My Salad Days

Those days are over—for a long time now. As Shakespeare meant the phrase to be, those were when I was ”green in judgment.” 

This is not ro brag, but as an elderly, I think I am wiser than I’ve ever been (except in anything that has to do with technology, especially digital scams). In that deep and wide area where the world is today, I am green in judgment. Go ahead, laugh. 

I digress. This post looks back to my youth with nostalgia. It’s about the days when I often ate a yummy salad, a luxury that I left behind. 

But because friends send me photos of PINK things (since I started  uploading a series of short posts every Wednesday on unusual PINK creation to my socmed page), I remembered my literal salad days. Meaning, when, as a little girl, I enjoyed this yummy salad on the dining table in the province: Katuday enselada.

My friend Gemma sent me a photo of PINK katuday (Ilocano term for katuray in Filipino and spelled katurai in other countries), an edible flower of a tree that populated our town, but which I cannot find in the city where I live today. 

My mouth watered, imagining a bowl of katuday salad (the three vignettes in the photo below):

 

Depending on one’s palate, this katuday salad can be served/prepared in many ways. I liked mine blanched, then mixed with boggoong (fish sauce), chopped tomatoes and onions, with a drop of vinegar. 

Life then was simple and dishes were easy to prepare. One can wing it along the way, without having to read a cookbook. 

Yup, my salad days are now just memories . . . of grace. How much yummier can that be?