Dreamy Chicken Salad with Tarragon, Green Olives, and Pistachios.
Perfect for fancy tea sandwiches. Plus: A rainbow-colored dance party of a grain salad, full of crunchy chopped vegetables, fruit, and nuts. (And I have another bee in my bonnet.)
WE MAY HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE, about 50 or 60 times, that we really do not enjoy snobs here at the Department of Salad.
Nonetheless, while working on this week’s newsletter, I somehow got a bee in my bonnet about it again. This bee entered not while I was thinking about salad but as I was watching The Gilded Age, that very popular show about America’s famous era of class separation, extreme income inequality, and corruption, whose central theme is snobbery as a weapon to protect power and decide the fates of others.
As I began tinkering with the tea sandwich chicken salad with tarragon, pistachios, and green olives that I have for you today, I was simultaneously trying to mentally swat away the fact that snobbery of this sort might seem archaic when in fact it has only adapted to conditions—like a virus—and taken a more easily self-inflicted form. Thanks to the internet and social media, rather than simply “keeping up” with the Joneses (those ordinary dullards next door), we can today gaze through millions of bizarre, constantly open windows into the staged-fabulous lives of international celebrities, strangers known as influencers, and, of course, the Kardashians, whoever they are. (Just kidding; I’m not dead.)
And as I cooked one pot of bulgur and another of quinoa for the delicious mixed grain salad recipe I also have for you, the bee continued to zoom around my brain, reminding me of what a destructive force snobs can be, especially in a world that has gotten as small as ours, where people in thrall of the rich and powerful are allowed to feel so close to the objects of their affection that they actually believe it is mutual and that someday a hand will reach down to pull them up onto whatever pedestal or podium or computer screen they’re looking up to.
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A small REQUEST
Please hit the ❤️ button at the bottom of this newsletter if you like it here! ❤️ —Emily
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As my mental hullabaloo continued, it brought to mind a woman I worked with years ago, who reminded me of one of Dr. Seuss’s Star-Belly Sneetches. She loved to roll her eyes at the mention of any of our various coworkers before listing, in a hushed, almost scandalized voice, where they were from or where they’d gone to school or how they talked or dressed.
“I’m a snob,” she’d then announce—almost victoriously, as if she were the Queen of Hearts and had just won a croquet match against the common man. You’d think it would be exhausting to worry so much about ranking other people, but she seemed energized and indefatigable. Her snobbery propelled her, like fuel for her engine.
She struck me as silly and sad, even though I liked her a lot when she wasn’t being a snob. “She just has very good taste and high standards,” a mutual friend explained. “But can’t you have those things silently?” I asked. But I knew the answer was no, judging from the many other kinds of snobs who roam the earth, feeding their insecurities on the insecurities of others, stomping all over authenticity, trying to destroy mankind’s right to simply be the way we are—with no notes, no ratings, no anonymous slams.
So, snobs: I do not like them!
But the question my bee reverie led me to was: Do I like whatever I am any better?
I think I’m a good egg, but I seem instead to be a hybrid of several kinds of phonies. I tell myself I’m definitely not a snob and that if I’m anything it’s a reverse snob (even though that’s still a snob).
But I’m not one of those awful reverse snobs who insists Velveeta is as good a cheese as Parmigiano Reggiano just to be cool. I am a righteous defender of things I don’t even really care about. For instance, if I tell you I liked a book and you respond “OH, REALLY—you liked that? Hmmm,” I will respond to you, “Not just liked-loved; it was a complete masterpiece!” And then I’ll go give it five stars on Amazon, even though I never actually finished reading it.
I bring all of this up because after I’d mentally razed the entire snob landscape (but let myself off the hook for whatever kind of snob I am), I realized that I’d been an enormous snob just last week, about food. Which is how I almost missed out on the grain salad that I have for you today.
My friend Susan, whose opinions about food and many other things I trust, had mentioned to me more than once that she was very fond of the Costco grain salad. I remember the image of a giant barrel overflowing with wan grains flecked with a few tired vegetables that appeared in my mind.
Oh. Really? I said (or something similarly snobby), but she was undeterred and even mentioned it again. But I never said: Okay, I’ll try it!
