Tsunami To Salad...

This is my kids' favorite salad.  Baby spinach and fresh strawberries with a rather uniquely sweet, tangy and zippy Worcestershire laced dressing that almost seems to have been designed to appeal to a kid's palate.

Monster Food

Soy-Worcestershire Dressing

Dresses 6-8 salads (using 2 cups greens)

- 1/4 cup light soy sauce

- 1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce

- 1/8 cup distilled white vinegar

- 3-1/2  Tablespoons sugar

- 2 Tablespoons minced bulb onions (red, brown, white all ok)

- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

- 1/8 cup oil (canola, vegetable, grapeseed or light olive)

1)  Combine all ingredients except oil and stir or whisk until sugar is completely dissolved.

2) Taste and adjust seasoning before whisking in oil. If too salty, try adding a teaspoon of water. Too sweet? Try adding a dash more soy sauce. As a general rule, I always adjust seasoning BEFORE adding the oil because the oil coats the tongue and makes it hard to taste the underlying flavors.

3)  Whisk in oil. DONE. :)

It's on my brain because I woke up this morning to news of an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan and because I am away from my children Monday morning through Friday afternoon while they are with their father in the house I made a home for almost a decade. 'Tis a long and hairy story why, but suffice it to say that it was not my wish, that truth is stranger than fiction, and that as a 23 year old, I was a much better cook than judge of character.

Lucky

In that tangential way we parents leap from a natural disaster on the other side of Earth to our children, wherever they are, I am reminded that life is full of surprises - some of them the worst kind, that I am away from my children should some sort of disaster strike their lives between Sunday at 8pm and Friday at 3pm, and that this salad they both love, the ebi sushi my daughter always asks for, and the beef tataki my son craves often, are all good and lovely moments, memories and indulgences tucked into short weekends between long weekdays of DiGiorno and Maruchan.

While I wait patiently for circumstances to change, food - in the planning, anticipating, preparing and sharing of it - finds a way to calm and comfort us, and to nourish and sustain me for another fight, another day.

shinae