What comes to mind when you read the words “salad days”? My guess is that you are thinking of your own salad days when you enjoyed youth and beauty. Some of the best years of your life. A time when you were happy and the future looked bright.
Maybe you thought about the reference to salad days in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. Or perhaps, as I do, you think about old English novels that described the lives of aristocratic young men and women (in that order) enjoying luxury and lazy days. You may recall some romance thrown in and a little ambiguity about social class distinctions, but mostly it was all jolly good fun.
Today, was a salad day for me, and it had nothing to do with youth, beauty, or upper class frivolities. It was just too darned hot to cook.
This area of British Columbia has been experiencing a heat wave that has changed my life. Right now, at 8:01 PM, it is 35 Celcius (95 F) with a “feels like” temperature of 38 (100.4 F). Usually, I enjoy the evening breeze. I open the windows and doors and let mother nature cool down my home. Today, though, there is an unusually strong wind with gusts up to 44 km/h (27.3 mph). When I open the door it is as though the weather gods are standing in front of me with a hairdryer as big as the British channel tunnel. So, I am not opening the door.
Thankfully, I have a portable air conditioner that has been bravely chugging away all day. I bought it last August during a similar heatwave and I have never been more grateful for it than I am today.
That said, even in my delightfully artificially cooled apartment, it is still too darned hot to cook. This evening I made a salad. Some Romaine lettuce, tomato, cucumber, celery, and salad dressing. It wasn’t great, but it was good enough. This salad day was less about luxury and more about giving myself some essential nourishment. Now I’m wondering why the term “salad days” has been ascribed to a period of youthful innocence, idealism, and pleasure when they are really just days of doing the bare minimum to survive when it is hot.
At the same time, this is a day to be thankful. I have a roof, cool(ed) air, food, and comfortable surroundings. I may not be young and beautiful, but dammit, mine is a good life. Better, perhaps, than the lives of those upper class people in old novels. Yes, this is a salad day.
Snowbird of Paradise 
I must grin. When you mentioned salad days, my elderly mind went directly to actual salads that we always have on very warm days. Today was both humid and very warm. Since we did not reach 90 degreesF, I won’t complain. However I surely did enjoy the salad. My daughter creates some marvelous salads! Do take care and stay hydrated!!
Yay for daughters who make good salads!
And, yes, I am staying hydrated…does wine count?
Well, it’s fluid so perhaps wine does count. I don’t drink so I can’t share personal experience. Coffee is my special friend and I have heard that it does not excel at hydration.
Haha. I’ve heard that, too. 🙂
Of course wine counts! Haven’t heard the salad days expression in a long time. Practical words I’d say 🙂
Cheers, June!
This is so fun, I had never heard of Salad Days! I love learning something! We too are having salads instead of cooking for our supper!
According to Dictionary.com it was a phrase invented by Shakespeare:
The time of youth, innocence, and inexperience, as in Back in our salad days we went anywhere at night, never thinking about whether it was safe or not. This expression, alluding to the greenness of inexperience, was probably invented by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra (1:5), when Cleopatra, now enamored of Antony, speaks of her early admiration for Julius Caesar as foolish: “My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood.”
So interesting! Thanks!