Quick and Easy Vinaigrette

Salad dressing from the grocery store, even the semi-sacred natural grocery stores, are overly sweet concoctions that lack body and overflow with additives. This simple vinaigrette can be made fresh in 60 seconds and is easily adapted to suit your family's tastes. I can't attest to how it stores, since I make it when I need it.

Basic Vinaigrette (yields 1/2 cup)

Mix the following ingredients in a bowl:

2 TB red wine vinegar
1/2 TB dijon mustard
2 tsp honey
1/4 tsp salt

Whisk in 1/4 C Extra virgin Olive oil. Adjust seasonings to taste. Serve immediately.

Variations:
Add 2 cloves minced fresh garlic or 1 small minced shallot.

Add fresh herbs - rosemary or thyme mix well in this.

Add 1/4 C finely diced tomatoes.

When I am making pasta salad, I add more vinegar or fresh lemon juice so that the bite in the dressing doesn't get lost in the pasta.

Mix and match any of the ideas above - or experiment with your own - and leave the bottled junk at the grocery store for the rubes.

Deer Repellent

My tomatoes have turned me against Bambi.

I am relegated to a container garden this year as we are overrun with deer and rabbits in our neck of the woods. (Seriously, where have all the predators gone?) Normally I love the wildlife, and am enamored by Aidan running to the sliding doors every morning and calling out "Deer? Rabbits? Are you?"

Until a month ago, I was also in love with the container garden. Virtually no weeding. Pretty colored pots. Giant lovely tomato and pepper seedlings courtesy of my favorite plant-pushers, Seed Savers. I was set up to have the most successful, trauma-free garden of the last four years. Two of my plants were taller than my toddler! I should have taken a picture because, as we learned from our old pal Pony Boy, nothing gold can stay.

Enter the deer.

Sad little garden.

They took me down to the stalk. Then the plants recovered over the course of a week! And then the bastards took me down to the stalk again. Only the prickly-stemmed squash escaped unscathed.

Deerpocalypse 2013!!!

Like a discarded popsicle stick...

The sight of two speckled day-old twin fawns frolicking in the trees outside my window almost made me offer up my plants directly...and then I remembered how delicious summer tomatoes are fresh off the vine, hot from the sun, and I toughened up. I taught Aidan to say "No deer! Bad deer!" and we returned to the garden.

Photo bombed!

I wish we could blame the dead yard on the deer too, buddy.

I sprayed the plants with liquid capsaicin from the local feed store. So far so good. Apparently Bambi is not into food that registers on the Scoville scale. We're 3 weeks out from the last deer blight and the plants are making a strong comeback.

Heritage plants unite!

I'm hoping for one solid round of fruit before the frost, and then I'll chalk this up to a lesson learned for next year. If the capsaicin doesn't hack it in 2014, I have a girlfriend who can get me a bag of deer-deterring hair from her salon (it's Aveda, so it's designer!) and there is an African lion rescue 30 miles down the road that gives away free lion poop to spread as a natural form of deer-be-gone. Ah, country life.

Simple Skillet Recipes - Zucchini and Eggs

I can thank my Italian grandma for my great hair, pleasing peasant build, and this recipe that takes advantage of baby zucchini and (eventually) my own eggs. Farm to table in 8 minutes or less.

Zucchini and Eggs

(serves 1)

Ingredients

2-3 baby zucchini (less than 6 inches)
1/2 TB butter
2 eggs, slightly beaten
salt and pepper to taste
fresh salsa (or pesto...or a nice slice of stilton...maybe a fruit compote...)

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat and add the zucchini, sliced thin. Sauté until softened. Add eggs, salt and pepper, and let set. (I scramble them - easier!). Remove from heat, top with salsa and enjoy!

(This pairs well with an NPR Tiny Desk Concert and San Pellegrino Aranciata over ice.)