After eating leftovers all week (thanks, Mama Phan!), we were ready to eat something different tonight.  Mr P wanted to make lentil soup, and it took much longer than anticipated, so we ended up eating bigs salads for dinner instead of soup and a small side salad (but yay for delicious lentil soup for tomorrow!!)

We topped red leaf lettuce with grape tomatoes, red onions, pears, grapefruit, walnuts, and a little bit of extra sharp cheddar cheese.  We normally make some version of a typical oil, vinegar, sugar, lemon juice, mustard, etc. vinaigrette, so I wanted to switch it up and go for some {balsamic} vinaigrette!  I never made it before tonight, so I looked to none other than the FoodNetwork.com to find a quick and easy recipe.

Emeril pulled through for us, with a simple vinaigrette with just balsamic vinegar, oil, brown sugar, garlic, salt, and pepper (woooo we had it all and I didn't need to run to the store again to pick up that ONE ingredient that makes the sauce).

We certainly enjoyed the change-up, and hope you do too!  Next time we will add in some apples and blue cheese (and load up on the walnuts!!)


Emeril Legasse's Simple Balsamic Vinaigrette
(find the original recipe here)

Ingredients:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar (more if you like it sweeter!)
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup olive oil  (we used a 2:1 olive oil to vinegar ratio instead of his given 3:1 ratio because vinaigrettes always call for too much oil for our tastebuds)

Whisk together all ingredients but the oil.  Slowly add oil while continuing to whisk.  Presto!

Serve over salad of choice (though we highly recommend it has walnuts and some sort of fruit!)

After visiting family in Ohio, we came home with delicious fudge for dessert every night!!  Yum! Thanks, Diann! We love it!

Toodles.
J&H