The Salad That Wasn’t

I’ve eaten nothing but canned fare for three months running, and so while doing the grocery today, I tossed in a few newcomers to my cart: radish, cucumber, and lettuce.

I thought I’d make salad for dinner. I also thought it would be simple. Everything will be tossed in raw; I don’t have to do any cooking at all! I thought a salad wouldn’t challenge my intelligence quotient in any. Obviously, I do not know myself well enough.

Here’s how dinner looked in my head:

A bowl of cucumber and radish salad: what could be more perfect for this impossible heat? It’s just the right kind of light, crisp, cool, and flavorful. I’d eat it with scrambled eggs, and wash it down with ice cold water and a few slices of apple on the side.

Here’s what actually happened: by seven this evening, I was hunkered before the computer, googling how to peel cucumber and radish, and chop lettuce. It’s a good thing I thought to check out on google image how onions look; I realized just in the nick of time it was garlic I’d placed by the chopping block.

The photo above? That isn’t how my salad turned out but… by the time I finished alternating wildly between googling and julienning, I was hungry and beat, and would have eaten paper without complaints.

What’s your fail-safe, go-to salad for summer? Is it an iceberg salad or a classic slaw? Macaroni or potato? Nothing complicated, please! The cucumber and radish salad made me feel like I was building a nuclear reactor, as it is.