A Delicious Survival Salad

Keep a big bowl of this chopped tomato salad in your fridge at all times.

I’M SENDING THIS OUT WHILE ON DRUGS. Drugs that make me loopy, nauseated, sleepy, cranky, and dreamy—which sounds like I’m in a Disney cartoon, but I’m not having nearly that much fun. I’m taking this load of pills not because I like drugs (although I wouldn’t mind some LSD right about now) but because I’m sick, with an ailment that puts many humans completely out of commission for several weeks.

But since I am a special kind of jackass, I have continued to make salads, however slowly. (I have one for you today and I’ll have another one, which I’m still refining, later this week.) I’m irrepressible.

The illness that picked the locks to both my spiritual and my corporeal doors (thanks to my hinky immune system) is an unpredictable one that must run its course. So in addition to giving me sacks of drugs, the doctor told me the key to wellness was resting a lot and eating a “healthy” diet. (I wouldn’t be writing this if that were true, but never mind.)

If you removed the stems from this photo of Sugar Bomb tomatoes, they’d almost look like pills.

I had little appetite when I was first struck down (I love being dramatic when I feel terrible), but I forced myself to eat the requisite sick-person crackers and canned soup that I found in my pantry but don’t remember buying. Bleh! What I really craved after a few days in my home sanatorium was something refreshing. Are you surprised to hear that for me this meant a nice tomato salad?

Only: I had no tomatoes. My cousin Toni, who lives nearby, had asked me if I needed anything, but I hate asking anyone for help. I’ll do it myself! All my drugs have “dizziness” as a possible side effect, but I decided that rather than dizziness what I was feeling was a doomed otherworldliness—a sense of unreality that left me entirely detached from the country and the planet I am living on.

Which, I decided, meant it would probably still be okay to operate heavy machinery. I drove about 7 mph on the two-lane road to my least favorite but closest grocery store 0.3 miles away, like the old lady in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (Not really—I wasn’t swerving and my hair looked worse.)

Good, large summer tomatoes are not yet available here, so I allowed myself my favorite splurge, Sunset Sugar Bombs, which are perfect for making the Turkish tomato and walnut salad I have for you today.