Salad Dressings

A Salad Obsession: Me, Samin Nosrat and Via Carota’s Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

A Salad Obsession: Me, Samin Nosrat and Via Carota’s Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

This is a very good vinaigrette. Glorious, in fact. The hot new chef, Samin Nosrat, featured this salad dressing recipe in a recent New York Times Magazine food piece titled “Best Green Salad in the World.”  That kind of high praise made me think this…

Barley And Lentil Salad With Feta

Barley And Lentil Salad With Feta

  What a delightful way to get some fiber! According to the medical experts, you need about 30 grams of fiber each day (women/25 and men/38). This salad meets about half of your daily requirement. If you hog all the avocado, you get even closer…

Wicked Potato Salad with Dill

Wicked Potato Salad with Dill

    Apples and potatoes? Why not? This recipe brings together an eclectic mix of ingredients into one delicious whole and the magic of the salad is the dressing which incorporates a whole lot of crunch and a piquant sweet and sour dressing. It’s pretty,…

Neil’s Romaine Salad with Vinaigrette–garlicky, tangy and homemade

Neil’s Romaine Salad with Vinaigrette–garlicky, tangy and homemade

  At dinnertime, my mother always placed a bottle of salad dressing on our kitchen table next to a bowl of pale iceberg lettuce pieces.  Always Wish Bone.  Always Italian. I’m an unrepentant foodie. I love food. Cooking is a delight for me. I love…

Sweet Dreams and Salad Days

Sweet Dreams and Salad Days

Yesterday I had the good fortune to get together with old friends. We ate a lot, laughed a lot and caught up on each other’s lives. Juliet got a lot of attention, too. It was a very good day all around. Today Juliet is sleeping…

Asian Zucchini Noodle Salad

Asian Zucchini Noodle Salad

Spiralizers. You’ve probably heard of them. Toaster-sized spiralizer appliances take boring old potatoes, beets and zucchini–you know, the vegetables that come to you in the elegant shapes that Mother Nature intended– and turn them into noodles. (Forgive my snark.) Nevertheless, I confess that I’m a…

Salad Days!  Summer Squash Carpaccio with Arugula

Salad Days! Summer Squash Carpaccio with Arugula

    With the weather heating up here in Southern California, these are salad days to be sure. A digression: If you’ve ever wondered about that expression, “salad days” has Shakespearean origins. In Antony and Cleopatra, a rueful Cleopatra laments her youthful inexperience and recklessness– “…my salad…

Avocado-Cilantro Salad Dressing

Avocado-Cilantro Salad Dressing

  I’ve lived in my home for forty-seven years and for most of that time we had an enormous Haas avocado tree in our back yard. Talk about an embarrassment of riches! In addition to the abundance of avocados we had to eat and give away…

Black-Eyed (Cow) Pea Salad for the New Year!

  OK everyone. All together now. Say cowpeas. That’s what black-eyed peas are. They are a type of cowpeas, “one of the most ancient crops known to man” according to Purdue’s horticultural Jefferson Institute, and the real shocker is that they aren’t really peas at all.…

Basil Vinaigrette

      There I was, like a jilted bride ditched at the altar, clutching a huge bouquet of leafy emerald green sweet basil and wondering what the heck to do next. Believe me, I had no plans for any major cooking projects using basil…