By The anniversary is next week. April 16th. Four years. I am ready in the way that repetition makes you ready — not immune but practiced, the way a musician is practiced before a performance. The song is the same. The voice is different. Stronger. Steadier. The song is grief and the voice is mine and I have been singing it for four years and the performance has changed because the singer has changed. I am not the woman who cried on the bathroom floor in 2017. I am the woman who cooks in a gas-stove kitchen in Cascade Heights and teaches a hundred girls and raises four children and loves a man who washes dishes. I am still the woman on the bathroom floor. But I am also the woman at the stove. Both women are me. The stove won.
Preparations: the Folgers can will travel to Mama's kitchen. Jasmine will come. Isaiah will come. We will fry chicken. We will eat at Mama's table. Curtis will be there. Three people who carry the recipe and one person who received it. The ritual adapts. The ritual grows. The ritual now includes a boy named Mitchell who calls me Mom T, and the inclusion is not dilution — it is amplification. The line is louder. The line has more voices. The choir is bigger. Mama would approve. Mama would say "more garlic." Mama would say "that boy needs to watch his heat." Mama would be right about all of it.
Made a quiet dinner: salmon, rice, salad. Nothing heavy. Nothing Mama. Just a meal. A Tuesday meal in a kitchen that doesn't need to perform or commemorate or prove anything. Just food. Just family. Just the table doing what the table does: holding us. Without drama. Without ceremony. Just holding.
That Tuesday I didn’t want ceremony — I wanted the kind of meal that doesn’t ask anything of you. The salmon was easy, the rice was easy, and the salad had to be easy too. A simple Italian salad was exactly right: crisp and bright and clean, nothing competing with anything else, just doing its job beside the rest of the plate. Some nights that’s the whole point.
Simple Italian Salad
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 head romaine lettuce, chopped
- 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
- 1/3 cup black olives, sliced
- 1/4 cup pepperoncini peppers, sliced
- 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup croutons
- 3 tablespoons Italian dressing (store-bought or homemade)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Prep the greens. Wash and dry the romaine lettuce thoroughly, then chop into bite-sized pieces and add to a large salad bowl.
- Add the vegetables. Top the lettuce with cherry tomatoes, red onion, black olives, and pepperoncini peppers.
- Dress and season. Drizzle Italian dressing over the salad. Sprinkle with dried oregano, salt, and black pepper. Toss gently to coat everything evenly.
- Finish and serve. Top with shredded Parmesan and croutons. Serve immediately alongside your main dish.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 120 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 9g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 380mg