Don’t Put My Salad Dressing on the Side

Being a white woman of a certain age means that people make assumptions. They figure I’m still paying for cable, belong in the slow lane, and when I meet my ladies for lunch, I want my dressing on the side.

“Stereotypes are so wrong!” I feel like shrieking. Not only do I want my salad coated with dressing, I want all the cheese, anchovies and whatever other crunchy bits come with those bland leaves. After all, isn’t it the other ingredients that give a bowl of grains or lettuces pizazz? As you’ve probably already guessed, I never turn down the bread and butter plate either. Why leave hungry?

Like most women of a certain age and class, I’ve had to develop a lifetime strategy around eating. I’ve  had to reconcile the dichotomy between wanting to taste everything delicious in the world and knowing when to stop to maintain a healthy body that I can live with when I look in the mirror. 

Like most women of a certain age and class, I’ve had to develop a lifetime strategy around eating. I’ve  had to reconcile the dichotomy between wanting to taste everything delicious in the world and knowing when to stop to maintain a healthy body that I can live with when I look in the mirror. Unlike most of my friends, I have a very short history of dieting. After trying the chocolate cookie diet at about seven—the one where you go on a hunger strike and eat only cookies—I flirted with hunger pains one other time. 

At about 15, while searching for bargains at Loehmann’s in the Bronx and hoping to squeeze myself into sample sizes, I had a revelation. In the dressing room, I was suddenly seized by stomach pangs and felt so light-headed that I had to stop tossing rejects in a heap on the floor and rest on top of them. When it occurred to me that I was experiencing hunger pains because I had skipped a meal, a bulb lit up in my brain.

I realized that if I skipped meals and focused intently on not eating, I could be thin, fit into all the best clothes, and probably marry well—a fairy tale clearly hatched in the 1950s. Thankfully, my brief flirtation with anorexia ended as soon as my mother served up her perfectly rare roast beef with baked potatoes that weekend. Forget the Jewish mother stereotypes, my modern mother did not push anyone to eat more or less than they wanted. Weight obsession was not one of her hang-ups. She threw herself into eating, cooking, baking, and going to restaurants with abandon. In fact, if there was one place where she would not scrimp, it was food. Only the best passed her lips.

Eating too much was not something that crossed my mind until later in life. Since I was a skinny kid who had to be reminded to eat rather than to stop, I wouldn’t really need a strategy until after my first pregnancy. The one where I gained 60 pounds by keeping a half gallon of full fat chocolate milk nearby at all times. After hiking in the hills with a baby strapped to my chest and skipping meals for six months straight, the weight was finally gone, and in its place was a waistline that I’m still trying to find. 

Later, I went back to my wanton ways in spades. By middle age, I was being paid to eat several meals a day as a cookbook/food writer, until I finally had to quit at about age 50. Time was running out on my excellent metabolism.

That’s when I crafted this strategy for eating well:

• Never follow a diet. Ever since being sent home from junior high for daring to wear culottes, I have been horrified by following any rules. “Don’t eat more than one slice of bread a day; never eat anything bigger than your hand; chocolate in the house is forbidden; non-fat cheese is a weekend treat, etc.” The story hasn’t changed in 50 years and it’s boring. If these rules worked so well, why do we still need them?
• Don’t get hung up on weights and measures. Yes, I know that Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, made a fortune by telling people to measure their food and weigh themselves compulsively—and in front of others. But unless you’re an accountant, keeping a little notebook full of numbers is soul-crushing. You know why the poets warn against measuring a life in teaspoonfuls? It is joyless.
• Think ahead to your next meal, as soon as you finish your current meal. Are there other, more important things to think about? Looking forward to and anticipating what exactly you feel like eating next is an important part of being human. It’s not just raw meat, raw  meat, raw meat with a chaser of dry grass day after the day for us anymore. Want turmeric sea bass with lemongrass confit for lunch? Go for it!
• Always search out the best. This is the pure nugget that came from my mom. Or as a chef once explained, “When it comes to eating, every bite should be delicious.” Since we eat about  80,000 meals in a lifetime, why not make the effort to make each bite good? Sounds like more fun than weighing out your next portion of steamed broccoli, right?

In these post-COVID days, when a woman or man of a certain age may be carrying some extra weight, I recommend easing off on the self-imposed deprivations. This is not the time. Try eating whatever delights, in moderate portions, surrounded by good friends and family. And please, dress the salad!

Los Angeles food writer Helene Siegel is the author of 40 cookbooks, including the “Totally Cookbook” series and “Pure Chocolate.” She runs the Pastry Session blog. During COVID-19, she shared Sunday morning baking lessons over Zoom with her granddaughter, eight-year-old Piper of Austin, Texas.