Sunday, June 19, 2011

A Spoonful of Sugar

Everyone knows the classic Mary Poppins song, "A Spoonful of Sugar."  My mom never seemed to take to this approach with me and my brother, much to my dismay, though my grandma did use quite a few spoonfuls of sugar to try and get my hiccups to go away once.  I remember knowing that it wouldn't work but allowing her to feed me sugar anyway because it was so delicious.  What a brat.

Nowadays I can choke down medicine without any sugar - likely due to my militant mother training me early on to do this - but sometimes I need a spoonful of sugar to get down my salad.

You see, it started this winter when the greens at the market were neutral at best and bitter at worst.  I make my own salad dressings now, and I had been making our balsamic vinaigrette with just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper for months.  John and I were both choking our salads down but not really enjoying them.

Enter: sugar.  I found that if I put just a teaspoon of sugar in our salad dressing it brightened up the flavor of the entire salad immediately, and John and I were eating tons more salad as a result.  I rationalize that the downsides from the extra sugar calories are balanced out by the leafy greens nutrition anyway.  That's Nutrition by Kathy, at least.

Here's my new "recipe" for salad dressing, in case you need to find a way to boost your leafy green intake too:
Add in a ratio of 3:1 good olive oil (not the cheap stuff): balsamic vinegar (depending on how much salad you're making).  Whisk in a teaspoon of sugar, a shake of salt, and a few cranks of the pepper mill.  Toss with greens immediately before serving.  Enjoy your slightly sweetened salad!

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