Quarantining:The Art of Salad Dressing & Nostalgia for Puerto Rican Rice and Beans

I've two bottles of commercial salad dressing: Japanese Miso and Green Goddess--someday I'll use both up. There's really no reason to buy when it's so easy to make your own Balsamic Viniagrette, Thousand Island, or Ranch, which I prefer to call Garden. I had a mess of dill and parsley in my fridge, green onion and garlic from the garden, which I chopped finely.

I microplaned the garlic and macerated it with sea salt and put it into a jar with mayonnaise, white wine vinegar, and sour cream. 

OH! I forgot to add lots of black pepper and Old Bay. But it's still delicious all the same.

I also was craving moros y cristianos or Moors and Christians or black beans and rice. And luckily a lot of vegetables in the fridge that I needed to use up as well like Cubanelle peppers and a jalapeno plus celery hearts, more onions and garlic and cilantro as well as tomatoes from our garden which were about to get too ripe.

I also had carnitas and bacon fat to saute all those vegetables and aromatics.

I could have simmered the stew a bit longer, but I was hungry.

Luckily I already had some leftover jasmine rice but my rice and pork and beans needed something more.

Couldn't find my Amazon ghost pepper green sauce even though I knew it was somewhere in my cupboard, but hunger made me settle for good ole Valentina.

I did find the Doc Ford's Green Flash sauce which will go great on my leftover rice and beans. And with this dressing made, there are lots of salads in my future.