Vinaigrettes, Reading...........

Before I forget, I concocted a very delicious and what I think is probably an unusual vinaigrette dressing last evening for our spinach salad. Our spinach salads consist of baby spinach, chopped celery, little chunks of apple, sliced strawberries and sometimes tomatoes, kiwi fruit and pecans. I've always made my own vinaigrette and have added various spices to it at times. Last night as I was tasting it I decided that it would be very tasty with some peanut butter in it........and it was. I didn't say anything about my new flavoring to Merle. Toward the end of the meal, he said "that's some pretty tasty dressing there". I smiled and told him the secret ingredient. Anyway, here's my dressing recipe. If you have your own vinaigrette recipe and lots of people do, just add some peanut butter to taste. I used crunchy peanut butter because that's what we had. Either crunchy or creamy, it makes the vinaigrette creamier.

PEANUTAGRETTE (my measurements are close estimates as I don't measure my ingredients)

1/2 cup canola oil (I don't recommend olive oil for this recipe)

4-5 T Balsamic Vinegar

1 or 2 packets of Splenda or sugar to taste

About 1 T Dijon mustard

Coarse black pepper to taste

Put these ingredients in a jar with a lid, shaking to combine or whisk them in a bowl. In a separate small bowl, put about 2T of peanut butter, pour some of the vinaigrette over it and stir it to liquefy the peanut butter. Add more vinaigrette until the peanut butter can be poured, then combine everything and mix or shake it well. Taste it and add more of anything until you get the flavor that suits you best. Chill it for at least 1/2 hour although I've use it sooner than that when I was in a hurry. Pour it over the salad just before serving and toss. Enjoy!

WHAT I'M READING NOW

Occasionally, I like to pick up an biography or an autobiography of someone. I've read about adventurers (my favorite) and certain celebrities that I've always wondered about. I'm finishing up a biography written by Lee Server about Robert Mitchum, an actor from around 1950 - 1980. Here's an obituary from CNN in 1997 that briefly tells about his life. The book, "Baby, I Don't Care" is a well written, gossipy book depicting a intelligent, poetic man who was also very crude, a womanizer, violent at times and a big time boozer. Before reading this book, I read one by the same author about Ava Gardner and it was very similar in that this sad, beautiful woman had the same crude behaviours, foul mouth, excessive drinking combined with violence and amazing promiscuity. If these books are only accurate by 50%, these two lives were a mess, despite the so-called Hollywood glamour and piles of money. Robert Mitchum seemed not to have as many demons as Ava Gardner, but I don't envy them their turbulent lives. Despite reading about the wrecked lives of these actors, I enjoyed both books with the inside stories on movies and other people in the business during that time...
On a more uplifting note, a friend gave me a CD of Michael Fox's book called "Lucky Man" and I started listening to it today. He wrote it, reads it and it is really good so far. At this point in the story he has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and is coming to terms with that. I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of it. He actually states that if he had a chance to go back to the way he was before he was diagnosed, he wouldn't hesitate to say no - his life has been so much better since then. That's a pretty amazing statement and I'm looking forward to hearing how he came to feel that way.

I'm watching the skies right now because I had planned to head out to the bike path for a ride. However, the skies are pretty dark, so I had better wait a bit and see what happens.

In the next couple of days, I think I will be able to post a picture of my painting on easel. I've done some sketches and am starting to feel somewhat inspired, so I may actually do something here soon. Here are a couple of pieces of artwork I've done in the past before I started doing abstract paintings.
This was a greeting card I designed when I was doing some greeting card work. I sold a couple of card designs and then had a little falling out with the card company. It's a very competitive business and you can submit over and over to different companies and get your work rejected over and over also. I know that just to be talented is not sufficient, you have to be persistent. I've kind of decided that every once in a while I will try to get my work exhibited and see what happens. But, I don't think I'll let it become an obsession. It's always been my opinion anyway, that real honest to God artists are people who are completely absorbed in their craft and cannot not do it. I'm not that way although I love to create a nice drawing or paint a picture - I can put it aside and do other things for awhile, like blogging.

Here's another piece of artwork I created. It also is a greeting card I was asked to make for the card company. I don't know how it turned out in the finished product.I don't think it's going to rain, so I'm going to brave it to the bike path. I'm saving the marmot for tomorrow's post. It's a story that needs its own space.