Spring Salads are Zigging!

So the Department of Salad is zagging, with a hearty kale salad full of crispy potatoes, smothered in smoky Romesco. Plus, a delicious new olive-tarragon vinaigrette from The Dressing Room.

Kale and Crispy Potato Salad with Chunky Romesco

FIRST THINGS FIRST: I am again sending this out while on drugs. So if I sound a little dreamier than usual (if that’s even possible), chalk it up to that. I honestly have no idea what day it is, and the difference between night and day has become meaningless to me. But apparently my illness is “peaking.” So that’s nice.

Anyway, something I’ve been thinking about while sick—wearing my sad, sick person costume day after day, as my household falls into disarray and my dog’s eyes being to reflect no memory of all the daily fun we used to have in the park—is the internet era’s special form of aspirational perfectionism.

I’m sure everyone here has heard of—and probably follows—social media influencers. I really adore quite a few of them, especially the ones who recommend doable ways to make life easier, more delicious, prettier, more adventurous, happier, etc. Who doesn’t want that?

Social media influencers have been around for a long time. (Simona Dumitru, Getty Images)

But lately I’ve started to fear that in the very near future I could easily be the only imperfect person left in the audience, watching everyone else on the planet tell me the best way to do a lot of stuff I was never planning on doing, anyway.

So I’ve decided—a long time ago, apparently; I just didn’t realize it—that I want to be the opposite of an influencer. I want to be the person who assures you that you can live a wonderful life in unfashionable clothes, with messy hair that does what it wants, in a house decorated not to get a shot at appearing in the pages of Dwell or House Beautiful, but to accommodate your cookbooks and unusually large collections of vinegars, animal figurines, rocks, and pine cones, and to make life convenient not for you, really, but for your dog, who needs a bed in several rooms.

Cookie needs a bed in every room including on the sofa.

During my ongoing bout of infirmity, this jokey goal became a more serious one when a stranger on Substack suggested that I might have lost a subscriber because I was not “put together.”

Was she talking to me? I was mildly shocked. I am pretty sure I am known far and wide for my insouciant stylishness. People always ask me where I got my favorite kaftan while I’m at the grocery store.

But then I looked at my profile photo on Substack, which features me sporting a dirty updo (which I likely tied in place with the fat yellow rubber band that binds bunches of broccoli stalks), wearing one of the t-shirt dresses I cook in and treat like full-body aprons, topped by a fraying, lopsided sweater I threw on to go to the over-air -conditioned indoor farmer’s market I love.

Chunky Romesco: so easy to whip up in your mini food processor.

I realized she was right.

But I also realized that despite all of this—and the fact that you can see the chaos in my kitchen in the background—it’s the very photo I offer whenever anyone asks me for one to use for publication, because it features my dog, Cookie, kissing me. I like it.

And that even though I’m not “put together,” something about the way I live seems to work, because, when I’m not worrying myself sick about the world, I’m very happy—and have probably never been happier in my life. I’m way beyond wanting to build a perfect image, having witnessed the way true, serious perfectionism can destroy a person’s soul. So I continue to fly my messy-life flag with pride.

Obviously, I’m not going to get millions of followers with that kind of attitude. But if I did, I’d advise all of them to do this one thing whenever someone or something makes them feel that familiar modern-day pang of anxiety (i.e., I should look, talk, dress, act like that): Go to the mirror and say to the imperfect image staring back at you, Oh, you marvelous, miraculous thing. Say it more than once. Isn’t that a great feeling?

ChatGPT made me the world’s most popular un-fluencer.

I shall be the world’s first un-fluencer!—who speaks from experience when I assure my millions and millions of followers that a person can live a life with very few of the markers that indicate they’re doing everything “right,” and even lose practically everything they once held dear, but still feel deep in their soul that they might be the luckiest person on the planet, and proud of who they’ve become.

Before I get too carried away, I would like to add that I’m not some kind of monster. Of course I still want to know where you got those cute pants and how to frame my art and what the cool young chefs are making; I will scroll until I’m dizzy to attain this information before I finally tell myself to get off this crazy ride. The instinct to get and give advice has always driven our species; searching for the right accent lamp gives us joy.

After boiling Yukon Gold potatoes, you bash them up and roast them until crispy with some shallots

And I’d also like to add, finally, that I’m well aware how little any of what I’ve just written has to do with salad, aside from the fact that salad is probably the only thing on this tumbledown globe we call home that truly makes everyone’s life better.