s a l a d . d a y s !

when we are green in judgment, cold in blood...

i recently organized a party in celebration of the spring of our lives, entertaining guests from england and canada and around the bay area, and, in honor of youthful idealism,  enjoying a number of commissioned works. let me introduce and thank my co-conspirators and briefly describe their contributions:

a meal from erin's kitchen including delicate and hearty handmade tortellini, nettle pesto, borage-miner's lettuce salad, croquetas de jamón and street foraged herbs; an embarrassing-revealing close-eyed arms-up question-answer game from najeeb; beautiful ocean-spring paintings by talented illustrator christian robinson (see the photo above and stay tuned for more!); homemade meyer lemon and strawberry ice creams from blake and margaret; and an inspired ukulele performance of 'salad days' by vegetablist and recent mcsweeney's contributor katrina dodson. everyone came together to make it a really wonderful night—not the last of its kind. let's have kat sing us out, and cheers! to  your, to our, salad days.

Salad Days

Lettuce take you away to a place that’s green,
Where the mint runs wild and ginger is queen.
Foxes play a tune on the fiddlehead fern;
Silly goats are lickin’ garlic just to make their lips burn

‘Scape with me up the ramps to the river.
We’ll pluck chanterelles ‘til our hearts start to quiver.
And spice things up with our arugula ways,
Then lose ourselves in these salad days.

Salad days dressed with lemon sunshine
Lying in the grass drinkin’ dandelion wine
We’ll bury our noses in parsley and sage
And lose ourselves in these salad days.

Turnip the beets, you oughta shake that fennel;
The flowers on the wall’ll get stung by nettles.
Oh the clover is swinging and the carrots say peas
Won’t you sing our fava song; it’ll radish the bees!

Endive with me to the bottom of the pond.
We’ll paddle like frogs to the artichoke frond,
Then cool things down in a nasturtium haze
And lose ourselves in these salad days.

Salad days dressed with lemon sunshine
Lying in the grass drinkin’ dandelion wine
We’ll crown our heads in parsley and sage
And lose ourselves in these salad days.