Grandma Salad

August 30, 2026

I sit at the kitchen table, snapping beans into a colander. I'm nine years old, and my mom said the only way she'd make this meal is if I did the beans. It's my favorite meal: fresh green beans and halved potatoes boiled on the stovetop, smashed together in a bowl, and topped with salt and butter. Another bowl on the side, that one filled with what we called grandma salad: cucumbers, tomatoes, onions. Oil and vinegar. Salt and pepper. This was dinner.

My mom never liked cooking, and this was never her favorite meal. She'd grown up eating it, raised poor by a single mom from Ohio's Appalachian foothills.

We were in Columbus, with takeout in every strip mall. When there was money, my mom and siblings would sooner order pizza, a food I detested at nine. To this day, I'd still choose beans and potatoes.

I share her disdain for cooking, though. It's lucky that my favorite foods don't need much of it: bread and butter, beans and potatoes. Endless toast. Buttered noodles with parmesan cheese when I need a pick-me-up.

Now I'm in Minnesota. This summer, I planted nine bean plants in my backyard. I picked enough beans for dinner this week, though I needed to buy potatoes at the store.

I sit on the front porch snapping beans in the sun. My cat moseys through the garden beds I desperately need to weed. Kids play in a front yard down the street.

Back inside, I chop baby reds in half and dump them into the big steel pot with the beans.

For grandma salad, I planted cucumbers and tomatoes. I have nine tomato plants too, all bursting through their cages. I snag a ripe one. The cucumber plants are at death's door, so I had to buy cucumbers too. It's fine. My mom never grew anything. Chop, dump, douse with oil and vinegar, refrigerate. Done.

When it's time to eat, I scoop out of the pot with my great-grandma's serving spoon. I mash butter into the potatoes with a fork. A small plate for bread and butter. Another small bowl for the grandma salad.

I set my place at the dining table, the curtains open to the street. My husband rummages downstairs. This isn't his favorite meal either.

I'm the same age now as my mom was when I was nine. My first bite is good. But it's not quite the same. My mom was always able to smash the potatoes just right.

Later, it's time for dessert. The other quintessential summer food of my childhood: pound cake with fresh-cut strawberries. I thought about making my own cake but settled for the same one my mom used to buy: Sara Lee, straight from the freezer aisle. I cut a rectangle and scoop strawberries over it. I go back to the porch and eat my cake in big bites while my cat rolls in the dirt.