Thoughts on BlogHer Food and Spring Greens Salad

I returned from my first BlogHer Food conference late last night. I woke today feeling a little unsettled.

I had a great time at the conference. I got to spend quality time with bloggers I already called real-life friends, and I met some completely awesome people for the first time (including many of my idols in the blogging and food writing world).

But.

I never caught up on my sleep after waking at 3:30 am on Friday. The fatigue coupled with the amount of people there (500?) and the occasional high school feel was kind of overwhelming for me (that’s code for “I am 40 years old and I cried in public”). Then my plane home was delayed several hours. So I found the whole experience kind of draining.

In an effort to regain some some balance, I tossed together this salad with spring greens from my garden today. I planted seeds a month or so ago, so I’ve got organic baby lettuces and baby Bloomsdale spinach in my garden right now. It’s such a pleasure to eat them after a long and cold winter spent relying on produce from the store.

I’ve also got these baby red lettuces and young peas; they’re so content with all the rain we’ve been having.

To make the salad, I grabbed a few handfuls of each of the greens; I tore them a bit, then combined them with a couple of whole lemon balm leaves (also from my garden: lemon balm is a perennial that came back just beautifully for me this year, but basil would also work well), some toasted almonds, pitted kalamata olives, and chopped preserved Meyer lemon rind. A drizzle of olive oil and a few twists of the pepper mill finished things off…and all was right with my world again.

Related posts I love:
Merry Gourmet’s Good and Bad of Food Blog Conferences
How Not to Behave at a Food Blogging Conference from 5 Second Rule