Honeyed Words: Salads

First Day of Spring Cucumber Salad · 22 March 2007

Picture of a bowl of Cucumber Salad

Even though today is the second day of spring, it’s the first day of spring that I’m cooking.

To stretch the old adage, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” Spring came in like a lamb for me yesterday, soft, mild, and unobtrusive. I feel I cheated the season, arguably my favorite, by not properly appreciating or reflecting on its arrival. This week was shaping up to be one of those “How did it get to be Friday already?” experiences that I’m trying to avoid. Since I have a lot of goals to accomplish this season, I’m hoping Spring goes out like a lion: strong, formidable, agile and king of its environment.

I thought it was an interesting coincidence that Al Gore addressed Congress on the issue of global warming on the first day of spring. Perhaps he is hoping that soon to be rising temperatures will make his message easier to get across? (I know I thought about global warming when temperatures here reached record highs for the season last week).

Global warming has gained force as a political buzzword since the opening, and subsequent Oscar award, of An Inconvenient Truth, not to mention the IPCC summary report released last month which in a nutshell says that scientists involved have a “very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.” For scientists, this is a bold statement. Even past debate between scientists seems to have “cooled off” (horrible pun, I know).

The question now seems to be, not “Is man affecting the climate?” but “How much is man affecting the climate?” While science continues to hypothesize, test, theorize, and hypothesize (as they should) in pursuit of an easily quantifiable measure of “Yes”, every person can take individual responsibility to act on the information we have.

Picture of the Planet Earth

Okay, basic logic here. Premise: Humans are affecting the climate. I’m going to make an assumption here and assume that you’re a human (and if you’re not, please comment!). Therefore you (yes you the person reading this) are affecting the climate.

Rational action demands that we act not as a response to an obligation placed on us by society, but through the process of valuing what is important to us and acting to preserve it.

Step one. Identify your level of personal interest in the well being of the planet. Of course, this is an individual answer, but ask yourself questions to determine to what level the health of the planet affects your chosen lifestyle. Are you a coffee drinker, a fish eater, a fan of apples? Are any of your favorite foods threatened by climate change (many apples for example need a certain amount of winter chilling to bear fruit). How do you spend your vacations? Even the avowed urbanites I know usually long to “get away from it” when they have the opportunity to travel. The people that know me in real life know I have a slight . . . fascination (we won’t call it an obsession) with post apocalyptic scenarios. My personal interest in climate change is that I don’t want to contribute to a world in which people need to live in artificially controlled environments because Earth’s environment has become too toxic for humans to live in.

Step two. Take action. Climate change is caused by many factors (the IPCC report has a nice summary on this) and it’s easy to become discouraged because some of the “fixes” touted are well beyond any one person’s individual ability to contribute to the solution. For example, gas mileage efficiency is being bantered around as one of the key items in a comprehensive attack on slowing the human effect on climate change. Most individuals are not in a position to change the design of vehicles so that more high gas mileage cars are manufactured. Many individuals are not in an economic position to buy a new car just to improve the gas mileage on the vehicle they drive. If you’re like me, taking public transportation to work isn’t even an option (my 15 minute commute by car is conservatively 2 hours by public transport, each way). But, there are simple, low cost steps that everyone can do. A few ideas on this list and this one cost only a few seconds of your time and many fall in the affordable range.

My personal answer to the problem of global warming is still developing, but for now, my enjoyment of today’s spring afternoon was tinged with the awareness that tomorrow’s eighty degree weather forecast is in partly due to my trusty 4Runner. This spring salad is likewise literally sweetness tempered with vinegar, a fitting salad to welcome the new season.

First Day of Spring Cucumber Salad:

Adapted from one of my grandmother’s classic recipes. I normally make this with tomatoes, but tonight I elected to use red peppers instead since I had some languishing in the refrigerator.