Let's All Marry Salad in 2024 👰 🥗 🤵‍♂️

You could do a hell of a lot worse than the vintage zucchini (something old) or the modern farro-grapefruit (something new) salads that I have for you today.

It’s easy being green: Grated Zucchini Salad with Fresh Basil.

I LOVE COOKBOOKS TOO MUCH, and about three years ago the number in my digital collection began to surpass that of my physical collection (at least the ones I have with me; my storage space, which is like a millstone around my neck, is full of God only knows how many cookbooks). It was out of necessity that this change happened, because back then I lived almost two hours from the closest bookstore, which was also the World’s Most Depressing Bookstore, clogged with corporate favorites and adult coloring books.

While the world of salad newslettering is not as high-pressure as, say, that of Formula 1 drivers or emergency-room nurses, I did find that in order to do my job well I often needed certain books fast. From there it just became a downward slide into an unconscious habit. Oh, I’ll just press this button and have information instantly as if it were nothing at all.

All you need for a glorious grated zucchini salad.

Like so many small modern-world luxuries that we happily enjoy—but that also contribute to the destruction of the richness of our lives and, possibly, the flattening of the complex dimensions of our souls—it was convenient.

I happily tell myself that I’m saving trees in order to avoid acknowledging the fact that I’m also paying for rocket fuel and space-age cowboy costumes for Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos after flying into space in his rocket in 2021. Getty Images.

But I always circle back to wistfulness—a wistful robot reading her robot books, until the day when all literature in the known universe is downloaded into our cold metal brains.

Wistful, because when I stop to contemplate my digital habit, I get nostalgic for the indelible feelings of discovery you once got while browsing for hours in a really good bookstore, where the owners were curators and arbiters and tastemakers because they actually read books—rather than anonymous Wall Street suits who homogenize every cultural landscape they encounter in the name of profit.

Pistachios, red onion, dried cherries, feta, dill! It all goes into the farro salad.