The Trash Salad

The concept of the Trash Salad was born in October 2010 when my dear friend, having witnessed what I was eating for second breakfast, declared that it looked as though someone's picnic leftovers had been tossed in a rubbish bin, mixed up, and dumped in my bowl.  This was a near-perfect description of my meal which from memory consisted of ripped up hot dogs rescued from the previous day's barbeque, crumbled up cheese slices, cold grilled summer squash, jalapeno olives, and crushed chips over spinach and drizzled with creamy horseradish sauce and mustard. 

This salad was obviously delicious and continues to haunt my dreams, but I also make other more conventional things to eat, some of which require recipes and even utensils to prepare.  Often these more technical pursuits get lost among the everyday eat-down-the-fridge meals, hence The Trash Salad aims to keep things organized and document some successes and failures along the way.

The goal of this little project is threefold:

WV Doubledown Extravaganza

• to learn a little something about web design.  This seems to be a useful and marketable skill that I have maintained active ignorance about since the olden days of livejournaling.
• to pressure me to take more photos.  I have a nice camera that has been used on fewer than 10 occasions since it was given to me almost 2 years ago.  As an example of how terrible I am at this,  the only photograph I took during a memorable trip to West Virginia last year ->
• to keep track of things I cook in a searchable format.  I once dreamt of using a cute little spiral-bound notebook to write down recipes with modifications and illustrations to have in one place and eventually pass on to my kids like good mamas do.  Unfortunately, handwriting things takes an unreasonable amount of time and any blank white surface in my kitchen is a prime target for red wine/tomato sauce/rogue bacon grease.

As a notorious starter but not keeper upper, I don't have high hopes of maintaining a regular posting habit, but we'll see what comes of this.  Other interests of mine include unnecessary food wastage, DIY everything, and deciphering food science and policy so I will probably be getting on my soapbox time and again.  And as a serious cheapskate working in New York City, I'll also be sharing tips on how to not go broke when all you want to do is spend money on awesome things and restaurants.

Incidentally, Park and Sixth Comfort Food in Hoboken, NJ has a Garbage Salad on the menu which sounds like it's filled with great veggies and may require further research.  But no hot dogs unfortunately.