My favorite salad dressing

Next to a good Caesar Salad, Pacific Rim Salad Dressing is my very favorite dressing. We came upon this years ago. In fact, the original recipe was published in the December 2001 issue of Bon Appetit.

It is the best dressing to go with seafood, be it salmon, scallops, shrimp, etc. Tonight we had grilled salmon and Romaine lettuce with Pacific Rim Dressing. It is worth the try.

Pacific Rim Salad Dressing

Juice of one lime

2 Tablespoons Mayonnaise

1 Tablespoon chopped fresh ginger

1 Tablespoon lemongrass, minced

1 Tablespoon sesame oil

1 Tablespoon fish sauce (nam pla)

2 garlic gloves, minced

1 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce ( we always use Sriracha)

1/2 cup olive oil

I large head romaine lettuce, torn in bite-size pieces

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Combine lime juice and next 7 ingredients in processor. While processor is running, add olive oil slowly and process until thickened.

Place lettuce in a large bowl. Add dressing and 3/4 cup of the Parmesan. Toss to combine. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan.

We always use Gourmet Garden Lemon Grass in a tube. Because we don't have a large Oriental community near us, this works very well and is much easier to find.

This salad with grilled salmon and a bottle of French Marsanne Viognier..it just doesn't get much better.

Oh My Mind..

.."you were always on my mind" oops, sorry Willie! There were several news items this past week that have been on my mind.

Did you hear about the new study that drinking scalding hot tea causes esophageal cancer? It seems the hotter the tea, the more chance you have of getting this cancer. How about coffee? It seems coffee does not fit into this plan. Strange, very strange to me. Actually, I don't know too many people who drink scalding hot liquids.

My friends and I have gotten into Skyping. Do you Skype? It is a webcam that is set up on your computer and then you can dial up your friends and see each other and laugh together. I think it makes it much more personal if you can see facial expressions when you are talking. Our daughter and grandchildren also Skype us occasionally and it is a very nice way to keep in touch since we see each other infrequently.

Anyway, Connie and I were Skyping on Saturday afternoon when....BOOM! At first I thought a golf ball had hit our house and then I quickly realized the space shuttle Discovery had just broken the sound barrier and was coming in for a landing at Cape Canaveral. How exciting, and my friend, Connie, in Iowa, was able to hear it also. We couldn't have planned it better.

Well, Bay Hill golf tournament is over and Tiger comes out the winner with one stroke at the last hole and walks away with $1,080,000. That amount of money is absolutely amazing. Zach Johnson from Iowa walked away with $480,000, coming in third. He is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and all of Iowa was cheering him on. Great job, Zach! The Trout volunteered at the tournament for 4 days, gone from home 12 hours each day. He enjoyed it, especially wearing this sharp cap they gave him. He was wielding his power by telling the crowd to quiet down and making sure all important people felt important. What a job!

Well, it's time to go to Curves and get some exercise and then catch up around the house. It looks like it will be a beautiful week in Florida, mid 70's and NO SNOW! That was for all my Midwest friends. Sorry, I just had to do it.

Family Tree and Pictures

In recent weeks, I have been doing some genealogy research. Or, I should say, I have been doing some posting to my family tree and have been fortunate to receive a lot of help from friends and family members as to information, names and dates. I have now taken my paternal grandmother's history back to 1680. What I find so amazing is that it tells me that my ancestors at that time came from Transylvania and Russia. Wow! I have work to do to go back even further than that.

The problem, or excitement, of working on a family tree, is that it can be very time consuming to the point where your eyes are hurting looking at the computer screen. It just makes me wonder how people did it years ago, before computers. I know as a very young adult, I sat down with my father and a large poster board and together we did a little tree making. It ended up being rather confusing, but I still draw information from it today.

The problem is, one branch leads to another branch and WOW it does get very interesting. Now, The Trout, I know, would like me to start recording his information and I do have a lot of it thanks to a cousin who did all this research and gave it to him years ago. It just takes time and believe me, I spend enough time on the laptop.

In conjunction with this, I have a heavy burden lying on me--photographs. I wish we had bought a digital camera many years before we did. Now we have boxes of some-what organized photos and slides. We don't even have a slide projector anymore. And then we got into videos of our trips abroad. We have one of the most delightful scenes at Juliet's balcony in Verona, Italy, where I am asking The Trout (wherefore art Thou?) Surely, someone besides me will find this humorous someday? ...hmmm, doubtful!

I have this wonderful photo album that belonged to my grandmother. Her name is in the front and the date Christmas, 1906. Even the price, $2.25 is written in the front. Surely, that was a very lot of money in those days.

Inside the photo album are many pictures with no names and dates. I recognize this one below, because it is my father's mother on the right, Susanna, and the other lady is unknown. I find that I do not write names and dates as often as I should on the back of photographs either. I like to think I am somewhat organized, but doing this is greatly lacking in my repertoire of things to do.