Vinaigrettik with a pickle!

Salat Vinaigrette-- something I was very skeptical of as a child. I did not like beets. They were red and squirmy!

But then I grew up, and now, here I am, recreating recipes from memory (and a few google searches just to make sure I had the basics down).

Let me break it down for you:

4 small beets
4 small potatoes (I think I had yukon gold? They were buttery and sweet and delicious.)
1 pickle (I used a persian cucumber I pickled myself. See recipe below)
1/2 med red onion
approx 1 tbsp olive oil
approx 1/2 tbsp chopped dill

Steam your beets and potatoes. Dice them up into semi-small pieces. Usually smaller is better, but it depends on your liking level of laziness.
Toss them into a bowl.
Add in diced pickle.
Dice the onion, and throw that in.
Add the olive oil and chopped dill, and mix everything together gently. It will all be pink! This includes your hands, if that's what you like to mix gently with. Be careful not to mush when you mix.



Pickles! (And pickled tomatoes!)

These were so unbelievably easy. Everything is surprising me so well!

I based my attempt on this

What I used:
6tbsp apple cider vinegar (as per my friend Maddy's recommendation)
3c water
3tbsp salt
many cloves of garlic
lots of fresh dill
tomatoes and cucumbers

Dissolve together the water, vinegar, and salt. Then throw in the dill and garlic. Then lower in your tomatoes. Splish splash. After a few days in the refrigerator, taste one! You will note that the tomatoes have cracks in them. Gorgeous. I can't imagine anything more beautiful, frankly. But beware--they spurt! All over your keyboard, in fact.

Then, when the brine is tomato-free, you can slice up some cucumbers and throw them in to pickle. A few days later, you have perfect Vinaigrette-making material.



I really liked the apple cider vinegar note of the pickles when in the Vinaigrette. The salad is a bit sweet because of the beets, so my sweeter potatoes and pickles seemed to mesh really well. I don't want to toot my own horn, but that may have been my favorite Salat Vinaigrette, of ever. That may also be because I haven't had any in a long time..

Maybe someday soon I'll make Salat Olivier for you too!

Til then, byebye

-Anna

Friendly Faces

Spring break was so nice. Eating thirty meals a day on a patio surrounded by my mom's driftwood is very missable. Now it's back to this crud:

"The herbs and spices being investigated in this experiment are: anise, caraway, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, and cumin. Your task is to analyze the volatile oils of some of these botanical products and then identify the adulterant in a sample"

Well I am stressing out quite a lot about all of this chemical nonsense going on all over the tests handed to me. So I decided to try this Chai Cola business today. Didn't like it. At least my two little Red Bull buddies are sitting in the fridge awaiting my desperate plea for their gift of vitality. The Russian ballet on ice is on my television screen. I'm glancing at its reflection in my window, because turning around is too much work when you have a lab report to concoct.

On the bright side Jenny liked the cake I made her !



I finally got to employ the (THE) chocolate painting technique. I'm not going to go into how I made the rest of the cake, but it tasted like chocolate milk. With blueberry on top. Actually I'm a fan of the blueberry sauce I drenched it in, so I'll use that again and it will be posted up here for you all, our droves of fans.

I'd also been waiting since Spain (2005, maybe?) to make a tortilla de patatas. The moment finally came! I modified the wikipedia preparation blurb, using green onions instead of the good stuff, and possibly oversalting. Added some milk with the egg too. Basically I had a really good tortilla de patatas but I was not happy to have to share it.



My posts have been lacking in the recipe department lately, but I'm sure I'll be up to it some day soon. After Thursday. Well after Thursday. If I am still alive Thursday, all is well with the world.

Forevers yours&young,

Anna