a salad i make a lot

the office,

                August 2, 2022

            a salad i make a lot

            i'm thankful to have learned that cleaning the air conditioners did not have a huge impact on their effectiveness, even though it was hot enough the last two nights that i would have really appreciated the improvement, because at least i can be thankful that it wasn't a terribly stupid self own to have not cleaned them before now (which it still kind of is in another way like re: allergies and stuff, but small blessings). i'm thankful that instead of sleeping in our bedroom (smaller space but weaker air conditioner) we slept on our couch and ottoman (which makes me think of one of my favorite bits from the office, which is when michael is giving a house tour at the beginning of a dinner party which is going to end with his relationship imploding and he reveals that he sleeps on a small bench at the end of the bed in the master bedroom).

i'm thankful that when a fuse trips in this house (because we have had the temerity to use two air conditioners and a fan and our TV at the same time and all the upstairs plugs are on the same fuse), in this house, our basement is much more pleasant than the basement we had in the place we lived two houses ago (when i started this newsletter), which was accessed through the mud room of our house and where there were literally dolls with their eyes x-ed out nailed into the rafters by the previous tenants. i'm thankful (knocking on wood) that when the fuse trips here, it never "goes out" and i can just flip it back on and everything comes back on. i'm thankful that the high temperature is lower tonight and it's much more pleasant already.

i'm thankful for cold cut sandwiches and i'm thankful for a salad i make a lot, which is Scarlett's Tuna Salad Recipe, which i decided to make this week because it involved no heat and would be so cool and refreshing and then i went to make it and the first step was starting a pot of boiling water for quick pickling a sliced onion and i was like goddamn it it was so hot that deborah had aimed a fan at me at the edge of the kitchen and at one point before i told her i was okay, sprayed water into the fan to create a mist, which i'm thankful for. i'm thankful to offer my honed over time adjustments to the recipe, which are geared around making a light meal for two people (n) number of times, with (n) being determined by the number of avocados and

INGREDIENTS

PICKLED ONIONS
1/3 to 1 red onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced 
½ cup rice-wine vinegar (or any vinegar you have handy, i did a mix of like champagne vinegar and black vinegar this time because that was what we had)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Note - Can make in advance if you're a smart and on top of your shit person but I usually end up just making it an hour before dinner. IMO that unless your onion is really small, you will get three meals for two people out of one red onion (or you could use it in tacos or whatever). 

SALAD PART A - CUCUMBERS
1 Persian cucumber per two people per night (unless you've got really small cucumbers), peeled if skin is thick and waxy, sliced to your preferred thickness (i like papery thin)
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
1 lime, zested and juiced
Note - Generously salt the cucumber, i also added zesting the lime bc i feel like almost always if i'm going to use the juice of a lime in a recipe i would also like to use the zest

SALAD PART B - PROTEINS
1 can olive-oil-packed tuna per two people per night
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (honestly i usually just use the oil from the can of tuna)
1 avocado per two people per night, peeled and cubed (can work with different softness but i prefer ripe but firm enough to keep the cube shape and also i like to put it in the fridge a few hours before so that it has a chill)

Note - I tend to do 1/3 of the pickling liquid and the onions for two people per night.

SALAD PART C - TOPPINGS
Generous handfuls of several kinds of herbs, roughly torn (the recipe lists basil, cilantro, and mint; they didn't have basil this time at the grocery store so deborah, in addition to cilantro and mint, got dill which has been really good and also makes it look fancier and i recommend as one of the herbs you chose)
½ teaspoon or more finishing salt
 Freshly ground black pepper
(If you bought one of those big plastic jars of fried onions/shallots at your local asian market this could be a good use of them is a thought i had tonight AFTER dinner 😢 furikake could also be good)

Note - I tend to think of myself as an over-salter but i underdid it the past two nights; it should be fresh and green feeling

Note - serve with bread and butter, crackers, a plain kettle chip (if so don't go too hard on the salt as noted above); we had it with wasabi peas the last two nights and some cherries as a sweet escape. this is a coasting downhill recipe: because you've made the pickle the first night, which is the most time consuming thing, subsequent nights always feel easy in comparison

i'm thankful that today was a good first day back to work after vacation, since the sunday scaries are always heaviest after a long time off (i'm thankful for the xanax i took yesterday, even though it (and exercise earlier in the day and weed and sugar and heat exhaustion) meant i fell asleep fifteen minutes into the rewatch that i initiated of portrait of a lady on fire). i'm thankful for liking the thing i do in my job now more than i did before, which even if work is stressful or tiring is such a meaningful thing.

i'm thankful that the couple i wanted to win on love island uk won. i’m thankful for the way people talk on love island and for the oft-used expression “it’s not that deep,” which people tend to say to express that something someone is upset about is not that big of a deal (even though that upset person thinks it is a very big deal). i’m thankful for the contestant earlier in the season who said, as though they were the smartest person in the world, “it’s only as deep as you make it” and i'm thankful i felt that.

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