STILL ALIVE

One day I found a bag of supermarket salad at the back of my fridge. Still in its original packaging, well past its use-by date  by several weeks. And yet the leaves were firm, intensely green. No sign of decay. No trace of anything gone wrong.

I stood there and wondered: how is that even possible?

I rarely buy supermarket salad anymore. Not because something is wrong with it exactly. I simply stopped trusting it. Freshness, I realised, is relative. That bagged lettuce can sit for days  weeks, apparently  looking crisp and inviting. Looking alive. Long after it has stopped being so.

The lettuce from my garden behaves entirely differently. Leaves picked straight from the bed within twenty minutes of coming indoors. They lose their tension, change their texture, and breathe. After a few hours they look spent and sorry.

But those are the ones I want.

You don't always need to plant a garden or sow classic salad varieties. Sometimes you just need to look around. Nature, at this time of year, offers its first green treasures freely.

From February I gather hairy bittercress  it self-seeds in autumn across almost the entire garden, so by early spring I have more than I need. It has a gentle heat to it, and sits beautifully alongside egg, fresh curd cheese, or as a sharp green note on an open sandwich.

March brings the first young leaves of jack-by-the-hedge, wild garlic, sorrel, dandelion, chicory, nettle. I use them in fresh spring salads. These are plants that are difficult to confuse with anything else.

Many of them carry memories too.

Jack-by-the-hedge pesto is spring in its purest form.

Spring comes a little later in Poland than it does here in Wales. Wales is generous with its green from February onwards, while in Poland the whole world is still locked in winter sleep. Those first wild leaves don't appear there until April.

Sorrel soup with egg is the taste of warm Polish spring days. It appeared on our family table every year at the feast of Corpus Christi, and without anyone planning it, it became a kind of ritual, a marker of the season, a fixed point in the family year.

Every season has its rhythm, its intensity, its brief moment of being fully alive.

Since that long-expired bag of lettuce, I look at supermarket food a little differently. I no longer ask how long something will last. I find myself wondering instead  whether it still lives.

Jack-by-the-Hedge Pesto

Also known as garlic mustard  foraged in early spring before it flowers.

You will need: fresh jack-by-the-hedge leaves, pine nuts or pumpkin seeds, Parmesan, the best extra virgin olive oil you can find, salt, black pepper.

Wash and dry the leaves thoroughly. Toast the nuts or seeds briefly in a dry pan  it deepens their flavour considerably. Add to a blender with the leaves and finely grated Parmesan. Pour in the olive oil gradually, blending to a texture of your choosing  smooth or slightly rough, both work. Season with salt and pepper. Jack-by-the-hedge pesto is more assertive than classic basil  a little goes a long way.