Procrastination Salad
Dinner. Nectarine and Tomato Salad with Zatar Meyer Lemon dressing, goat cheese and pistachios.
I should be working on the final project for the final class in my project management certificate cycle but instead I’m making dinner and pulling out the big boy camera to take pictures of it. Let’s just call it what it is.
Procrastination Salad
My part of the team project is done and anything I need to do from here is in response to what my team does. I really just want the whole thing done. This has been going on for a year and each class consumes my life in unexpected ways. So I’m enjoying some unexpected free time.
It’s a super simple salad really. Some pretty lettuce. A nectarine. A tomato. Some goat cheese. Some pistachios. Some labneh mixed with zatar and Meyer lemon. Some salt. Some tarragon. Pile it all on a platter and eat. Just because San Francisco is in the depths of Fogust, doesn’t mean we can’t eat like it’s hot outside.
Done.
I’ve had this salad in my head for a couple of weeks. We’re wrapping up the stone fruit season in California and I’ve been eyeballing them at the vegetable stand. I haven’t bought them much because of the aforementioned time suck of a class. I’ve laways kind of loved the idea of stonefruit and tomatoes together. I think I first saw it or read about it coming out of Chez Panisse. I wanted a slight Mediterranean kick to it and the labneh, zatar and pistachios fit the bill. I added the goat cheese and nuts because I wanted a counterpoint to the acidity of the fruit and the dressing.
I also had a couple of peaches that were threatening to go to waste so I tossed them together with the stale leftovers of a loaf from Arizimendi on Valencia, some eggs, some sugar, some vanilla, some salt. Popped in the oven for a while till it got happily brown and bubbly and there’s dessert too. Easy.
As I was plating it up, I took a few snaps with my ipad and I felt like there was a depth lacking in the images. The images just didn’t feel alive the way they do when I use the real camera. So I went and got it and ended up spending half an hour happily playing food photographer. I even broke out the tweezers to get a tomato slice where I wanted it. Before I knew it, I was feeling energized and full of ideas again. I hadn’t thought about how much I missed this process and how much I’ve grown to resent that I haven’t had time to do it.
The class ends on Thursday with final project presentations. I’ve promised myself a little reward if I get a B+ average or better in the program. (Spoiler alert: I do) But you’ll just have to wait and come back to see what that reward is.
For now, I’m kicking off my kitchen clogs and pulling the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and dropping a big glob of it on the bread pudding. Then, I’ll plop down on the couch and wait to see what this coming week holds.
See you soon.
