The Big Rideau Salad

Invited by her husband to do so, I am about to tell you about Helen's Big Rideau Salad. As you know, we spent a week at a mansion/cottage on the Big Rideau last week. But since I still have a "cottage" mentality about cottages, I neither buy exotic ingredients nor prepare gourmet meals when I am at one -- even if an expansive and luxurious abode may warrant it. So, our friends arrived for an early spaghetti dinner, prepared by Brian who makes the best spaghetti I have ever tasted (and I am not just saying that). Spaghetti demands salad in some establishments, so I pulled out what I considered cottage salad makings, i.e., a half a tomato, a cuccumber and a few lettuce leaves. "Helen, could you just make a little salad out of this?" Sure! And then she started. She rumaged through the fridge and salvaged bits and pieces of this and that and the salad grew and grew like the loaves and fishes. Trouble was that all the while she was building it, I kept having in interrupt what I was doing to find this and that with which to cut up and prepare this and that. G-d Helen, just stick to the lettuce and tomato! No, being a stubborn Ottawa Valley girl from the village of Eganville, Helen dug in further and searched even farther and wider for more accoutrements. Her husband kept giving me knowing glances and shaking his head, as if to say......"don't object or it will get even more complicated!" And it did.

In a disgusted huff she rejected my Kraft Thousand Island dressing and proceeded to make her own. But that demanded a special spill-proof vessel in which to mix it and naturally, after a time-consuming search, we failed to find one. Undaunted, she whipped it to death with a spoon. At last we were ready to eat. But wait, we have to have a candle. The search for matches began. No smokers and no matches to be found, a reluctant Doug was dispatched to the garage to see if a BBQ lighter might there lurk. No luck. At this Doug decided to ignite a piece of paper on the gas stove to light the blessed candle. With trepidation, we all huddled around the flame, water at the ready, while Doug tried in vain to light the wick. The paper went burst forth perfectly, but the wick stared dryly back and refused to cooperate. We finally abandoned this folly when I mentioned that if the smoke detector went off, the volunteer Perth Fire Department would be here in a Tay-River minute! To my grateful surprise, Helen (sort of) admitted a (slight) defeat and we sat down. After saying both the Catholic and Protestant graces -- having been raised a Protestant I know each -- in we tucked. Shocked, I watched in horror as Brian reached for the Kraft in an act of bold-faced defiance; ever faithful, Doug enjoyed Helen's homemade. Did he have a choice?

Bottom line here is that we had so much salad left over I insisted Helen take it home as a remembrance of her Big Rideau Salad concocted out of nothing by a well-trained and frugal Valley girl.

Today is International Punctuation Day and next I will have a field day on that subject!