Fruited Mixed Greens Salad

Stephanie returns to Amazon after four months of maternity leave. Everything feels smaller — the meetings, the metrics, the politics. She has two children at home and a career that no longer feeds her. She starts quietly exploring other options during her lunch breaks.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

We always buy too much at the Sunday market — James knows it, I know it, and neither of us stops. Last week it was the shishito peppers and a bag of mixed greens from the booth near the corner, and by Monday I needed to use them before they wilted into guilt. This salad came out of that urgency, the kind of cooking that happens when the refrigerator is making an argument and you’re willing to listen. After a week of therapy sessions, sprint reviews, and two AM Lego encounters, the fifteen minutes it took to throw this together felt like the most honest thing I did all day.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

6 cups mixed salad greens
1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup mandarin orange segments (canned or fresh)
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup candied pecans or walnuts
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 small red onion, very thinly sliced
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons white balsamic or raspberry vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Make the dressing. In a small jar or bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside.
Prep the greens. Rinse and spin the mixed greens dry. Spread them across a wide serving bowl or platter.
Layer the fruit. Scatter the sliced strawberries, blueberries, mandarin segments, and dried cranberries evenly over the greens.
Add the toppings. Distribute the candied nuts, crumbled feta, and sliced red onion over the top.
Dress and serve. Drizzle the dressing over the salad just before serving and toss gently, or serve the dressing on the side. Eat immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fruited Mixed Greens Salad — What the Wallingford Farmers Market Keeps Teaching Me