I am So Totally Over my Salad Spinner

Dear Mouse,

I just needed to get that off my chest.

I have, like, three of them for some reason, all of them missing various pieces, and it's just like an edge-of-the-sink, splashy leafy circus every time I use them. No cupboard or vessel can hold them; they bounce out every time you open one, onto the floor, it's downright dangerous. And in the end, you have sort-of dry lettuce that is sort-of still dirty. Anyway, lettuce is not in season now, which brings me to my point.

I'm almost done with the book you lent me, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I love. Her year-long saga of farming, local eating and generally revising her family's relationsip with food has been hilarious and inspiring.

I've noticed that the approach of XmasUkahStice has brought with it the usual spate of Food Terrorist Literature: the magazine articles, soft news stories, and subway ads about holiday excess reminding us that in this time of togetherness and celebration our Diet Alert should be raised to Fat Orange.

As an antidote to this time of Calorie Phobia, I'd like to offer a quote from Kingsolver's "November/December" chapter. It says everything I'd like to say back.

"For most people everywhere, surely, food anchors holiday traditions. I probably spent some years denying the good in that, mostly subconsciously - devoutly refusing the Thanksgiving pie, accepting the stigma my culture has attached to celebrating food ( ...) We are supposed to pretend if we are strong-willed that food is not all that important. Eat now and pay later, we're warned. Stand on the scale, roll your eyes, and on New Year's Day resolve to become a moral person again.

But most of America's excess pounds were not gained on national holidays. (..) Good people eat. So do bad people, skinny people, fat people, tall and short ones. Heaven help us, we will never master photosynthesis. Planning complex, beautiful meals, and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. ... I have given and received some of life's most important hugs with oven-mitt pot holders on both hands. "

In gratitude for friends, family, creative endeavors both in and out of the kitchen, and a big pot-holder hug to all.

Love, The Boo

P.S. Online, I found a lettuce-hygiene product called the 'Spin n Stor'. From the instructions:

"Just put your freshly washed greens into the bag, hold the top closed, spin it around overhead in a big arc for maximum force (Argee suggests about a dozen times), and the water drains out through little slots at the end of the bag into a reservoir."

Spin it around overhead in a big arc for maximum force.

Oh, ok.
In a New York apartment?

Love (again), The Boo