A Tale of Two Salads

It's Summer, and it's hot, meaning it's salad time again around here. 

We thought we'd try being organised this year, so a few weeks ago, we bought a dozen lettuce and rocket seedlings. Well, not exactly a dozen - it was a gardener's dozen, twelve for us and "some for the slugs". Our slugs, however, are particularly greedy creatures. Within a week of planting the seedlings out, there were only three rocket plants left and no lettuces AT ALL. Then, they moved on to the radishes. They don't seem to be interested in the roots, but the poor plants have had to put all of their energy into regrowing their leaves and not into the part we're actually interested in. 

On Saturday afternoon, I planted a pepper plant in my herb beds. Note that these herb beds are in window boxes at some distance from the main garden, next to the front door, on a hard path. On Sunday morning, there was NO PEPPER PLANT. The slugs had struck yet again.

That was the first of the two salads- a great big gigantinormous hypothetical salad which we WILL NOT GET TO EAT because of the EVIL SLUGS.

The second of the two salads was last night's salade composée, which was a particularly good one, so I thought I'd pass on the recipe. Its name? Norman. Norman the Salad. 

I should explain...

Salads in France often have names. Salade Niçoise is one of the best known versions. Last night's sald was a Salade Normande, including traditional ingredients from Normandy, or, in other words, a Norman Salad. See? Norman the Salad.


Without further ado, here are the ingredients...


Half a red lettuce, shredded
1 apple, diced
5 inches cucumber, diced
A few sprigs of parsley (the slugs haven't eaten all of that yet...)
1/4 Camembert, chopped into small pieces (note: use a Camembert that's not too close to its use-by date for this one, otherwise it's impossible to cut up, it just oozes)
Croutons/ torn-up stale bread, fried in a little olive oil



Stick ingredients in bowl. Add dressing to taste (I recommend vinaigrette made with walnut mustard- it's AMAZING). Mix. Eat. Om nom nom. Serves 2 as a main meal with bread, more as a side dish/starter.


Sorry for the lack of phototage... next time I'll remember. Promise.