By Classroom walk-through is Monday the 18th. I drove by the school on Saturday just to see it in the summer — the building is a brick two-story with a painted mural on the east wall, a garden in the front that someone has been tending, a buzzer and keypad at the front door. I parked across the street and sat in my car for five minutes looking at it. Inside that building there is a room that is going to be mine. There are kids whose files I have not read yet who are going to be mine. I drove home and made lunch and thought about it for the rest of the afternoon.
Called Dr. Perkins this week — she has a therapy practice in the city now and I have been seeing her once a month rather than biweekly. We talked about the classroom anxiety. She said "It is not anxiety, it is anticipation. They feel similar but they are different things." I said how do you tell the difference. She said "Anxiety says you can't do it. Anticipation says you haven't done it yet." I sat with that for a while. What I feel is anticipation. I am sure now.
Made panzanella this week — Italian bread salad, with stale bread cubed and toasted in the oven, ripe tomatoes from the Saturday market, cucumber, red onion, fresh basil from the pot on the windowsill, olive oil and red wine vinegar. The stale bread absorbs the tomato juice and the dressing and gets soft in a way that is entirely different from regular croutons. Total cost under three dollars for a generous bowl.
Panzanella is the recipe that uses what is past its prime and makes it better. Stale bread, July tomatoes, yesterday's basil. You take things that are almost over and combine them into something new and it is somehow more right than if everything had been fresh. I think about that sometimes — the way things past their best moment can combine into something you could not have predicted. I think that is also a version of what happened to me. Old grief, new purpose, something I could not have seen from inside the worst of it.
I made this the week before the classroom walk-through, when anticipation and something almost like grief were sitting side by side in me, and it felt like exactly the right thing to do with my hands and my afternoon. Panzanella asks you to trust that what seems past its moment — the heels of bread, the last of the week’s tomatoes — still has somewhere to go, and it always delivers on that. If you’re making it as a main dish, a generous bowl is all you need.
Main Dish Panzanella (Italian Bread Salad)
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 3 cups stale crusty bread (such as ciabatta or sourdough), cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided, plus more for drizzling
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
- 2 large ripe tomatoes (about 1 lb), roughly chopped
- 1/2 English cucumber, halved and sliced into half-moons
- 1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
- 1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Toast the bread. Preheat oven to 375°F. Toss bread cubes with 1 tablespoon olive oil and a pinch of salt on a rimmed baking sheet. Spread in a single layer and bake 12–15 minutes, until golden and crisp on the outside but not fully hard through. Remove and let cool slightly.
- Salt the tomatoes. Place chopped tomatoes in a large bowl and sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Toss and let sit 5–10 minutes to draw out the juices — this liquid becomes part of your dressing.
- Build the salad. To the tomatoes and their juices, add the cucumber, red onion, and torn basil. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, red wine vinegar, remaining salt, and black pepper. Toss to combine.
- Add the bread. Add the toasted bread cubes to the bowl. Toss well so the bread begins absorbing the tomato juices and dressing. Let the salad rest 5–10 minutes before serving — the bread should be soft in places but still have some texture.
- Taste and serve. Taste for seasoning and add a final drizzle of olive oil if desired. Serve at room temperature, directly from the bowl.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 320 | Protein: 8g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 480mg