Brasil Hangover Salad

Lovely lovely warm music-in-the-streets life-loving Rio. Very unlovely hangover. I won't claim this salad cured my hangover, but it did enable me to make it the few blocks to the beach and a fresh coconut full of life sustaining head clearing electrolyte-filled water. The salad took a whopping hour to make, but only on account of massive hangover slow motion.

The Baghdad version would have dried figs and dried coconut carted in from Jordan and no cilantro, unless we brought it in fresh from Amman and then got a hangover within three days before it went off and was forgotten in the depths of the fridge. If I really were hungover in Baghdad, by the way, I'd try to con Sara into going to the cafeteria for the spinach, since that's a long walk in the scorching sun with no coconuts or spontaneous bossa nova along the way. If she wouldn't, I'd probably eat the ingredients sans spinach in bed while watching reruns of Dead Like Me and whining.

Brasil Hangover Salad
2 cups spinach
1 large handful cilantro, de-stemmed
1/4 cup shredded coconut, fresh (2 T if dried)
1 mango, cubes
2 figs, sliced
2 T almonds
1 T pumpkin seeds
1 T sunflower seeds
1 t balsamic vinegar
1 t olive oil
1 t lavender pepper

Toss in a big bowl, and mind the knife in your hungover state...

P.S. Have you had this new-fangled lavender pepper? It's black pepper mixed with dried lavender buds and a touch of sea salt. It adds an incredible little note to salads and veggies. (You can make your own by adding dried lavender to your pepper grinder and giving it a shake). Be careful about getting carried away with this new taste sensation and over-peppering, as you don't want to choke on a particularly peppery mouthful. Just sayin'.

Speaking of Mango...

Since you mentioned mango, I wanted to tell you - What's that? You didn't mention mango? You said "your housing extension is confirmed?" I could have sworn you said mango.

Speaking of mango, I've been meaning to tell you about my most favorite ever in the whole wide wild world life-altering amazing salad. I started making it a few years ago in Ghana, and it has never gotten old. It's so good that I've tried to spread it around the globe like I'm paid to promote it. Like I'm the leader of a mango avocado cult and have committed myself to preaching its virtues. By day I masquerade as an office worker, but by night I change into a mango avocado superhero outfit and brandish a cutting board and knife. It's beauty is in its simplicity:

Mango Avocado Salad

1 ripe mango

1 ripe avocado

a bunch of chopped fresh cilantro

a tiny squeeze of lime, if you must

The key is the ripeness. You want a today mango and a today avocado - not tomorrow, not a few days from now. In Ghana, this is how you buy them: today? or tomorrow? They sell them at stands next to each other in beautiful piles of possibility. Perfect ripeness will make a perfect salad. Trust the ladies selling them: they know today from today. You also want them to be roughly the same size, so they're equal players in the final game. The cilantro should be fresh and fragrant.

Ghana, by the way, is a raw food paradise. The papayas are enormous. The tomatoes taste like tomatoes. The oyster mushrooms may make you blush. The streets are paved with coconuts. The pineapples taste like coconuts. The tiny bananas are little pieces of heaven. The peppers are hot and powerful. The cocoa is plentiful. The kelewele - plantain roasted with ginger - isn't raw, but when its smell lazily drifts over the dark streets at night, it will make you want to sing.

Chop the mango and avocado into equal size chunks - just enough to fit on a fork (to do this easily with the avocado, cut in half, jiggle off each side from the pit, score the chunks, then peel away the peel and let them fall into the bowl. You do sort of the same thing with the mango, only it's a bit messier.)

Sprinkle with cilantro. Toss. Eat. Begin converting others.