My Salad Day
People who live alone, especially those who have such a state thrust on them because of the death of a spouse or life partner, often have trouble with meals. It seems silly to fix a meal for just one person — it’s so much easier to get take-out, heat frozen meals, or simply snack.
In my case, I usually choose to snack, eating finger foods such as cheese, ham without nitrates or nitrites, fruit, vegetables with dips, in addition to all the tasty non-nutritional foods that are so readily available. It took me a full year before I could fix some of our recipes. (“Our” recipes because we created the recipes.) We used to cook together, usually some sort of entrée and salads. Since our salads were large, elaborate affairs with all sorts of colorful vegetables, it took two of us — one to wash the produce and one to cut it up.
During the past three-and-a-half years, I have often made salads. For some reason, salads were one of the few foods that we prepared together that I could eat — instead of making me feel sad, it made me feel closer to him. Still, it’s hard to fix meals. I just don’t want the fuss, so I revert to snacking.
Deciding to put an end to snacking, at least temporarily, I spent the morning making enough salads to last for several days. It was a great morning — just me and all those colorful vegetables. Now I need to make sure I eat them.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: fixing meals after the death of a spouse, salads, snacking
