I was moved by some spirit to make salads this weekend. Spinach ones, with chicken and feta and balsamic and tomatoes from the plant on my balcony (or strawberries). This isn’t my usual practice — I love salads when someone else makes them or when I have ready access to a Sweet Tomatoes, but I’m rubbish at making them. When I invite someone over for dinner and they say, “Love to! What can I bring?” it’s salad every time.

I don’t know. I wasn’t really raised on salads. I could sit down and eat a head of iceberg lettuce whole, though. You know. If I wanted to.

I ate my way through three goodish salads over the last couple of days, feeling all summery and virtuous. And then I was left with too little spinach for another salad and too much to throw away without damaging my newly won virtue. (This is also one of the reasons I don’t just keep salad stuff in the house to tempt me to eat salads. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t tempt me. It rots and wastes money I could otherwise spend on gin.)

This morning, I threw a handful of that spinach in my morning smoothie, along with the usual fruit + vanilla soy + honey + a bit of protein powder.

It wasn’t gross. I mean, it was ugly. It looked like a blender full of faintly pink paste before I put the frozen blueberries in, and then it got a little brighter and a little less alarming.

But it wasn’t gross. It was tasty and the spinach was hardly noticeable. If anything, it just balanced the whole thing and made it heartier and less sweet.

Y’all, this may be the next step in embracing my inner hippy.

(In related news, I did that whole “feed a cold[/starve a fever]” thing while I was sick, and now I have no appetite. I also haven’t run since July 3 or 4…my schedule was off, and then I was sick, and now I’m working my way back to the treadmill. I still don’t trust my throat and lungs, though.)