Salad Days

When I was a child, salad meant summertime.  It's scorching June in Haverfordwest, hay making is in full swing, the tractors are slow as beetles on the road, but we're not eating cucumbers, lettuce or tomatoes.  E-coli strains in imported vegetables have made it dangerous.

The quay in the old two town in Lower Fishguard is lined with holiday cottages but there are a handful where local people live all year round. Two of the houses, semi - detached, have square gardens on the side and I was particularly taken with one of them this afternoon. It had rows of shallots ('shibwns' that I like dipping in sugar and eat between slices of thin bread and butter), lettuce and glaucus blue cabbages - a beautiful deep bluey purple colour. In between the rows of vegetables, clumps of pink aquilegia (grannies' bonnets) and forget- me-nots grew and there were cream tea-roses in the corner, climbing  up a wall.

If you can grow your own salad ingredients fine, but if you can't or don't?

I like half my plate to be filled with vegetables, whether we eat salad or not. (Did I mention that when Peter's thyroid troubles resulted in a swift loss of a stone in weight, I gave him snacks and joined him? He put on ten pounds and stabilised and I put on a stone?)

To make up for the loss of salad this week at teatime, we have had asparagus with poached eggs (since the Eggwina Curry egg scare Peter will not eat 'runny' eggs). We've also had hot boiled beetroot, squirted with lemon juice, ground pepper and a teaspoon of horseradish sauce beaten into a spoonful of mayonnaise, with dry-fried Halloumi cheese, Peter first checking that the milk was pasteurised.

    

A bowl of of peas (frozen can taste better than fresh) or broad beans with salty Sir Gar, Carmarthenshire, butter, with crispy fried coutons of bacon scattered on top, takes your mind off salad. Don't cook the broad beans for longer than ten minutes because they lose the flavour and turn brownish.

  

Peppers, including the sweet ones that look like long fingers, can be roasted with onions and mushrooms.  Scatter with thyme and rosemary, sea salt and brush with olive oil before putting them in the oven. Tear fresh basil leaves over the vegetables  when ready to eat. I have borage in the garden and, apart from floating the blue flowers in long drinks, they look good on roasted vegetables.    Salads need mayonnaise and it's good with cooked vegetables, too.

I'll talk about it next time.