Salmon Dinner Salad

Do you find your­self say­ing things to your kids that you’d choke on if some­one said to you? I mean, I know kids are kids and it’s not always a par­al­lel, but still… The other night Esme informed me at 7:25 (ie. Bed­time minus 5 min­utes) that she was hun­gry and wanted a snack before head­ing upstairs. I told her it couldn’t be true, that she’d had big din­ner and a bowl of fruit for dessert, yada, yada, yada. Of course what I sus­pected was that she was just stalling. She put her hands on her hips and said, “If you told me you were hun­gry I would believe you!” The truth is I don’t have to ask any­one for per­mis­sion for a snack and it is not unusual at all for me to have some­thing between din­ner and my own bed­time. I felt like a real jerk and gave her a banana.

It made me think of some­thing Jenny Rosen­strach (Din­ner A Love Story — if you don’t read it, go!) told us when we asked a bunch of par­ent­ing experts for tips with picky eaters. She sug­gests serv­ing meals fam­ily style, in plat­ters on the table, and allow­ing every­one to serve them­selves. We did it the other night with tacos and Esme freak­ing loved it! There are times when I really want her to try some­thing new but why not let her choose what she wants? No one makes me brus­sel sprouts, which I loathe. Well, some­one is but that’s another post com­ing soon. My point is that I like to have choice so when it’s pos­si­ble to hand it over to the lit­tles I feel like I should try. And I think it’s true that if you can dial back the pres­sure you can get lucky.

This salad was made with this kind of eat­ing in mind. It’s sub­stan­tial enough to serve for din­ner and it’s got enough ele­ments that peo­ple can choose what they like from it. You can also chip away at the prepa­ra­tion all day, which is what I did. Boil and cool the pota­toes while you’re mak­ing break­fast. Mar­i­nate the fish in the after­noon. Chop the veg­gies and assem­ble five min­utes before sit­ting down. The kids ate every part of it. Prob­a­bly because we didn’t tell them to.

To make the dress­ing put all the ingre­di­ents into a jar and shake. Either dress the salad or just serve it on the side so every­one can do it them­selves. Which is sort of the point of the whole dinner!