Salad Days

Somewhere between the car parking at Chateau-Gontier and the next campsite about 10 minutes down the road at Daon I started to think that this might be the best way to travel by motorhome! Which is a lovely thought to think. Now to be honest often my thinking about situations last about 20 minutes and then I’m on to the next thought so I’m likely to change my mind but as time continues to pass I haven’t changed my mind… yet. I just love this lazy, slow way. We travel for a little bit and stop for a little bit. On top of that the weather has been very kind to us.

Just down the river from Menil, the campsite between church and river

Now I’m thinking about future trips where we make some place our base and explore the few things around about by public transport or foot… I’m also eyeing up the adorable little wooden cabins we see at some of the smaller campsites. Hmm, wouldn’t that be perfect for Teru (the grandson - are you keeping up?) of course he’d have to bring his parents too. There’s always a little playground in or near the campsites and sometimes there’s a farm or zoo nearby to visit - did I mention he loves animals?

The village of Daon from the banks of the Mayenne

Anyways, back to this trip. My intention to rest has been successful and now I’m thinking about another intention - salads. You weren’t expecting that? I have a love/hate relationship with salads. I love the idea that I’m eating a healthy salad but I hate that I cannot make it taste good. Denis says it’s the dressings and I catch him looking longingly at the jars of dressing in the supermarkets here. You know the ones with an ingredient list as long as the label and very few of those ingredients sound healthy? I pull him away but all I have to offer for a dressing in the cupboard is olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pepper - shake to mix. He’s not impressed and that wouldn’t overly bother me except to be honest I’m not that impressed either. Salads are good for us, who needs to enjoy their salad? It’s a medicine. Tasty medicine isn’t a thing, right?

It’s a small village but it has everything we need

Well, something has changed and I’m no longer able to put up with ugly boring salads. But it feels like I’m abandoning my heritage. Since I was little my history of salads has always been that they are boring and ugly, something to place wilting on a plate to frame the star of the show - meat. Or there’s the obligatory visitor’s salad: sliced boiled egg, thin sliced ham (meat again) lettuce, sliced hard tomatoes and salad cream - also not great or pretty. The problem might be that I haven’t been able to update my salad experience because I would never choose a salad from a menu and now I can’t get those salads from the past out of my head. I don’t know any exciting, beautiful salads.

The Mayor’s garden and possible the Mayor’s shoe?

Now this isn’t the first time I considered changing up my salad game. I think it was about three years ago in a Spanish motorway services that I picked up the most delicious boxed salad with a variety of coloured lettuces, olives, avocado and some other things I can’t remember. The only reason I chose that salad was because it was there in front of me, not just some words on a menu and it looked absolutely amazing. Mouth watering even. When we came home that year I made a pretty good imitation of it twice, but twice is not enough for it to stay in my head. And we won’t be going to Spain anytime soon…

One of the chalets for rent in the campsite

Soooo, in the time left here in France (about 3.5 days) I am determined to find a beautiful salad recipe, that is healthy (no supermarket dressing) tasty and beautiful. I am also determined to practice it and bring it home and it will become my signature dish. I will serve it every week and there will be no complaints only compliments and I will never get fed up making it. The ingredient list will be short and easy to find and I will buy a salad dressing shaker with the amounts of the different stuff to add for a variety of dressings, marked on the side! I’ve seen those in the hypermarkets… I might be over extending myself.

Our pitch has wild buttercups and a beautiful white flowering plant that my phone tells me is a Guelder-rose

Hold everything. I just went into the internet to look at salad dressing shakers and saw a picture of a Vinaigrette Dressing in a jar (a used jar you’d be bringing to the bottle bank, under normal circumstances.) Ingredients - white wine vinegar, honey, dijon mustard, olive oil, garlic… there might be more ingredients but what got me was the colour - it’s a bright and cheerful yellow! Maybe… now I could be wrong but maybe, all I need is a colourful dressing? Right, I have to go and look at the rest of this recipe and hopefully it’ll tell me what things to pour it over because I sense drinking the vinaigrette on its own wouldn’t be great. But it does look beautiful - one out of three.