cup or so of grapes, cut in half for forking ease.
-Olive oil.
-Lemon juice.
-Pepper.
-Grated parmesan cheese.

Just toss the greens, the peanuts, and the grapes together. Drizzle enough olive oil to just lightly coat everything. Add lemon juice, pepper, and parmesan to taste. Couldn't be simpler, and it's REALLY good.

How fish becomes fish food

I spent the last semester of my senior year in Mallorca to improve my Spanish, and it also ended up broadening my culinary horizons. Like, I learned how to make salad. This would be a pretty obvious thing for most people, but I've always hated salad with dressing and ordered just the dry leaves, leaving waiters dumbfounded and weirdly suspicious. It turns out that I just didn't like those commercial, creamy, too-salty dressings, or maybe it just bugged me that I didn't know what was in them, but I DO like salads with dressing now. I keep oil and vinegar dispensers (bought there, with "Aceite" and "Vinagre" printed on them -- oh, aren't I so hip and cosmopolitan!) on my kitchen table -- some leaves, a little oil and balsamic, salt, pepper, maybe some Italian seasonings, and whatever else you want in there, and you have a salad with very little effort. My host mom would put all sorts of stuff in, like apples and nuts and seeds; I loved her creativity. Salad is so much more a part of the meal there (as is soup, bread, and dessert -- how do working señoras find the time and energy? I think reasonable working hours and the sacred tradition of siesta have a lot to do with it), and they go a long, long way beyond romaine and cherry tomatoes with something pale and slimy out of a bottle.

Anyway, another eye-opening experience was the seafood. Stateside, I'm a "vegetarian," but I do eat the occasional bit of fish when I go out. Sometimes I'd buy those bags of frozen fish at Aldi for $3.99 and sautée or bake them and serve them to myself alongside some pasta, and they tasted fine. Well, I'm here to tell you, if you live in a landlocked state like I do, don't EVER spend any time on an island because it will ruin fish for you forever. The fish that I ate at my host house was probably fished out of the Mediterranean a day or two before, and it had a succulence and a mildness and a depth of flavor that I've never experienced. If I were a Mallorquín, I'd probably be horrified if I were served something that had been frozen for months. It's just not the same at all.

I returned from Mallorca on June 17th, and today was the first day I ate fish since I came back from there. I thought I'd give my palate a lot of time to forget what island fish tasted like. Tonight I cooked myself up a frozen Tilapia fillet, thinking I'd be able to say "Oh well" and accept what my landlocked status handed me.

ACK, PPTH, PTUI! Horrible! Dreadful! It tasted exactly like the smell I get when I open the can of freeze-dried krill I keep on the top of my turtle tank to give him an occasional fishy treat. (Some treat!) Stale, old, and saturated with "that fish taste" which I think is the reason some people can't stand fish. Disgraceful. Is this what islanders who come inland think we like to eat? No wonder Mallorquins are a bit reserved...who'd want to talk to anyone who thought THAT tasted good?

So from now on, I buy my fish -- if I do at all -- from the Co-Op and at least get something that came out of a nearby river. Life is too short. If you want an easy dinner from the supermarket, save yourself $3.69 and get a package of Ramen Noodles. You'll feel better afterward.