By June is here and Kentucky has decided it's summer whether the calendar agrees or not. Ninety-one degrees on Tuesday. The crews on the Richmond Road site were drinking water like it was going out of style and I sent the youngest one home at two o'clock because he was pale and swaying and I've seen heatstroke and I will not have it on my watch. The boy argued. I told him he could argue or he could go home and drink Gatorade but he could not do both. He went home. Good. Somebody's got to have sense on a job site and it's usually not the twenty-year-old who thinks he's invincible. I was that twenty-year-old once. The mines cured me of it.
The garden is already producing. Connie's lettuce came in first, which it always does, and she made a salad Saturday night with leaf lettuce and green onions and a warm bacon dressing that her mother used to make. The dressing is bacon grease, a little vinegar, a pinch of sugar, poured hot over the greens so they wilt just slightly. It's called killed lettuce, which is a terrible name for a beautiful thing. Appalachian cooking has a naming problem — everything sounds like a threat. Killed lettuce. Leather britches. Shucky beans. Stack cake sounds harmless enough but the rest of the menu reads like a frontier warning.
Amber stopped by Sunday on her way home from a twelve-hour shift. She looked tired in the bones, the way nurses look tired, but she ate Connie's biscuits and drank coffee and told us about a kid on her floor who'd been there six weeks and finally went home. She lit up telling it. That's how I know she's in the right work — the hard days drain her but the good days fill her up past where the drain can reach. She gets that from Connie. I get drained and stay drained. Connie and Amber have a refill mechanism I was not issued at the factory.
Cookbook hit forty-eight pages. Two short. I'll make it by Friday if I can get the fried apple pie recipe right. Betty made fried pies with dried apples she'd put up in the fall — little half-moons of dough filled with sweetened apples, fried in lard until golden. The dough is the problem. Too thick and it's bread. Too thin and it tears. Betty's was perfect, which helps me not at all because perfect is not a measurement. I'm on batch number three. Connie says the kitchen smells like the Harlan County Fair. I said good. She said it wasn't entirely a compliment. I'm making batch four.
Connie’s killed lettuce was gone by Sunday morning — Amber finished the last of it with her coffee, which is exactly the right ending for a bowl of something that good. I’ve been turning the fried pie batches over in my mind all week, but it’s that salad I keep coming back to: the way warm dressing over cold greens can be both simple and exactly right. This Spring Greens with Beets and Goat Cheese won’t replace Betty’s killed lettuce any more than store-bought replaces homegrown, but it carries the same idea — fresh garden greens dressed with intention — and it’s earned a place on this table right alongside the biscuits.
Spring Greens with Beets and Goat Cheese
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 6 cups mixed spring greens (such as arugula, baby spinach, and tender leaf lettuce)
- 1 can (14 oz) sliced beets, drained, or 2 medium beets roasted and sliced
- 3 oz crumbled goat cheese
- 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
- 1/4 cup candied or toasted walnuts
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
- Prepare the greens. Wash and dry the spring greens thoroughly. Place them in a large salad bowl. Scatter the sliced red onion over the top.
- Add the beets. Arrange the beet slices over the greens. If using canned beets, pat them dry with a paper towel first so they don’t bleed too heavily into the dressing.
- Finish and dress. Scatter the crumbled goat cheese and walnuts over the salad. Drizzle the dressing evenly over everything just before serving. Toss gently at the table or serve undressed and let people dress their own portions.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 210 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 12g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 310mg