By Miguel arrived in San Diego on Wednesday. Mark called me at three AM Alaska time, sobbing — the third Santos baby he has produced and the third time he has called me sobbing. I do not laugh at him for this. The crying is the brother letting himself be the brother. The brother as the boy who used to cry when Angela broke his action figures. The brother is the same brother. The crying is the proof.
Miguel is the third. Marco and Sofia, almost five, are now the older siblings. Carmen is exhausted. Mark is more exhausted. Lourdes immediately started planning a visit. Joseph called from Kodiak. The Santos Network of grandchildren now stands at five — Marco, Sofia, Mia, Noah, Miguel. The math is steady. The math will keep coming.
I made arroz caldo Thursday for the family — for the celebration, for myself, for the kitchen that is always the response to news. The rice porridge with ginger and chicken and saffron. The body's first soft food after illness or birth or any large arrival. The dish you make when you do not know what to make.
Eight hours of light and climbing. The body waking up.
The shifts the next week continued. Two appendectomies, a shoulder dislocation, a pediatric fever. The body did its work.
I made a list Sunday morning of the small things I needed to do this week. The list was twenty-three items. I crossed off twelve by Wednesday. I crossed off four more by Friday. The remaining seven moved to next week's list. The moving is the practice.
A reader from Honolulu wrote me a long email about the post. The email was beautiful. I wrote her back.
The blog post for the week was a short reflection on the recipe of choice. Six hundred words. I drafted Tuesday. I revised Thursday. I posted Friday morning. The cadence has been the cadence for two decades. The cadence is the discipline. The discipline is the reason the work survives the years.
I read for an hour Sunday night. The reading was the small surrender. The surrender was the rest.
I called Angela on Saturday. We talked about the week. We laughed at the things we always laugh at. We did not say what was actually weighing — both of us were carrying things and both of us were saving them for in-person. The phone is good for the surface. The kitchen is for the depth.
The book I am reading this month is a memoir by a Vietnamese-American chef. The book is good. The book is also, in some ways, my own life adjacent. The adjacent is the thing that keeps me reading.
The grocery store had calamansi this week. I bought four pounds. I made calamansi vinaigrette and froze it in cubes. The cubes will get me through the next three months. The freezing is the small inheritance from Lourdes — every Filipina mother freezes things in cubes.
The week ended quietly. The body did its slow work of integration. The integration is the only work that matters in weeks like this.
I made coffee Monday morning and stood at the counter and watched the light come up over the inlet. The standing was the prayer.
I cooked through the rest of the week without much thought. The hands knew what to do. The hands always know. The hands had been learning for years and the learning had become muscle and the muscle had become reflex.
Lourdes called Tuesday. She was upset about something at the church. I listened. I made the right sounds at the right intervals. I did not try to fix it. The not-fixing was the love.
The arroz caldo was for the immediate tenderness — the three AM call, the new body in the world, the kitchen doing what kitchens do in the hours after large news. But the celebration that followed, the one for the whole table, the one for Marco and Sofia learning they were now the older ones, the one for Carmen and Mark and all five grandchildren in the Santos Network — that called for something layered, something you could make ahead and carry in, something that said I thought about you before I got here. The Nine-Layer Salad is exactly that dish: built the night before, patient, generous, the kind of food that feeds a table still learning its new shape.
Nine-Layer Salad
Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes (plus chilling) | Servings: 10–12
Ingredients
- 1 large head iceberg lettuce, chopped (about 8 cups)
- 1 cup celery, thinly sliced
- 1 cup frozen green peas, thawed
- 1/2 cup red onion, finely diced
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 6 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
- 4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
- 2 cups mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 tablespoons fresh chives or green onion tops, chopped (for garnish)
Instructions
- Build the base. Spread the chopped iceberg lettuce in an even layer across the bottom of a large, deep glass bowl or 9x13-inch dish. The glass is important — the layers should be visible from the side.
- Layer the vegetables. Scatter the sliced celery evenly over the lettuce, followed by the thawed green peas, then the diced red onion. Press each layer gently but do not mix.
- Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, sugar, garlic powder, salt, and black pepper until smooth and well combined.
- Spread the dressing. Dollop the dressing across the top of the onion layer, then use an offset spatula or the back of a spoon to spread it all the way to the edges of the bowl, sealing the layers beneath. This seal is what keeps the salad fresh overnight.
- Add the top layers. Sprinkle the shredded cheddar evenly over the dressing layer, then distribute the crumbled bacon, and arrange the hard-boiled egg slices across the top.
- Chill and rest. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight. The resting time allows the flavors to settle and the dressing to work down through the layers.
- Garnish and serve. Just before serving, scatter the chopped chives or green onion tops across the top. Serve directly from the dish, scooping down through all layers with a large spoon to get every tier in each serving.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 310 | Protein: 9g | Fat: 26g | Carbs: 8g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 420mg