We are back from our Mexican vacation.  The washing machine is whirring away and we are spending the day in our pyjamas, drinking Mexican coffee and trying to catch up on life.  It was a great trip filled with family, refried beans, boogie boarding, and inventing ways to keep our fair little girl out of the sun.  A security guard asking me about the trip last night as I waited for Dylan to pull up the car – midnight, after 15 hours of travel, with a sleeping baby in my exhausted arms – reminded me that it was “back to reality” now.  I have to say that when you travel with a one year old, reality never quite leaves you.  I was thankful to have family there to allow for some stolen hours shopping, cooking and playing in the ocean.

I return to you with lots of recipe ideas that I will be testing out over the coming weeks.  I must recreate the rice milk that we had at the roadside food stand where we got our papas!

For now, I’m going to keep it simple with a staple recipe from my cookbook.  After a week of meat and cheese and rice…some salad:

This is my mom’s recipe for spinach salad dressing, and though I’ve experimented with many a gourmet olive oil/balsamic combination, it’s still my favourite.  And yes, it has ketchup in it.  I’m classy like that.

Here’s what you need:

1 cup olive oil

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup ketchup

1/4 cup vinegar

1 small onion, diced finely

1 tbsp. Worchestershire sauce

Here’s what you do:

Place all the ingredients in a mason jar (or similar container), put the lid on, and shake like heck.  Serve on a classic spinach salad with hard boiled egg, mozza and bacon, or with some more creative ingredients, like I did here.