Tonight, our kind neighbor brought over a bag of lettuce from her garden. A lovely accompaniment to our bratwurst, I knew V would want to make the salad. She loves using the salad spinner (a well used wedding gift). Not only did she task herself with washing and drying the lettuce, but she searched the fridge for what to add to the lettuce. She decided I should slice some radishes, and then upon seeing the carrots, she insisted on making a carrot dressing. This was a novel idea to me. I do, however, really enjoy shredded carrot salad and thought that might do for her. She definitely wanted to start the process that way - so she snapped some carrots in half, surprising me by knowing just what needed to be done to feed them into the food processor for shredding. We changed blades, however, to chop them some more because she wanted both shreds and a juicy consistency. We don't have a juicer and it still wasn't quite what she had in mind. I suggested that with a dressing for salad, we should add olive oil to the carrots while in the food processor to form an emulsion. We also added the juice of half a lemon. V uses lemons A LOT (on salmon, with powdered sugar on German pancakes, and added to a simple syrup for homemade lemonade). We always have a bag of lemons on hand. (Although that was our last lemon tonight! Time for more.) With just a little salt and pepper, her carrot dressing really took form! And it was a super tasty addition to the soft lettuce from our neighbor. I don't know what inspired it, but I loved watching V visualize and create!
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