Sprouted Lentil Salad
When I came home from teaching today, I put together a salad of sprouted lentils, celery, spring onions, and walnuts, dressed with walnut oil and aged, organic balsamic vinegar. What made the salad special was freshness of the lentil sprouts, the subtlety of newly ground pink himalayan salt and the little luxury, the balsamic vinegar. In the summer, it would be great with a new cucumber from the garden on a bed of fresh mixed greens.

As I walk around the neighborhood seeing all the pumpkins on stoops, like Proust with his madeleines, I remember the scent of roasting pumpkin seeds and the salty taste on my tongue, and I return to the place of my childhood. My mother wasn’t much for holidays, but she very much enjoyed arts and crafts projects. The jack-o-lantern, was something then that showed up when we were little kids. I don’t think there was ever a jack-o-lantern carved when we did not eat the seeds. Part of the project was cleaning the seeds, oiling a cookie sheet, spreading the seeds out on the sheet, salting them, and roasting them until golden, and then enjoying the seeds as a special salty treat. I think it unlikely she has decorated a pumpkin at home since I was in early elementary school, but if she were to do it now, in addition to roasting the pumpkin seeds, I am sure she would decorate the outside instead of cutting it into a jack-o-lantern, so that the pumpkin could also be used for soup or pie.






