Some bad things happened in the kitchen over the last several weeks. Our plucky, and some might say, obsessively tidy (might) Ms. E, actually had a brief and specialized case of amnesia about what sorts of actions are required to lead to clean dishes. Then some ants, which are always hovering opportunistically in the building, discovered a hole not yet sprayed with organic ant killing spray under the fridge and suddenly, washing dishes meant dealing with ants, and dealing with ants meant washing dishes, and there were all these community meetings and things, and...well...lets just say I didn't cook too much for a bit.
However. On Saturday August 2nd and Sunday August 3rd, I did great battle against foul minions of chaos; Ants and Dishes, and prevailed. See? Clean Kitchen.
I even scrubbed my stove. I took a picture of the stove, it was that shiny clean (it could only have been cleaner when I moved in and took the plastic off of it) when I finished.
Of course in the...cough cough...unspecified length of time that my kitchen was in a state of distress, I ran out of food. So tonight I recycled withered lemongrass, wilted lettuces, the one egg, an old chicken carcass and some leftover wonton skins from a dumpling project, and got to work on dinner.
This is the end result:
Its salad greens with parm, and fried chicken lemongrass things. I also wanted to say that one thing I take pretty seriously is salad dressing.
Lecture break now: I don't hold with store bought dressing. Thats madness. Do you have any idea how much high fructose corn syrup and poly unsaturated fat is in there? What about maldextrose, guar gum, xanthan and stabilizers? And you are supposed to pay 3 bucks because the preservatives are on the house? Whyyyy??? Don't go down that road folks. Real food= you know what the ingredients look like. Much of my motivation for cooking comes from looking at the ingredients list on pre-made food and thinking what percent of it I know the health benefits of. Even that fried stuff thai dipping sauce, which comes from my grocery is simple- its just sugar, chili, vinegar, garlic and water- I checked.
So for posterity I give you this motto: salad dressing is just vinegar (maybe oil) plus fun anything else you have in your house. Tonight's dressing- featured in the unmarked glass bottle involved the following three ingredients and some oil:
Other things I might put in salad dressing include mustard, herbs, pepper, salt, sugar, bbq sauce (the kind where I know the ingredients), and so on. I also have a small library of vinegars- but mostly I use quality balsamic or white vinegar.
And that is the saga of how I returned to my kitchen and my blogging duties.
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