oriental salad

This one comes to you from the City of Brotherly Love, where my aunt and uncle hosted a family gathering.

Sauteed almonds, sesame seeds, green onions, olive oil, and ramen noodles (minus the flavor packet), plus:

chopped-up napa cabbage, courtesy of my sister-in-law, plus a dressing made with white vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, olive oil, and diced garlic, equals:

… a slimy-looking salad. That’s just my camera, I promise. It’s actually a great salad — the dressing is sweet and tangy, the cabbage has just the right amount of bitterness to balance it, and the almond/ramen noodle mix makes it crunchy. My family loved it, and I finally managed to redeem myself for the time I accidentally fed them worms.

What’s that, you say? The worm story is more interesting than looking at slimy cabbage? I’m happy to oblige. See, my mother decided to go back to school for her bachelor’s degree after we children were old enough to take care of ourselves. One of the classes she had to take was a health-related class, which filled her head with all manner of ideas regarding the horribleness of my family’s diet. She decided we needed to eat whole-wheat noodles rather than egg noodles, so she stocked our cabinets with health food and ignored our grumbling. One night, she asked me to make dinner because she was going to be late, so I made brown gravy to be served over the wheat noodles.

While I was boiling the noodles, I noticed some little curly things floating on top of the water, but I figured they were noodle crumbs and let it go. We ate dinner and I put some away for my mother, then went about my life until she got home. She got as far as taking the Tupperware out of the fridge and popping off the lid, then brought the container to her face to scrutinize it. If my mother was a shrieker, she would have shrieked, but instead she informed me in her cool manner that they weren’t noodle crumbs — they were tiny worms. And my whole family just ate them.

It’s been at least 10 years now and I have yet to live down that incident, but tonight’s fabulous salad went a long way toward redeeming my culinary cred. And if there’s one thing the Dumbass Gourmet needs, it’s culinary cred.