In 1952, after the fifth attempted burglary of our house on 50^th Street in Chicago, my parents decided to buy a lot on the North Shore and build a new home. Before that work could begin, they organized lawsuits with other prospective lot buyers to break a restrictive covenant governing all the empty lots on a recently divided family estate. Until the covenant became illegal, the owner would not sell real property to Blacks, Jews, or Asians.

Almost as a celebration of their victory over prejudice, they built a ranch house on a wooded, half-acre lot on a private lane cut out of that family estate. Their architect specified a number of conveniences in that house, one of which was a modern, all-electric kitchen.  Most cutting-edge was the Hotpoint pushbutton cooktop. Four sets of controls were installed in the wall above four burners built into a white Formica-covered counter. My mother could choose from six settings when she used a burner: HI-2-3-LO-WARM-OFF. All the cabinetry was white, and cork tiles covered the floor. Cheerful ecru wallpaper dotted with delicate navy-blue flowers added to the luminosity of a kitchen filled with light from large, tall windows under a cathedral roof.

Mother only cooked what my father loved to eat. That included Saturday (or was it Sunday’s) brunch with bagels, chopped liver, herring, cold smoked fish, cream cheese, and onions. At dinner, she prepared flank steak, burgers, spaghetti with chopped meat and tomato sauce, or roasted chicken, especially Chicken Kiev. Although Mother was trained as a nutritionist, her menus rarely varied, but they always included a tossed salad.

When I was a teenager, my dinner-time chore was cleaning and cutting vegetables. I washed lettuce, usually a head of romaine or iceberg (no bagged lettuce was available to us in the late 50’s). Then I cut up celery and carrots or cucumber. I dreaded adding tomatoes. They were packaged in a cellophane covered cardboard tube. Their pulp was stiff, seedy, and flavorless.  Nevertheless, I quickly sliced one or two in sixths and added them to the other vegetables. The next step was mixing the Lawry’s salad dressing. The flavoring ingredients came in a packet, sometimes attached to a glass cruet that had level markings for oil and water. When I had combined all three parts of the mix, I shook the capped cruet somewhat violently and poured about 1/3 of the dressing over the vegetables before tossing them to combine the ingredients.

My parents, three siblings, and I almost always ate dinner together and around the same time every weekday evening. The timing depended on my father’s schedule since he usually took a train home from his Loop office when he was feeling well. I served the salad in a deep, black resin bowl with matching serving fork and spoon. My sister has that bowl now and sometimes uses it to serve her own salad.

Salad features often in the meals I prepare. It’s a habit I have kept since high school. Some things have changed, however. I don’t have a Hotpoint kitchen. My cooktop is induction,  ultra-modern for our times. My salad bowls are ceramic, not resin. The serving fork and knife are stainless steel. The vegetables are usually organic, and I use balsamic vinegar or fresh lemon juice and EV olive oil with little else to dress them. In my home, we don’t eat red meat, and vegetables play a more important role in each meal, but every time I compose a salad, I think of my mother in her then dernier cri kitchen and her insistence on having at least one serving of fresh vegetables as part of our family dinner.