Appetite

We ate a salad most days in Buenos Aires...basic ingredients of lettuce, tomatoes, and onion served in a little silver bowl. Plenty for two people. Sometimes corn oil and white vinegar were on the table and it took us awhile to figure out we needed to ask for the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I never saw any other choices for salad dressing so I began to look at salad dressings in the small markets that we passed on our daily walks. If you go to Rainbow or Cub there is a good 20 feet of shelf space devoted to salad dressing and that doesn't include the stuff in the refrigerated section. If you have two people trying to decide which salad dressings to purchase you could be there all day. First you have to look at the ones that have food coloring and rule those out, then consider the sugar content and other ingredients, and finally price. It's exhausting. I like the idea of simplifying the choices for salad dressing. In my survey of 8-10 markets in Buenos Aires I found most of the small ones only carried oil and vinegar. I finally found a market that was about 1/3 the size of the Rainbow on Robert Street and there were four varieties of Newman's Own and one local brand. So five to choose from. I could live with that. What about making my own dressing and unclutter the fridge of all those half used bottles of salad dressing we accumulate? I usually pick up a free weekly copy of the Villager newspaper that is available downtown. An article appeared about salads and making your own dressing in the food section of the 1/26/11 edition. The author Jo Marshall says "Luckily for the cook, the world's most satisfying salad may also be the simplest--an interesting tangle of leaves moistened with just a drizzle of oil and vinegar." I may just start skipping the salad dressing isle entirely!