Salad! Finally! (With Persimmon and Pear White Balsamic Vinaigrette)

 You must think all I eat are pickles and jam with the occasional chestnut thrown in for good measure (it is historically the poor person's protein, and that's what most people think of as "lentils" today, and I eat a fair bit of those too...), but no, I eat a well-balanced diet. Most of the people I've ever lived with (there have been almost 30 of those, not including immediate family) have been shocked to see me make a meal just for myself and do courses. Well, what they think of as courses. I start almost every meal with a salad. That way I make sure I get some greens and I don't eat way too much of a heavy main course because I'm starving and my stomach doesn't know when to shut up.

Most of my salads aren't worth writing about, but this one...

...this salad was a bit heartier. Walnuts, a raw goat's milk cheese, shredded carrot and fennel, olives from my favourite Italian épicerie (Roberto's, home of the city's best gelato...and take-out pasta and sauces), belgian endive, and crunchy organic romaine. The dressing is what really put it over the top though.

Persimmons, pears, white balsamic vinegar, Italian dijon from (who else?) Kozlik's, olive oil, and a tiny, tiny bit of salt. I think that was it...the inspiration for it was mostly that I hate wasting things, so when I had to peel the skins of the persimmons and the pears for the fruit in syrup with cinnamon and star anise and I didn't feel like eating 8 fruits' worth of skin, I decided to purée it and maybe use it for muffins instead of apple sauce sometime...but then it was already in my blender and I needed a vinaigrette. So I have a good pear vinaigrette, and I figured that making it from the skins wouldn't bother just me (if it sucked no one else was going to know. It didn't suck, by the way). So I threw in vinaigrette-y things and as I'm obsessed with strong dijon I put in about a tablespoon of that and some more than sweet white balsamic vinegar (a splash), whirled it up with a bit of salt (it was already in the blender after all), tasted, added more dijon because I'm ridiculous and re-blended. Then drizzled in a little olive oil. I knew I wasn't going to really taste the olive oil anyway (plus I didn't really want to, since it wasn't that kind of dressing) so I didn't use more than a tsp or two. It took me 4 salads to eat my way through this dressing (over the course of 4 days, not in a row), AND I ended up using it for a raw carrot dip when my grated carrot ran out. Again, my fennel tasted like absolutely nothing, just watery fibre, which is more than a little sad, but a good man/grocer is hard to find, apparently. I suppose I am looking...for a grocer...not a man. If I happen to stumble upon a man in the process of finding my grocer, well, that would just be the icing on the cake.

Speaking of cake, I had the best cupcake of my life (well, maybe...it was AMAZING! but cupcake quality all depends on what kind of cupcake mood you're in at the time, so "For the Love of Cakes" still probably gets my "best cupcake ever" vote, but this!!!) at, of all places, the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Craft and Bake sale. I had a key lime cupcake that had both lime zest and juice in the sponge-y cake. Light without being wimpy. It must have been baked that morning it was so fresh and moist. The buttercream was so delicious and by the end of it, it was too rich, but the first few bites of it were heavenly dense and smooth. Then there was a graham cookie (home-made) stuck in the top. Just butter, graham crumbs and salt, but some bites had more salt and some just had savoury graham and then some sneaked in the butter, which I only noticed when I wasn't eating the buttercream. I was alone in my car (well, not my car, but not a stolen car...I was alone in my "borrowed" car...lets leave it at that) and I couldn't help but exclaim about how good the cupcake was. I kept looking out the mirrors to make sure no one was watching me enjoy the cupcake. Kind of weird seeing a woman freak out about a cupcake in the driver's seat of a car. Maybe also a little weird that I had a box of 4 and a bunch of other take-out bags of various lunch/dessert things I'd purchased. It was a fundraiser, after all! Green tea mochi? Yes, I think so.

Probably no more strange for passerby than seeing me ice the two yellow cakes I made (from the 1984 Joy of Cooking I was given. THANK YOU!) with orange custard filling and lemon buttercream...to come.