FOOD FOR THOUGHT
For goodness sake, it's time to toss your salad hangups

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

I've been saying that for years. But recent experiences have taught me otherwise.

A conversation recently with chef Kathleen Daelemans (Taste ran a story about her nutrition and cooking tips Feb. 18) resulted in my personal salad epiphany, and a valuable lesson for anyone trying to move toward a more healthful diet.

Daelemans says you have to understand — in personal, quirky detail — what is keeping you from improving your eating habits. What you find might seem silly, surprising, even embarrassing.

I burst out laughing when I realized that one reason I don't eat more fruit is I don't like it unless it's been trimmed and cut up — preferably by someone else.

Slice me an apple and I'll munch it happily. Place a whole one in my lunch sack and it'll be there when I get home. Just knowing that about myself, and accepting it with a laugh, means I have a new tool for adding more fruit to my diet — a paring knife and a zip-closure bag.

What if all these years of therapy about weight issues come down to a lack of knife skills? Or not understanding my inner chef?

For a number of reasons, I had become determined in recent months to eat, and serve, more salads. And I had been unconsciously following the path that Daelemans recommends: figuring out why this is so hard for me, and solving the problems.

It began when I noticed one day that I was eating a well-made salad at Chai's Island Bistro — and not just eating it, but relishing it, noticing the interplay of flavors, commenting on it to my dining companion.

So what's not to like? I began to think about that systematically. I just don't care much for plain lettuce — and I abhor iceberg lettuce. I don't like raw mushrooms. If there are raw carrots, I like them to be cut into strips, not coins. Cucumbers give me indigestion unless they've been peeled and seeded. And so on.

For years, I also declared that I just couldn't make a good salad or salad dressing — my dressings were gloppy, my salads uninteresting.

This, of course, is ridiculous. A woman who can prepare an entire Middle Eastern menu complete with home-baked pita bread, who makes her own gefilte fish at Passover, who isn't afraid of any cuisine alive, can't make a salad?

I realized there was some unfinished business here, some insecurity and a few practical problems.

The unfinished business had to do with Dad forcing me to sit at table for an hour until I had choked down a wilted iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island monstrosity. I recalled something a therapist once said to me: that I can do what I want — even if it's what my parents want, too.

The insecurity was because I realized that salads offer no place for poor technique to hide; you need the freshest, highest-quality ingredients and some skill to make them work.

Finally, I resented salads because I could never seem to use up salad ingredients before they spoiled.

So I solved the problems. I studied recipes, picked apart restaurant salads and asked friends for their techniques. I bought some really good oil and vinegar. I shopped in Chinatown, the farmers' markets and R. Field for interesting ingredients. I learned to core and wash greens and store them in a Salad Sac, which preserves them. And after I realized that foods taste different when they're cut differently, I took a knife-skills class at Kapi'olani Community College.

Here's the kicker: The problem-solving process was fun. I recommend it if you're contemplating diet change.