Mixed Green Salad with Roasted Portabellos

Five weeks. The calendar says April. The calendar says spring. The world outside my window is blooming — the azaleas along Forestdale Road, the same azaleas that bloomed two years ago when I started writing this blog, when Marcus was sixteen and talking about Tuskegee and eating my smothered pork chops. The world is blooming and my son is in the ground and the contrast is so obscene that I want to close every curtain and block every window and live in a house where spring cannot enter, because spring is for the living and I do not feel like one of the living. I feel like someone who is still here by accident, by the inertia of a body that has not received the memo that the reason for living has changed address.

I have not cooked in five weeks. This is the longest I have gone without cooking since I was eight years old. Thirty-eight years of daily cooking, and the streak is broken, and the breaking feels like the final evidence that the Loretta who existed before March 3rd is gone and the Loretta who exists now is someone else, someone who does not know the stove, does not know the skillet, does not know the recipes that used to live in her hands the way blood lives in veins.

Mama came to visit on Saturday. She did not call first. She just appeared at the front door, eighty-one years old, having driven herself from Bessemer despite her bad back and her worse eyesight, carrying a pot of collard greens and a look on her face that I have seen exactly twice in my life — the look that says: enough.

She walked into my kitchen. She looked at the cold stove. She looked at the empty counters. She looked at me, sitting in my chair, and she said: Loretta Mae. That is all she said. My name. But the way she said it contained everything — the grief and the love and the impatience and the understanding that a mother who has lost a child has a right to sit in a chair for as long as she needs but that five weeks is approaching the edge of what is survivable and Mama was not going to let me go over the edge. She put the collard greens on the stove. She turned on the burner. She said eat. I said I cannot. She said you can. I said I cannot, Mama. She said Loretta Mae Simms, your son is dead and your heart is broken and no food on earth will fix that but you are alive and the living eat and if you do not eat you will die and I have buried a grandchild and I will not bury a daughter. Now eat.

I ate. Standing at the counter. Crying. The first tears since the funeral. The collard greens tasted like vinegar and smoke and Mama's hands and Bessemer and 1975 and every single thing I have ever lost and every single thing I still have. I ate and I cried and Mama stood beside me and did not touch me and did not speak and the kitchen was not silent anymore because the sound of eating is a sound and the sound of crying is a sound and together they are the sound of a woman who is still alive, who is still here, who has not fallen into the canyon yet, who is standing at the counter eating her mother's collard greens and crying and tasting the first food she has tasted in five weeks and the food is not healing her, nothing will heal her, but the food is reminding her that she has a mouth and the mouth still works and the working is enough. It has to be enough.

Mama took her pot back to Bessemer, and I was alone with the stove again — a stove I had not touched in five weeks except to put her collard greens on it, and that does not count because Mama did that, not me. I am not ready to make her recipe. That recipe lives inside her and I am not ready to reach for it without her standing beside me. But the morning after she came, I pulled out the cast iron skillet and I roasted portabello mushrooms, just to say to the kitchen: I am still here. This salad is not Mama’s collard greens. It is not a substitute and it is not a healing and it is not anything except the next thing, which is all I am capable of right now — just the next thing.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 large portabello mushroom caps, stems removed
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
6 cups mixed greens (spring mix, arugula, or baby spinach)
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese or feta (optional)
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts or walnuts (optional)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Set your oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Marinate the mushrooms. In a small bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, 1 tablespoon of the balsamic vinegar, the minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Brush the mixture over both sides of the portabello caps and place them gill-side up on the prepared baking sheet.
Roast the portabellos. Roast for 18 to 20 minutes, until the mushrooms are tender and their edges have darkened and pulled slightly away from the pan. Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes, then slice into 1/2-inch strips.
Make the dressing. In a small jar or bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, remaining 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and honey. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Assemble the salad. Place the mixed greens in a large bowl or divide among four plates. Top with the sliced roasted portabellos, cherry tomatoes, and red onion. Scatter the goat cheese and toasted nuts over the top if using.
Dress and serve. Drizzle the balsamic dressing over the salad just before serving. Eat it warm, while the mushrooms still hold their heat from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Mixed Green Salad with Roasted Portabellos — The First Greens I Could Bring Myself to Eat