Salad dressing, tossed salad

On these cold winter days, although it's not officially winter here in the northern hemisphere, depending on which scientific orthodoxy you accept and which country you're presently living, when icicles form on the eaves and on the balconies and the snow crunches audibly underfoot, when great care must be taken while walking on the ice lest you slip catastrophically, and the air is so cold you risk your lungs freezing by inhaling too quickly, when your windshield fogs just by entering your vehicle, when you wouldn't dare walk a block without covering your head and ensconcing yourself in layers of wool and doubling up on mittens, when it comes to food during such weather and warming my soul, my mind inevitably takes me to a fresh green garden salad.

 Psyche!

SRSLY. This craving for raw things has become quite demanding. I got the idea for a salad while passing the meat counter and noticed spinach/chicken sausages. Up till that very moment I never would have even considered such a weird thing, but because of the word spinach I was suddenly iinspired to include them in a salad.

With tiny new local designer potatoes. Which are cooked, those two things, sausage and potatoes, but all the rest is utterly raw.

But first, I really want to impress the importance of whipping up your own dressing. You'll thank me for it, and you'll think yourself such the creative cook, and rightly so. It's a skill that will serve you all the rest of your life.

Let's consider a simple vinaigrette and then elaborate on that however we wish the day we make it, and include whatever we have on hand in our cupboards, our pantry, and our fridge, or even in your car, because some of you keep quite the messy car. Now, as if scanning a Denny's menu designed for illiterates, here it goes quickly in pictures.

* mince a few disks nicked off a shallot

* vinegar

* mustard

* honey

* ginger

* salt (I forgot pepper, oh well, the sausage has plenty of pepper)

* oil ( usually I use something much lighter than olive oil, or mix them)

* they always say whisk as you drizzle, but that's nonsense. You can just dump it all in and whisk however you wish. You can even process. Or, just to be different, you can barely stir and allow the ingredients to separate, that's fun too. It's called "a separated dressing."

Now for the ingredients. Here's where you can really let yourself go crazy. I love mixing traditionally hot things with cold things, processed things with raw things, various proteins that shouldn't properly combine, with the good kind of slow carbs, and all types of lipid -- weird stuff, pork with chicken or shrimp, scallops with bacon, fruits, and grain even. Yay! Anything!

*dances *

But at least be reasonable about it.

In'nit purdy?