Salad Days

When my husband first moved to DC (back when he was just my bf, not my husband) he rented a tiny room with shaggy blue carpet and a threadbare bedspread in a musty old house, with an eccentric, and mildly racist landlord, P, who had two black standard poodles. When I would come to visit, we were at a loss for what to eat. The kitchen was pretty much off limits. One, because it was filthy and hadn't been remodeled, or possibly cleaned, since the house was built in say, 1879. And two, and more importantly, because of the chance of an awkward encounter with the landlord. Or the Poodles. And since we were in upper NW DC and car-less, we might as well have been in suburban Kansas with the dearth of food options at our disposal.

So we would walk more than a mile up the hill to Whole Foods and get salads from the salad bar and a pint of ice cream. Then we'd take it back to the house, race up the stairs to avoid uncomfortable chit-chat with P and the Poodles, and have a picnic on the bed beneath the ugly oil painting of a ship being lost at sea.

Last Friday we had salads from Whole Foods for old times sake. Only this time we drove the Volvo Zip Car to the Whole Foods near our house, strolled around buying other organic goodies, and came back to the privacy of our own apartment to enjoy our feast. How times have changed.