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on the menu
To preface this post, I would like to say that somehow I haven’t been grocery shopping in weeks—I’ve just been managing to use alllll of my produce and also used a lot of canned/boxed food that I had forgotten about. SO I woke up this morning and knew that today was the day—the day to buy groceries.
After spending way too much time at the store (as usual), I came home and was craving something spicy (as usual). I decided I wanted to make a simple salad and some form of potatoes and add in not necessarily a lot of different spices but a wide variety of spicy tastes. What I ended up doing was making a vinaigrette (inspired by one my mom often makes) with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, honey, salt&pepper, some minced french garlic and a little bit of finely chopped red jalapeño, with the garlic and the red jalapeño (which I prefer to green) adding the twist of hotness with the honey still making it fairly tame. I also chopped up a little bit of dried rosemary recently bequeathed to me by my dear roommate Katharine, which I think made it a little less typical mix of flavors.
For the salad, I just used spinach, quartered grape tomatoes, and minced a single pearl onion, put on the dressing and then a little feta on top of that. I then added some rosemary and drizzled the delicious dressing on top. To prepare the potatoes, I chopped them, boiled them with some garlic, and before mashing them I added some olive oil, butter, a little milk and some more rosemary. Perfect! I enjoyed this meal with a classy glass of water and a fancy glass of cranberry juice— what could be better?
Overall, the dinner was a success—I’ll definitely be using the vinaigrette recipe again, maybe playing with the proportions a little bit (it was a little oily), and I think that next time I should use a different type of potato for the mashed potatoes (although they were still delicious). What I enjoyed about this meal is that I didn’t do anything revolutionary but still managed to tweak the flavors and ideas of basic dishes to create a special, spicy supper.
