This Guy With the Sleeves of Tattoos Wants You to Toss Your Own Salad

There's a book signing happening this Sunday, September 10, for Toss Your Own Salad by Eddie McNamara at the outdoor Beacon Farmers Market on Veterans Place (next to Towne Crier Cafe). McNamara's cookbook features meatless recipes. Now, I'm a meat and potatoes kind of gal, but I'm always looking for ways to jazz up a salad instead of wasting food in the fridge. Sometimes it's a lack of creativity or fear of knowing what to do with veggies, aka salad-tossing-block (think writer's block, but for making salads). Those days might be numbered.

The vegetable-forward timing is right as we enter the season for autumn detoxes and The Harvest, but something else caught my attention when people interested in this book signing sent emails to A Little Beacon Blog about it. The author, Eddie McNamara, is an ex-NYC cop, having entered the force right after college. He then spent several months after 9/11 helping out at Ground Zero, which led to his desire to retire due to PTSD, and he took up cooking. Eddie started a blog of the same name as his book, and I investigated a bit to get to know him. Here he is below, during a stop on his book tour:

His writing is hilarious and makes salad-tossing actually sound tough - as tough as the tattoos on his arm - as well as delicious. For any man wanting to eat more salads, this is the cookbook to get. Get it online (I prefer Barnes & Noble simply because Amazon is trying to take over the world) or find a signed copy at the Beacon Farmers Market. You might also check Beacon's local bookstore, Binnacle Books near the library, to see if they have a few copies). How tough is this guy? If his cop background wasn't enough, he even has a skull and crossbones in his blog logo! Not that salad-making has to be gender-specific at all. The literary approach to his salad-making is just so funny, you must read his blog. His style reminds of me of the Ink and Coffee blog, penned by our very own Marilyn Perez, an editor here at A Little Beacon Blog.

"Toss Your Own Salad" was just added to a 12 Must-Read Summer Cookbooks list at People Magazine. In Eddie's words: "People Magazine said you MUST READ my book. Bieber, every Kardashian, Drake, and J-Lo agree."

So with those endorsements, enjoy it, and maybe talk to him on Sunday. His people claim he will be providing recipes on the spot: If you give him a vegetable that you want to eat, he'll tell you how to prepare it and what will best accompany it. For the carnivores in the room, fear not, you can always toss some hamburger, fish or chicken into salad recipes while still getting more veggies into your life.