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Golda Simon's Grated Salad
September is a lovely month in Seattle, even though the many students heading back to school may not agree—the weather is still warm, the skies still light at 5pm, and the many trees’ leaves are not yet strewing the city streets. For those attuned to a scholastic calendar, whether they are students, teachers, or parents, September is also a time of new beginnings, its own sort of January. This month, we’d like to share the story of Golda Simon, a longtime teacher and Rainier Valley resident who demonstrates the importance of looking for opportunities to learn new things throughout one's life.
Born Gail Simon in 1954 in Brooklyn, New York, Golda Simon began going by her Jewish name in the early 2000s as she found it was “more of who [I] am.” Golda shared that “I probably think about food a lot more than the average person. Food has always been important to me. It’s been a part of who I am — it’s kinda tied to my Jewish identity, even though I cook a lot more than “Jewish” foods. I grew up mostly on canned foods in the fifties, except for a few odd things like parsley, dill, and parsnips that I grew fresh because they were really important to the soups. For the same reason I was named Gail and called Golda — that struggle with assimilation versus tradition. We were probably Americans first and Jews second. Any important occasion [or holiday], it was homemade soup and more, you know, but dinners during the week, there’s always canned vegetables and canned fruit and sometimes canned soup in addition to the meat and potatoes. I think it was just the times.” While her passion for cooking began early in life, she began cooking frequently during her college years, becoming vegetarian and getting involved in gardening through a program sponsored by the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, sharing how “[My family] built this organic vegetable garden in the grass underneath this eight-storey building, and actually won honorable mention for the best organic garden in a New York City housing project. In like 1974 or ‘75. That was great! And there were no canned green beans that summer, only fresh ones. It was great, it was really a good, good time.
After studying to be an early education teacher in college and spending years working with young children, Golda felt burnt out from the classroom around the late 1980s. Looking for something new, Golda began working at one of the local natural food delis, deciding to work toward a cooking career and going back to school at Seattle Central Community College’s Culinary Arts Program. At the time, she also did community work in a WSU Extension program that took her out into low-income and immigrant communities in the area doing demonstrations on cooking healthy meals using primarily ingredients one receives from food banks, working with those canned ingredients which she ate so often as a child in Brooklyn. Golda explains how during this time, “I’m going back and forth between kids and food, food and kids, and then I just put it together. I teach kids, I teach adults how to cook, and I work in schools planning and implementing a snack and lunch food program. And I work as a personal chef as well. So I’ve put together a combination where I get to do the creative work on my own and then share what I’ve come up with as a teacher. We have a working kitchen, an extension of the classroom at the Montessori school where I work. The kids get involved, everything from setting the tables to clearing off the tables, and making the food in between. The parents are quite pleased — they see how their kids are using real tools and actually making the carrot salad or scrambling up the eggs…It adds some joy to my day to work with the kids as they discover the gooky egg whites or the sloshy pudding or the sticky peanut butter balls. Or, you know, even if they’re not eating the kale, they really like cutting it into ribbons. It’s getting kids involved in an important part of life and helping them to obtain practical skills and cross any gender barriers also.”
In this work teaching children and adults the joys of cooking, Golda found a career that brought her great joy that she couldn’t have imagined when she was frying latkes in her childhood kitchen or attending education classes in college. Her new work allowed her to anchor her life around her core philosophy, which she shared with us: “My philosophy on food very much matches my philosophy on life, which rotates around the idea of living simply, with an awareness of being earthfriendly… Even as simple as eating off real plates and not paper plates at picnics. I gather with a group of Jewish lesbians each year and our friends and children, and we bring our own dishes, you know, rather than bringing paper plates and things like that. But importantly, to have a wide vision—beyond myself. That’s why I enjoy feeding people, because it’s a way to connect over barriers.” This September, it would do all of us some good to pursue new opportunities and make an effort to learn new things, no matter how many years it has been since we were walking into traditional school halls. Consider tapping into Golda’s philosophy of feeding people to connect over barriers by making her grated salad, a quick and easy recipe that could be whipped up to share over a dinner party with new or old friends.
Grated Salada
Golda Simon
Ingredients:
1 cup raw carrots, peeled and grated
1 cup raw beets, peeled and grated
1 cup apple, peeled and grated
½ cup toasted pecans, broken, not chopped
¼ cup shredded coconut, lightly toasted
¼ cup currants or raisins
4 cups assorted lettuces or salad greens
Dressing:
3-4 Tbsp. lemon juice
3 Tbsp. walnut or olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Grate carrots, beets, and apples, set aside. Carefully toast coconut and pecans in separate dry pans. In a large mixing bowl, combine grated items, coconut, pecans, and currants. Mix with dressing, toss well. Serve on a bed of greens.
Recipe from the Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook, available for purchase here.
Individual's stories sourced from the Rainier Valley Food Stories Cookbook.
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