Winter Break

It's cold outside.  In fact, for the past week or so, it's been damn cold for Los Angeles.  I know it's January and the middle of Winter, but in Southern California that usually means some rain and highs in the 70's, maybe 60's.  But it's cold...and I mean, 'bring in your tender plants, frost advisory in the San Fernando Valley, 34 degrees at 7 a.m.' cold.  Unusual.  Strange. Downright weird.  I had to break out the leather jacket, sweaters, and thermal shirts.  The heat has been running every night.

Now, in weather like this, you want foods that speak of warmth and comfort.  Soups, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, a cup of hot chocolate as you're sitting on your couch wrapped in blankets, bundled up and cozy.  How about a salad?  Not the first thing you think of eating when it's cold outside.  I, myself, am guilty of not eating much salad once there's a chill in the air and the Season of Gluttony begins (roughly the time between Thanksgiving to New Year's).  Cookies, wine, cookies, pasta, cookies, cheese, candy, bourbon, bread, and cookies is more like the list of what I consume during the holidays.  There may be a vegetable thrown in there for good measure.  But the holidays are over, it's time to stop the over-indulging, and maybe you've promised yourself to pay more attention to what you're eating and get yourself back to the gym.  Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

A salad on a cold afternoon is much more appealing when it's topped with a warm vinaigrette.  I also added a heap of beans and thick shavings of Parmesan cheese.  The vinaigrette is an easy to whip together recipe from the Food52 site and while it's not advertised as a warm dressing, it's delicious warm with the Dijon mustard and Worcestershire in it.  Add whatever beans you like to this.  I made a white and red beans mix the day before, just because I have so much in the pantry and want to use them more frequently.  They ended up in a bean and vegetable soup, beans and rice, and this salad.  I was lucky enough to gather arugula and curly green lettuce from my window box before the cold nights got to them.  The parsley has held up, thankfully.

January Salad with Warm Vinaigrette

1 cup spinach greens
1 cup lettuce
1/2 cup arugula
1/4 cup fresh parsley
3/4 cup beans, cooked
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
6 Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
Shaved Parmesan
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup Salad Dressing (from Food52)

Mix all your ingredients in a bowl.  Heat 1/4 cup of vinaigrette over low heat for 5 minutes.  Add shaved Parmesan and drizzle with dressing.  Salt and pepper to taste.

From the Boring to the Sublime

Potato salad.  One of the major participants at barbecues and cook-outs countrywide.  I may be pushing the 'sublime' designation...but work with me.  With Independence Day a mere two days away (don't you hate when a holiday falls smack in the middle of the week?...it's not close enough to either the beginning or end to stretch it into a 3-day weekend), I'm sitting here thinking about a huge spread in the backyard, the table covered in red gingham, lemonade in tall glasses, playing horseshoes, the grill fired up, huge bowls of cole slaw, macaroni salad, and potato salad, watermelon, endless condiments, flies buzzing about, a sunburn from not putting on enough sunscreen, and platters of hamburgers and hot dogs.

There is one small problem...I don't have a backyard with the gingham-covered picnic table, a grill, or the horseshoes.  I can squeeze lemons for the lemonade and make the rest of the food, but on a much, much smaller scale.  I can sit out on the common patio here with a Cook-Out for One...made inside!  I'll be happy with a couple of hot dogs and potato salad.

This is going to be one of those admissions where you're probably going to say to yourself, 'How long has she been cooking?'  I honestly believe this is the first time I've made potato salad.  Truthfully.  I cannot remember making it in the past, unless the result was so horrendously awful, I have conveniently forgotten the whole incident.  When I make something like this, I could almost smack myself for thinking there was some mystery that was eluding me.  It's boiled potatoes...with other stuff thrown in!  I think a lot of the hesitation has to do with not wanting to destroy the memory I hold of certain foods.  My mom is a decent cook, and I  distinctly remember how her potato salad used to taste over all those summer cook-outs when I was growing up back East.  I'm not saying hers is the end-all-be-all of potato salads, but I can 'taste' it in my mind.  Know what I mean?


So...here I come with my own twist on a classic.  I know my mom's and most other potato salads I've eaten have hard-boiled egg in them, but I've kept it out of this version.  It's pretty short and sweet.  Measurements are estimations at best, because, well...it's how I work...at least today.  Maybe 'sublime' is too extreme a designation for something so easy...but I do believe it's far from boring.


'Sublime' Potato Salad  (okay...maybe, maybe not)
(Serves 2-4)


3 medium to large red potatoes
1/2 cups diced baby carrots
1/4 cup minced red onion
2 tablespoons chopped pepperoncini
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste


Wash potatoes and dice into roughly 1-inch or slightly larger pieces (skin on).  Add to medium saucepan with enough water to cover and bring to a boil.  Cook until done (about 12-16 minutes).  Drain and rinse under cool water.  In a bowl, combine all ingredients and gently stir to evenly distribute mayonnaise and mustard.  I also sprinkled in a little Magic Dust Rub because that stuff is amazing!  Try to make it a day before, so everything has time to co-mingle.  

Mini-gingham!

Reason Enough

Have I ever told you how I feel about eggs?  It's been a love-hate relationship since I was young.  I pretty much stuck with eggs, scrambled hard.  Eggs kind of creeped me out, but I was still curious about them.  Mom used to eat hers over-easy sometimes and I was fascinated, watching as she broke the yolk and dipped her buttered toast into it.  But my young mind saw something runny and immediately connected it with raw and  uncooked, and therefore, GROSS.  At Easter, the egg holiday of the year, I loved dyeing those hard-boiled eggs all sorts of pretty colours, and once or twice even ate them.  Let me correct myself...I only ate the egg white, and only if it was coated in about an inch of salt.  Then there was a time in my teen years where I had runny scrambled eggs, where I was totally turned off from eggs and didn't eat them for years after that.  The key word again was 'gross.'  In my mid-twenties, after spending way too  much time at the Perkins in Montgomeryville, PA, having breakfast at all times of the day and night, I discovered that scrambled eggs tasted pretty darn good with apricot syrup.  Then another couple of years where I didn't really eat them, and in my mid-thirties, it was back to the same old, same old.  Scrambled, usually hidden in the depths of a breakfast burrito where they served as a backdrop to potatoes, onions, and bacon.

Egg salad?  Don't even get me started.  I used to think it was one of the most unappealing foods known to man.  Slimy-looking, and a sickly pale yellow.  I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.  Then, it happened.  The mind (and palate) opened.  I found myself strangely fascinated with the egg again.  I don't know where exactly the lightbulb went off, but it did.  I started with making egg salad.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A friend convinced me that I could put anything I wanted into it, so it wouldn't be a slimy, sickly yellow goo.  My favourite mix-ins are sweet relish and olives.  Then it was the Big One.  The Poached Egg.  Thanks to a breakfast date at Philippe downtown, I finally tasted that poached egg with its runny center, and after all those years...I liked it...a lot.  At Phil's Diner in North Hollywood, I had a bite of a burger topped with a fried egg.  It was getting better and better.  I made a fried egg at home for the first time a couple of weeks after the burger bite, so I could savour it on its own.

And now...this past week I saw a glorious post on TheKitchn, where an egg was baked in an avocado half.  I wasted no time in trying this one, the avocado on the counter ripe and waiting to be used.  How easy does it get?  Split the avocado in half, pry out the pit, make the hole a wee bit larger, crack your egg into the hole, top it with what you like, and bake it in the oven.  I sprinkled mine with shredded Parmesan, a shake of oregano, and black pepper.  Besides tasting good, it made me want to throw a Sunday brunch.  Of course, wanting to see your friends is reason enough to invite them over.  But think how snazzy the spread will look with the addition of these on the table.

Have I told you how I feel about eggs?  It's love.

Check out TheKitchn's link here and the original post on LifeHacker.