The First Thing Missing

Our realtors swung by this morning. In theory, our house will officially be on the market tomorrow. And there will be an open house on Sunday. Is that Father’s Day? Well, I guess it is. It will be a great excuse to get out of the house and be treated to something nice.

If you’ve got friends moving to the area who are looking for a modest home that’s tucked into the woods, but walking distance to SUNY Albany and the Nanotech campus, and within the Guilderland school district, we’ve got just the place.

To get the house ready, the family has been packing up a lot of stuff. We’re making regular donations to Goodwill, and throwing out everything that can’t be given away.

There was some question about what to do with the OXO salad spinner we’ve owned for years. It has been cracked but functional for as long as I can remember. Frankly, it didn’t seem to make sense to put an already damaged salad spinner into a moving truck and haul it to the midwest. Goodwill wouldn’t want something that appeared broken. So off in the trash it went.

Maybe that was premature.

I’m not missing the salad spinner per se. It was old, and that crack in the outside bowl made it challenging to operate. But this week was when the Roxbury CSA started up its annual shares, and I’ve been thinking about their wonderfully tender salad greens.

Mostly my thoughts have turned to lettuces because Mrs. Fussy has been on a salad kick lately, and has been buying prewashed greens in bags at Trader Joe’s. She’s very pleased with them, but to me, they just look so sad. They are dull, and heavy, and just a little bit limp. One might not notice the limpness, because it’s not as if they are wilted. However, if you’ve become accustomed to just harvested local salad greens, with the soil in which they were grown still clinging to its leaves, it’s very clear the bagged lettuces are lacking the same vitality.

It’s a funny thing for me to miss, since I was once just a vehement salad hater.

Bur Roxbury Farm’s greens turned me around. That, and the discovery of a simple salad dressing technique from Marcella Hazan that does not require the washed leaves to be meticulously dried. In fact, those last dewy bits of water help to spread the salt through the mixing bowl. With an avalanche of good olive oil, and a little bit of acid, these salads have become a rite of late spring. Except this season there will be none for me.

Getting rid of the salad spinner was easier knowing that we wouldn’t have the Roxbury veggies coming into the house for the next several weeks. But now even farmers market lettuces are out of the question.

I’m not washing lettuce in the sink and draining the leaves on kitchen towels.

Sure, it’s the technique Alice Waters uses, but it’s just not going to happen. I might miss salad, but I’m not that salad obsessed. Instead, I think I’ll just have to make sure to get a few great salads out and about. It will be the perfect excuse to make it out to Lost & Found. Chef Ian makes salad just the way I like them. Light, and fresh, with tender flavorful greens. Heck, maybe we can even get there for Father’s Day.