Thoughts: on the ambiguities of Salad
This is a mess. It’s a mess of figuring out where the past ends and the present begins. It’s my mess. In the mess, two items appear - new items that bridge timeframes, from the daily to the monthly or the yearly.
(1) The shopping list, segmented by holiday: a to do list spanning months. In red, variations. Cultures clashing.
(2) The calendar compass, contrasting two calendar systems: marking seasons and holidays but forever misaligned, the lunar calendar has a mind of its own.
Food can contribute to a sense of identity - to a sense community - through ritual sharing (pot luck?) but also through shared definitions.
Take ‘salad’ for instance.
It is a culinary category. We can all agree on its existence.
We can all imagine a ‘salad.’ But do we imagine the same thing? maybe not.
Why? The misunderstanding may go as deep as the ingredients of a ‘salad.’ Abstractly, a ‘salad’ consists of some form of cut, cold, raw vegetables. (and not always)
However, even this definition is built on cultural understanding and perspective rooted in the term ‘vegetable.’ What is a vegetable? It is not a botanical term describing a part of a plant, as ‘fruit’ is (the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants). Botanically speaking, tomato is a fruit, lettuce is leaves, broccoli is a flower, onion is a bulb. So what is a vegetable? In fact, we may disagree on what produce constitutes a vegetable and which does not. Vegetables, like other cultural entities, accrue meaning through their context — in this case, primarily through cultural practices. For instance, in the United States we tend to agree that vegetables are usually savory and used as appetizers and side dishes, and rarely as desserts (saved for something sweeter) or entrees (saved for meat or fish). Through this unspoken agreement, vegetables begin to be defined by their use. An avocado is used in savory dishes like avocado toast or guacamole, and so, while botanically it may be a fruit, it performs its cultural identity as a vegetable through its use. However, travel to Brazil and you will find avocado in sweet smoothies and alongside cultural-fruits like apples, bananas, and grapes. In this context, avocado performs as a fruit as well. So which is it? a fruit or a vegetable?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. The avocado’s nutritional value remains the same. However, our definition and engagement with the avocado begins to define our sense of identity and thus our sense of community (as well as beginning to shape our culinary perspectives).
Back to ‘salad.’
‘Salad’ was one of my biggest cultural shocks in moving to the States: massive bowls of uncut cherry tomatoes, loosely ripped lettuce, hunks of cucumber, croutons, drizzled with a rich (and masking) sauce.
How does one eat this? physically, I mean. A humbling task.
For me, ‘salad’ means something else. It means finely diced cucumber and tomato. Add scallions and radishes (also finely diced) for good measure. Season with a touch of olive oil, salt, and lemon juice. A delicate dish, rich and fresh.
What I encountered was not a salad, but it was a ‘salad.’
We all eat.
Our associations with food contribute to our worldview and our sense of belonging, our sense of being understood. Seeing a dismayed look on a fellow eater’s face as they enter the cafeteria, standing in front of a caesar salad (why put chicken in a salad?) gives me a sense of connection. We take a little salad (3 leaves was all the spoon could hold) and move down the line, reflecting on our associations of cut, cold, raw vegetables.
Based on these salad musings, I came up with an experiment whose goal is to explore how different levels of specificity / ambiguity create different experiences of creation, co-creation, and authorship. Next week, I will introduce part 1: “Make a salad” where I share 5 salads-spaces.