Bread and Wine: Green Well Salad

After a "Tea and Pajamas," a chapter emphasizing the need for rest and rhythm to feed our souls and not just our bellies, Shauna Niequist turns to writing about running, an orienting, rhythmic practice if there ever was one. The recipe is a favorite salad of Niequist's, one she craved during her marathon training. 

Now if you're like me and asking, "Where's the pasta?" hang in there. There's a reason for salad.

Green Well Salad Recipe
Mixed greens, onions, butter, pears, red grapes, dried cherries, walnuts, goat cheese

Dressing: Maple Vinaigrette

Added: chicken breasts baked in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and thyme (my own)

It means something if my husband eats a salad and he ate this one. It's hard not to love, what with the hearty nuts and cheese involved. The vinaigrette, which is basic vinaigrette with maple syrup added,  gives a lot of thick, savory flavor so you kind of forget you're eating a garden.

I did have a bit of a time caramelizing the onions. Niequist invites readers to cook them for 45 minutes in a tablespoon of butter until the onions are a rich brown color. I ended up with blackened onion fries, kind of like a damaged version of the things you're supposed to put on green bean casserole at Christmas, so I opted for onions gently cooked in olive oil for around 30 minutes. The onions turned lovely, tender and sweet. I was glad I had not left them out since they do make the salad more meaty. 

On Instagram, you'll see me holding my son as together we watch in awe as the onions caramelize. 

Full disclosure: For this salad I did substitute pecans for walnuts and feta for the goat cheese. I just couldn't do it. I love walnuts, but they squeak and get all gritty in my teeth in a salad (that's probably a little more honesty than what y'all wanted to hear, sorry), and I solemnly swear I have tried goat cheese nearly 20 different times in my life and each time I do NOT like it. Its odor kind of fumigates my mouth and makes it a little hard to breath. I can't taste anything because suddenly I don't want to taste anything! 

But feta...now feta and I are friends.

I also substituted cranberries for cherries because...no real reason except I was running out of dried cherries.

Lemme just say: don't sub the cranberries. This is a very soothing, hearty salad. You actually don't want a lot of zing and pop because it clashes with the mellow and savory flavors. The cranberries zanged and popped and acted weird around the maple vinaigrette, so I'm not probably not going to invite them to the same party again. I mean, it's not a big deal, but if I'm gonna find something to be picky about, I found it.

It was a delicious and filling salad, no hunger here after that supper. I served them with the Goat Cheese Biscuits from the next chapter (and for the next blog) and it was a hit with the family.

Mission accomplished.

"Run"
I haven't gone on a run in about three weeks now, so I felt a little guilty and itchy during this chapter, but it got me thinking more about my own rhythms and orientations in my daily life. 

Niequist writes about learning to run for a marathon when 1) she realizes they make her cry and 2) because she realized she kept putting off, and finally decided to say yes to, training for the Boston Marathon.

I love this part where she writes, "I have […] long held the belief that one's tears are a guide, that when something makes you cry, it means something. If we pay attention to our tears, they'll show us something about ourselves."

Tears, like hunger, indicate something about what we love, maybe, and what we need. 

(I took a little inventory about what makes me cry--like, good cry, like happy or cleansing tears. So far I came up with books and my kids. Books--any books, even terrible books-- because they're like this portal for me into another world, which is like a shadow of entering Heaven, and I get so excited and curious and interested and intrigued, that getting a new book has been known to make me cry. My kids, because I love them and worry about them, and I'm awed and frustrated and inspired by them. Hence maybe the reason why the last two months I've been happier than I have in a couple years---all the reading of books, all the writing about my family. Still musing on this, but after reading this chapter I'm working harder to pay attention to my hunger AND my tears).

Niequist took on the challenge of running, the inspiring thing in others that made her cry, and she entered the training, the mindset, the relationships that went along with it. 

There's a lot in this chapter about what she learns about herself during this season, but the portion that I highlighted most was this, when Niequist writes about finding a new relationship to her body:

"Each week I was surprised at what my body could do, this body I'd long suspected, squared-off against, blamed. In the same way that giving birth had connected me to my body in a new and meaningful way, the training gave me a new respect for my body, for what it could do, for how strong and powerful it was."

And she fuels herself accordingly--more water, more salad.

There's a reason for salad.

It's funny what your body does when it has a focus, a goal to work towards. It's also interesting what that does to your brain. It kind of makes you rearrange your priorities and what you worry about. It can even make things like weight and weightloss and size drift to the side because you're working on something bigger than that.

I danced for nearly 10 years through middle and high school and some college. I did the dancer yo-yo diet thing where I alternately starved myself little to the brink of annorexia, repented, then gained. I had something like a 35 lb swing between 17 and 21 before I finally settled into a calmer relationship with food and a friendlier view of my body. 

What happened was I finally decided I preferred energy to anxiety, and doing stuff to exhaustion from not eating enough.

It was when my focus swung to the doing that I stopped worrying about the looking. I don't mean my value came from doing busy work; rather I started asking what I wanted to do and be and feel versus how I thought I wanted to look. 

That thinking, centered on living, changed my relationship to food. 

If you've read any of my other blogs or followed me on Instagram, you'll have read how a lot of this transformation happened during a season of work in Chattanooga in college, where I found good food that fueled me instead of making me feel terrible. I also found I love being outside exploring and working, rather than being cooped up inside, only writing or only dancing, alone with my thoughts of weight and weight loss. 

C.S. Lewis has a great line in one of his academic works, The Personal Heresy, where he says that the value of a work of literature to someone can be measured by whether it's a part of all that a reader "want to become, do or be." In other words, does a work of literature help you become more you? If so, than despite what the critics might say about it, it has some value because it has helped you on your own journey.

I think of this in terms of food as well, or anything in which our souls and bodies find nourishment. 
Does it help us towards what we want to become, do or be?

I know I make wiser food choices when I'm focused on what else I want to do and be--do I want to feel good so I can play with my kids today? Do I want to have energy so that I can go for a run later? Then I eat more protein and fruit and less starchy crap like chips and cheese crackers. Do I want to be clearheaded and less anxious so I can write more truthfully, more clearly? Then I drink more herbal teas and a lot less coffee. 

What's weird is that, like Niequist experiences, I actually crave the healthier stuff over the junk when I'm focused, as if my mind and body are making a united effort towards my goal. That's not to say that other, less healthful cravings don't happen, and in terms of food and hunger, I think it's worth noting when those cravings happen and what they might signal--exhaustion or depletion. 

But it's also worth noticing what happens when we are centered on a greater goal--a marathon, raising kids, even writing--that we can start making decisions that better fuel us on our journey, that help us towards what else we want to become or do or be.

And that's a great reason for some salad.