Most days as a stay at home pop, I try to do something grand for a meal. Meal-time after all is the most visually and viscerally obvious aspect of what a stay at home parent does and so it is my opportunity to express myself.
Often however- when I try to do a grand thing it doesn't work out because it isn't 'art for art's sake'- it is more art for the glory of the artist if you will. The intuition doesn't get involved.
Other days however, I don't seem to aspire very high at all but rather scratch an itch of curiosity or inspiration and the experiment is an effortless, addictive success. On such occasions I feel so gratified that I have fallen into the habit of capturing a photo - it is so easy to do so these days after all.
This large veggie dip platter marks one such occasion. As my boys were studying in the afternoon I prepared a snack large enough to last until dinner so that my wife could enjoy it as well and we could have a second whack at it after dinner.
I doctored up some home-made Caesar dressing with some extra olive oil and less base (recipes usually call for egg substitute or mayo - I use soft tofu) so that the dressing is sort of more oily and fragrant. I arranged carrots, cauliflower and celery (leaves on- makes it look nice- besides I have come to really like clean fresh celery greens since living in China where they think that is the best part of the celery anyway).
So it is an ultra-simple and common platter- but a few adjustments, the fact that most everything is organic and the dressing is a tweaked home-made infinitely superior ceasar dressing made this an attractive and addicting hit. Oh, and we preceded it an hour earlier with another innovation I came up with a couple of days ago- fill a glass with chunks of seedless watermelon, then pour blended seedless watermelon and ice (the result is essentially chilled watermelon juice) into the glass up to the brim. You wind up with chilled watermelon chunks dripping with juice which you wash down with more juice.
It's sort of the ideal way to drive a steak through the heart of a debilitating summer- watermelon craving.
