THE NERVOUS COOK RE-EMERGES

We will be attending a Pot Luck this evening, given for our friend Vicki, who has just retired.  She's been the last holdout among our Thursday evening "Small Group", so it's appropriate to celebrate her capitulation to the neighborhood status quo.  I've volunteered to bring a salad because, as you long-time readers may remember, cooking, quite frankly, just isn't my thing.

As always, I scoured various foodie web sites and eventually chose "Mexican Chopped Salad with Honey-Lime Dressing" from epicurious.com ("for people who love to eat").  It seemed to be a relatively classy site that wouldn't lead me astray.

I made the dressing first...a combination of lime juice, honey, olive oil, garlic, jalapeno and cilantro.  I seem to have overbought on the cilantro for two teaspoons, so I pushed  it up to three.

Despite the fact that cooking isn't my thing, I do have a goodly supply of really neat cooking gadgets (thanks primarily to BC, who loves such things).  These are the latest purchase, and the best ever for slicing up leaves like cilantro, parsley and etc.  Trust me--they can slice quite a pile of cilantro in nothing flat.  You may have to control yourself.

This is as close as I'll ever come to creating a semi-still life, but really I'm just organizing the chopping orgy that's about to begin.  I've chopped every vegie in this picture at least a hundred times before, but  I'm about to meet my first...

JICAMA

I must admit I needed help to find it at the grocery store.  I made a run at the rutabagas and the pomegranates before the Produce Manager found me and led me to the Jicama.  I haven't figured out the Jicamas yet.  They're certainly not pretty and, at least this one, didn't have much taste--but they're not offensive nor anything negative.  I guess Jicamas are just what they are and we need to accept their presence and include them as often as we can.

We've made it to the party, we're nearly ready to serve and at such moments I like to camouflage my cooking nerves with hysterical laughter.

Here's the finished product.  Doesn't it just scream Mexican Chopped Salad with Honey-Lime Dressing?  At least it's presentable.  Kind of like when my mother told me that as long as I was neat and clean I was OK.