Drowning in Gray; Rainbow Salad

Last night, it snowed heavy, white-out, huge, fat, fist-sized flakes. We sat inside the snow-shaker with the outside light on, watching the show.

 Later on, it warmed up above freezing for the first time in a month, and rained.

Not enough to wash away all the snow, but enough to keep the skies gray. Enough that when you sit in the outhouse, there's a drip of gelid water that lands right on your knee. And drips again.

I'm struggling with the gray since returning from Israel. Yes, the rain washed the snow-cover from the spruce trees, and they're my favorite green; yes, there are still some mountain ash berries on the trees, scarlet red. But mostly, there's gray, there's blanketing white. I feel like I'm in a dream where my limbs are numbed to robotic, leaden treads and when I take a step, it sends me in a slow-motion spiral so that where I thought was was going is on the other side of the floor. An end of everything seems so attractive right now--just turn out the lights and be finished in one last gush of red.

But I'm not supposed to think that way! I go through the motions.
For Phil's birthday, I even made a rainbow salad, so that all the colors could be in a bowl, if not before my eyes.

 Of course, the light makes any kind of colorful photography kind of grayed over...
Salad was:
Pomegranate seeds (red--persephone in the underworld)
shredded carrot (orange)
The dressing (see below) (yellow)
lemon zest (yellow)
shredded ginger (yellow)
spinach (green)
purple cabbage (that blue-purple end of things)

Tahini-Mustard Dressing
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon flax meal
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons miso
1 teaspoon black pepper
water to thin as necessary

Blend all together, adding water as necessary. This mixes up really easily, would probably even be doable by hand, but even an underpowered blender can easily do it. (I used my hand-held blender, as you can see in the salad pic.)

Even in the pillows of gray, there can be light deliciousness...