Salad days

I’m utterly bemused to say we’re having a Crab Salad for dinner today. Why I am so bemused is that, until recently, the Fox was always reluctant to have a salad. I could hear the moan coming before I even announced  that that was what we would be having. Then, in 2015 we went on holiday to Austria. Every meal started with a salad buffet. The ingredients were always very fresh. They varied in range & there was always a selection of dressings. After over a week of such meals he actually came back home looking forward to the idea of a salad. Now he even asks for one even given a more cooked option. Today I was contemplating making some Potato & Crab Balls to fry up in the evening. But no, he preferred the idea of a simple crab salad even though we had two salads earlier in the week – one a Chicken & Avocado Salad & one a Mediterranean Bean Salad with tinned tuna.

It’s strange you would have thought this transformation would have happened a few years before, when we stayed in Molveno. Again dinners always started with a salad buffet. However, everyone started dinner at the same time. By the time the Fox had got me sorted, & got in the queue, there were only the last sad remnants to pick through. The locusts had already picked the choicest items.

For a while the Fox has enjoyed the occasional salad, a favourite being a Bean & Tuna one. On a self-catering holiday, particularly in the south of France, we often had a salad sat outside in the sun. Mainly because of the ease of making & the quality & freshness of ingredients in France. A salad always had more appeal when it was going to be eaten outside in the warm sunshine. But by the time he was home, a salad only happened on a very hot day & those don’t come often in an English summer.

So today it’s a crab salad. I will use the more classic ingredients of an English salad – tomatoes, boiled eggs, beetroot, some leaves, cucumber - with a vinaigrette dressing of some sort. I’m thinking of using some balsamic vinegar with the olive oil. The sweetness of balsamic I think should go well with the sweetness of the crab. We’ll see.