Warm Wilted Lettuce Salad

Week 501, and the apples arriving, the squash at the farm stand, the light turning golden, the kitchen shifting to soups and stews. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Three years at Cedarhurst; 1095 visits; devotion in numbers. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made matzo ball soup this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

The matzo ball soup was the heart of the week, but a bowl like that needs something alongside it — something green and tender and alive on the plate, something that wilts a little under warmth the way I have learned to wilt just slightly, then hold. This warm wilted lettuce salad has been in my rotation for decades, the kind of recipe that asks almost nothing of you and gives back warmth and a little sweetness and something that looks, in a bowl, like care. I made it this week because the kitchen needed more than one dish, and because Marvin has always loved the way the warm dressing softens the leaves, and because I am still, after sixty-seven years of cooking, feeding the people I love however I can reach them.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

8 cups leaf lettuce, torn into pieces (green leaf or red leaf)
4 strips bacon, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3 scallions, thinly sliced
2 hard-boiled eggs, sliced (optional)

Instructions

Prepare the greens. Place the torn lettuce and sliced scallions in a large heatproof serving bowl. Set aside.
Cook the bacon. In a medium skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon pieces until crisp, about 6–8 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside on a paper towel, leaving the drippings in the pan.
Make the warm dressing. Carefully add the apple cider vinegar, sugar, water, salt, and pepper to the bacon drippings in the skillet. Stir to combine and bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, about 1–2 minutes, until the sugar dissolves.
Wilt the lettuce. Pour the hot dressing immediately over the lettuce and scallions in the bowl. Toss quickly with tongs until the greens are just wilted — tender but not fully collapsed, about 30 seconds of tossing.
Finish and serve. Top with the reserved crisp bacon and sliced hard-boiled eggs if using. Serve immediately while warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Warm Wilted Lettuce Salad — The Simple Side That Sits Beside the Soup