“Cold, icy hands tug at my coat as I make my way through the white facades on the block. They brush through my hair and are coalesced in my foggy breath. The very last leaves on the trees desperately hold on as the wind tries to pull them down. The cold barren landscape is covered in white under the thin sheet of amorphous snow. Just as the coldest of winter wind makes its way through the city, images of warm sunny days add up to the longing for spring and hope does its job to keep the cold at bay.”

Just like food, seasons play a huge role in delivering emotions to people and just as they change, so do the feelings they bring. With the winters gearing up from the past couple of weeks, the emotion that flows in has to be hope.

Hope has, since long enough, played a very important job in keeping people going on in the darkest and coldest of times. Be it the hope of one day settling down as a civilization on the unexplored, prehistoric Earth or investing in homes on Mars, hope has certainly the power to push our boundaries over and ahead. Though hope limits itself in certain ways around, it is the sole power that can actually make humankind limitless. Though the harshest of seasons radiating feelings of safety seems quite ironical, I have to say that pretty much everything going around is no less than over- simplified irony!

Well, irony apart, winter is also about that warm, toasty and comfortable gourmet that settles in the form of large, cheesy bakes and creamy bowls of soup. Though you might just be salivating, not everybody wants to put on an extra couple of pounds through the usual wintery stuff and the world always asks for something different every season. Therefore, with the hope of spring in my heart and fine dine in my hands, here is what I call the Pink salad bowl.

Featuring the freshness of the grapefruit in the form of segments, a vinaigrette and some zest, this bowl of winter salad also showcases couscous boiled with kafir lime, roasted tofu rolled through black sesame, pickled pink shallots, toasted pine nuts, tortilla crisps and a lime emulsion topped off with micro-mint right from the garden and a little bit of seasoning.

Though this very dish stands as a winter salad, the grapefruit and the mint symbolizes the hope for upcoming spring and a fresh new decade along with wintery notes from couscous and the emulsion making it more than just a representation of winter and instead of the transition from the cold gruesome winter to something as fresh and as healthy as a pink grapefruit.

While we deal with cold winters this year, remember that the southern hemisphere is still under the grabs of a seemingly difficult summer. Though it lies completely in your hands, please support Australia with a #Icare in the comments section below, because if we don’t care, no fleet of rescuing aliens is yet visible!!!

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