Basic Salad

There is absolutely no reason to pollute the planet by buying those bottles of salad dressing that taste like salt and chemicals from the forbidding aisles of the supermarket.

A basic salad dressing for four is two tables spoons vinegar, two tables spoons oil, and salt to taste.

Use less on delicate leaves like butter lettuce. Start with a tablespoon each olive and vinegar and salt, toss, taste a leaf and add more as needed.

I use Four Monks vinegar from San Francisco. Its a distilled vinegar from wine. For a more complicated dressing back off the basic vinegar and add proportionally balsamic, rice, lemon or a combination for heavier salad leaves like romaine, arugula, or winter greens. I grow my lemons and when I need more I ask my neighbors. Balsamic is available at our farmer’s market from Big Paw. A teaspoon of balsamic will change the dressing considerably.

Olive oil is also found at the farmers market also from Big Paw. There are more vinegars and olive oils at the Saturday Farmer’s Market at San Mateo City College. For a more complicated dressing back off the olive oil and add proportionally sesame or walnut oil or whatever takes your fancy.

These oils and vinegars bring more to the kitchen than the store bought dressings. Given the strange world of corporations he vinegars and oils we don't get from the farmers market come from www.mizkan.com

The basic dressings works on everything and brings out the flavor of fresh cut salad leaves.

Winter brown rice salad

Brown rice is the only food that no one is allergic to. We get Massa Organic from the farmer's market in Chico.

One cup brown rice. Almost two cups water.
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne or to taste
1/2 inch fine chopped ginger or a tablespoon of powder.
1 fine chopped large garlic clove.
Two tablespoons vegetable oil.
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste.

Toss into the 6” oval roaster and in the oven in the winter position with the reflector for two and a half hours.

While cooking mix half a lemon juice with equivalent quantity vinegar. I use Four Monks white wine distiled vinegar from San Francisco. Its the same vinegar that goes in the spray bottles for all the cleaning.
Add one teaspoon sugar and half a teaspoon salt. Mix.
Chop one half red onion into half inch strips about an 1/8” wide.
Mix in the marinade for at least an hour. Turn over every fifteen minutes.

When the rice is done fluff and add
Handful of carrots chopped into 1/8” cubes
Handful radish chopped small
Handful of chopped cilantro
fine chopped chili if available and to taste
Spoon the onions carefully on top then add a couple of teaspoons of the lemon vinegar marinade to taste.

Mix well.