California Dream(ing) Salad

Really, this is just a salad. From one of my many Moosewood cookbooks, called 'California Dream Salad'. It was a good, healthy salad.

Boston lettuce, radicchio & spinach. Shredded carrots, celery, red pepper, tomatoes, avocado, chickpeas, alfalfa sprouts, croutons...there may have been more, I honestly can't recall.

But the name, and it's very salad-y-ness, made me 'homesick' for California. The Berkeley/Oakland area, specifically.

My very first trip there, Matt took me down Telegraph Avenue. It was so fun, and different, and warm. I wore a Batman t-shirt, apparently that went over well.

We did some shopping, street vendors selling jewelry & just about anything else you could imagine. Listened to music. We had lunch at a place called Cafe Intermezzo. Popular with students, it's all about salad there. Salads, as Matt likes to tell it, 'as big as your head'. I think we were foolish enough to order a sandwich, too...but trust me, two can share one of those salads.

So, it was a good salad, but it really served to remind me how much I miss California. With places like Intermezzo, or College Avenue with a restaurant for every country respresented. The record stores, the book stores. The marina, the view of the Oakland bridge from our balcony. The smear of paint colors that was the sunset each night. That field of bamboo growing next to our apartment. Access to places like Whole Foods or 99 Ranch Market or Ikea.

Come to think of it, this was more than just a simple salad. It was a page from a diary, a trip down memory lane. And as it's so cold & miserable here, those were very welcome memories. I may have to make this salad again.









Time to unpack your grass skirt, and gather your coconuts, because for our 42nd get-tether, it's Tiki, Two here at Blog Party!

Hope to see you there.