Yet another use for little-visited blogs: Recipes!

I've been experimenting a bit lately and thought I'd put here a few recipes that have worked well. It beats leaving them on the hard drive until a catastrophic crash. We'll start with last night.

I brought home a mess of strawberries from the Freshman Strawberry sale at school (for two people, half a flat is definitely a mess -- not a half-mess, a whole mess). They smell very ripe and on the verge of going bad. They are, sadly, not local, but shipped up from Florida. So despite their smell, they are very hard and not very sweet. Be that as it may, I knew we needed to use some. We also have a hefty supply of spinach, so I figured it was time for a salad.

I've made berry vinaigrettes before for other sorts of salads (berries, white balsamic, sweeten to taste, stick blend till pour-able; toss with olive oil on the salad). But berry vinaigrette on a berry and greens salad seemed like too little variation. So I went searching for a different dressing. Some of the ingredients I found recommended seemed verrrrry odd. Nevertheless, it came out quite tasty. Here's what we had:

Salad

• 10-12 oz. spinach, washed & large stems removed
• ~2 oz. goat cheese, tossed into the spinach to evenly coat the leaves (just use your hands and mash that stuff all over the leaves. It really is the best way to manage this step.)
•  enough thinly-sliced red onion to make a nice spider’s web covering the top
• 1.5 hard-boiled eggs, sliced (If I’m only making enough for a few of us, I do 10 oz spinach and only two eggs. If I’m doing this for a big gathering, I typically do at least 24 oz. spinach, 4 oz. goat cheese, and anywhere from four to six boiled eggs.)
• 1.5 cups whole strawberries (1 qt. for 24 oz. spinach), sliced after measuring
• pecan pieces, toasted (2 minutes in our convection toaster oven does the trick, or around 20 minutes at 220°F)
• layer it all up in more-or-less this order

Dressing

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. minced onion
• 1 Tbsp. poppy seeds
• 1/2 Tbsp. mustard powder (I added this improvement to the recipe later.)
• 1/4 tsp. paprika
• 1/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 c. light olive oil
• 1/4 c. red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Blend to a smooth emulsion. I use an immersion blender / stick blender. You could also use a regular blender or a food processor.

I know it sounds odd, but trust me on this one. It's quite tasty.