I remember the salad dressing my mother used to make for the family. It was very simple. Lebanon’s fresh cold-pressed virgin olive oil, a splash of half a fresh lemon, a pinch of fresh mint, salt and pepper and there it was. And our salads at the time, it seems like a lifetime ago, consisted of crisp fresh green salad, delicious fresh tomatoes, crisp little cucumbers, and chives. Salad preparation was quick, simple, tasty, fresh, and super healthy. Fresh salad was part of our daily diet. The small cucumbers were so delicious that we ate them like a fruit. My favorite when I was a kid was a feta cheese sandwich with cucumber pita bread.

Years later in the western world, I discovered all the ready-made salad dips, in England it was the Heinz salad which had a creamy texture of thick mayonnaise and I developed a taste for it for a while. In Switzerland I developed a taste for the thick and creamy salad sauce that they love to serve here, still today. Italians love vinegar instead of lemon, especially balsamic. Today when I go grocery shopping, I find it amazing to see the variety of ready-made salad sauces available and I wonder how healthy that is, considering that to stay fresh for so long in the bottle on the shelf, you have to add a lot of additives .

I have an Australian friend who makes his salad dressing in bulk and keeps it in his fridge for the week. The ingredients are olive oil, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise, dried herbs, salt, pepper, and cream. It tastes good I have to admit and I tried it for a few weeks but gave it up because I couldn’t bear to eat the same salad sauce all week! Another Hungarian friend makes an interesting fresh sauce, she adds sunflower seeds, zucchini, walnuts, to olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, which is very much to my taste. A French bride would put her salad leaves in a cloth bag and shake it so that all the water would run off the salad leaves – they ended up dry, limp, and not so crunchy! My daughter, who is married to a French Swiss, has a small plastic container where she puts the salad and pulls a string to strain the water from the salad. Salad leaves don’t suffer as much, so it’s okay if you worry about a few drops of water in your salad. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered.

My niece, in her late teens at the time, came to spend a few days with us. When he saw me making the salad sauce, he was horrified, he refused to eat it saying that his mother made only one type of salad sauce, always the same and that he could not eat anything else. He grew up to change his mind about it. Some people try experimenting with different types of salad dressings. I belong to this category. I love the variety in life. So sometimes it’s with mustard, sometimes maybe with mayonnaise, sometimes with cream, sometimes with apple cider vinegar, which they tell me is very healthy, sometimes with balsamic which tastes delicious, but most of the time with fresh lemons. I like to add a variety of nuts, sometimes even raisins or blueberries. If the sauce is too thick and I don’t want to add oil or vinegar or lemon, I add a little apple cider or even a teaspoon of water. I always feel guilty when I do that, a flash goes through my head from my French friends who go to so much trouble to strain the water from the salad leaves.

My salads have gotten more creative and tasty since I eat a lot of fresh veggies so actually my salad plate now also consists of raw veggies like avocado, broccoli, zucchini, celery, fennel, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, beans and any other. green veggies that I can get fresh and crisp with lots of nuts. Sometimes I add fruits like grapes, pineapple, or apples. The mix always depends on what you have in the fridge and what is available in season. Every now and then when I have a freshly cooked hot meal, mostly baked or grilled vegetables or fish, I go back to the original salad that I like the most, the way my mother made it, quickly and easily.

Variety is the spice of life and the Creator loves variety. Is your life full of variety? It would be interesting for you to be aware of what you are eating, what kind of salad sauce, and what is actually in the ingredients. Is it healthy and is it good for you? Too often we get into the habit of doing things automatically and spend half our lives unconscious. Ask yourself how aware you are of what you are eating. It would be a good start to become aware of your eating habits.

Among many other activities, Margo also likes to cook. He loves to experiment and he loves variety, always simple, uncomplicated, fresh and fast is his motto. he likes to put together simple and quick menus like Jamie Oliver, the young and famous English chef who tried to change eating habits in American schools. As far as I can remember, he failed because pizzas, French fries, and pasta reappeared on the school menu by popular demand, shortly after his departure. The very things I wanted to banish, unhealthy foods!

Obviously I feel nostalgic. I feel guilty because I remember in a cleaning frenzy some years ago throwing away my cookbook, handwritten in Arabic, spanning 20 years, with recipes from my mother’s kitchen. I used to call her on the phone, she lived in London and I lived in Zurich, and she would give me the recipe over the phone and instructions on how to do what. My young husband used to be horrified by phone bills! There was no internet back then, no phones, no sms, nothing, nothing! How do we manage? I can’t imagine how we survive without YouTube, Google, Amazon, or Skype! Then I think about the food, the way my mother cooked a dish, and I remember throwing that treasure book of mine, and I feel guilty every time, like I have betrayed my mother, and angry at myself for being so radical. about getting rid of old things. I don’t think he was that aware of what he was doing at the time. A big mistake that I cannot rectify.