As I walked home today, something felt different. It was still cold, I was still wearing down and a tightly wrapped scarf, but the air felt less punishing. Also, it was almost 6 pm, and it wasn’t dark. This, more than the unseasonable warm weather we had most of last month, started me dreaming of spring. So I decided the coming change of seasons required a dinner that would suit. Everyone eats salad all year round these days, but somehow I don’t crave crisp greens, cucumbers and slivers of red onion in the winter, the way I do when the weather is warmer. So salad it was.

I walked into the produce market on 20th Street (between Chestnut and Market) seven minutes before they were closing, and looked around to see what would make a good, spring-like sald. Butter lettuce, red onion, sweet grape tomatoes, seedless cumcumber and beets caught my eye and fell into my basket quickly. I grabbed a couple of lemons for dressing and made my way to the counter. Groceries paid for, I headed for my apartment, catching the last few rays of sun that my north-facing apartment gets, as I walked in the door. Heading for the kitchen, I put a pot of water on to cook the beets, dumped the lettuce into the sink and the rest of the ingredients onto the counter.

Beets are immensely easy to cook. Just pop them in a pot of water and let them boil away until you can stick a fork in them to the middle and it goes in and comes out easily. Then put the pot in the sink and run cold water over them until they cool a bit, and just rub at the skins with your fingers under the running water. They should just slide away. The red onion I sliced into thin slivers, cutting the onion in half from north to south as opposed to at the equator. Using a sharp knife, I cut translucent half-moons and sprinkled them over the roughly torn butter lettuce that was now washed and waiting in my salad bowl. I took half the cucumber, and chunked it. A handful of grape tomatoes went in next, followed closely by some crumbled feta and one of the beets, cut into small pieces. Last went the dressing, just a quick vinagrette of the juice of one lemon, some extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar to bring it all together.

I sat at the table, eating my jumbled salad of spring with just a touch of winter (the beets) and felt content.

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