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Have you ever put on your favorite dress or shirt just to dance around the house alone? Ever dressed up just to go to the grocery store? If you haven’t, you should try! And if you have, I bet you can relate to the joy and pleasure that come from feeling marvelous, even in mundane surroundings. 

There’s this prevalent idea in our culture that everything should be about productivity, and that things like beauty or pleasure are unnecessary frivolities. Oh, what a limited lens to view the multiplicities of life! It is my strong belief that beauty and pleasure are worthwhile pursuits on their own; they are what give life color, and richness, and, for many, a sense of purpose. What if, from today forward, you made a conscious decision to allow more space for prioritizing pleasure in your life (as long  as it isn’t at the expense of anyone else, of course)? What if you gave yourself permission to use your favorite china for a casual dinner at home, wore your favorite dressy outfit for a stroll in the park or a trip to the hardware store, took a moment to make your food look as beautiful as it tastes? A spectacular thing happens when you start to make those kinds of decisions: you start to feel more and more comfortable in your skin and in your life, and you start to enjoy pleasure in the most unexpected ways. Life just gets richer. 

Let’s take a salad, for example. Sure, you could pull some bagged lettuce out and put it on a plate and drizzle it with storebought dressing and scarf it down. Or, you could get outside and breathe in the honeyed sweetness of black locust blossoms and craft something that is both beautiful and delicious, plus a pleasure to create. 

This particular salad is edible artwork, and that’s important. First comes the visual impact: a textural surface covered in beautiful white blossoms, then a square of toast that looks like a sea glass mosaic, its patterns complimenting the repeating designs of the salad itself. Compositionally, it looks a bit like an abstract painting and less like something you’d find at a salad bar. Then come the flavors: sweet, light, incredibly fresh, the perfume of black locust blossoms wafting their honey-sweet scent, which is balanced by a tart, citrusy vinaigrette flavored with spruce tips. Generous slices of aged pecorino add a backbone of umami savoriness. Crisp toast spread with cream cheese or goat cheese and topped with watercolor wafer paper (painted with natural sources of color) is perfect for soaking up extra dressing and adds a nice counterbalance of tartness as well. This salad is a delight to look at AND a delight to eat. Pure pleasure. 

Even though the impact of this salad is intense and immediate, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to lots of extra time spent in the kitchen. In fact, it takes just a few moments to paint a sheet of wafer paper, and you can forage the black locust blossoms, wild onions, and spruce tips while it dries. The salad is as simple as tossing the spruce tips in a blender with a few other ingredients to make a vinaigrette, then tossing that with fresh early summer peas and a few other complimentary ingredients. It takes moments to top each bowl generously with those beautiful and delicious blossoms, and hardly any time at all to prepare the toast. Perhaps this presentation would seem unnecessary or over-the-top, but surely you can agree that it would at least surprise and (hopefully) delight whoever you are serving it to? And isn’t that reaction worth a couple extra moments of preparation? 

Taking the time to make an impact with food is a sign of love, whether you are putting together a plate for someone else or just making a quick lunch for yourself. Food that looks like it took some thoughtfulness carries that impact of care and nurturing. When I was a child, my mom would often go out of her way to make our plates beautiful, with fruit garnishes or unexpected components. It always made me feel so loved and cared for to be handed a plate full of some simple food, beautifully presented. I carry that tradition on today, and take those few extra moments for presentation when serving someone I care about. It doesn’t matter if I’m defrosting a frozen waffle or cooking something fancy from scratch; those little embellishments are absolutely an expression of love. It’s the difference between an “oh, thanks!” and “aw, you made this for me?!” What a gift it is to be able to see someone’s face light up because of a tiny bit of extra effort! If you have two minutes to spare and those two minutes are the difference between doing anything else or making someone’s day, why wouldn’t you pick the latter??

Indulging in presentation and beauty for beauty’s sake isn’t just important when it comes to preparing food for others; in fact, taking those moments when creating something for yourself can be a palpable act of self-care. Taking the time to create a beautiful plate for yourself is a message that you matter, that this food is more than fuel to be scarfed over the sink or on your way out the door, that experiencing the pleasure of eating is something that you deserve. Your food will taste better. Your day will go better. You might be surprised at how a seemingly-frivolous act can actually leave a huge impact. 

Sometimes creating a show-stopping presentation is a time-consuming endeavour, a chance for creative expression that is a joyful process all on its own; other times, all it takes is a couple of minutes. This recipe is a wonderful way to practice the idea that beautiful food is heart-filling food. It’s easy, I promise. This whole salad from start to finish took me about an hour (and the majority of that was a lovely walk spent gathering honey-perfumed black locust blossoms!) So wear that fun shirt. Use the fancy dishes. Eat the pretty salad. The pursuit of pleasure is a valid and beautiful one indeed. 

Sea Glass Toast: 

Ingredients: 

A couple of sheets of edible wafer paper

Clean paintbrush

Vodka

¼ tsp. Butterfly pea powder

Pinch saffron

(alternatively: use natural food coloring)

Bread of choice (I like whole grain with seeds)

4 oz cream cheese or chevre, at room temperature. 

Directions: 

1. Place the butterfly pea powder into a little bowl and add 1 tsp. Vodka. Put the saffron in another little bowl and add 1 tsp. Vodka. Let sit for 20 minutes or so. 

2. Spread the wafer paper out on a non-stick baking sheet. Gently moisten your paintbrush in the blue vodka, wiping any excess liquid on the lip of the container. Paint the wafer paper with loose brushstrokes, layering on both the butterfly pea blue and the saffron yellow. *Be careful not to get the paper too damp, or it will melt and curl. Your brush should be just barely dampened with the color when you apply it. Leave to dry (should take about half an hour in a dry climate.) 

3. Meanwhile, forage your ingredients and make your salad. Then, tear up the wafer paper into small irregularly-shaped pieces. Toast your bread, cut off the crusts, and spread it with the cream cheese or chevre. Arrange the wafer paper pieces on top to look like a mosaic. Serve immediately with the salad. 

Black Locust Salad: 

Ingredients: 

2 c. sugar snap peas

¼ c. fresh mint leaves

1 ½ c. pea sprouts 

1 wild onion (or green onion) 

Pecorino romano, to taste

Black pepper, to taste

4 c. fresh black locust blossoms

Directions: 

1. Slice the peas diagonally into bite-sized pieces. Tear up the mint leaves into small pieces. Chop the pea sprouts a couple of times, then slice up the wild onion into small slivers. Toss together with the fir tip salad dressing.

2. Top each salad with generous shavings of pecorino romano and freshly-cracked black pepper. 

3. Cover the tops of the salad completely with fresh black locust blossoms. Add a slice of sea glass toast to the side of the bowl and serve immediately. 

Spruce Tip Vinaigrette: 

Ingredients:

1 heaping Tbs spruce tips

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

¼ c. apple cider vinegar 

⅓ c. olive oil

½ tsp. Salt

1 tsp. Dried tarragon

Directions: 

1. Add all of the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. 

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