Tag Archives: balsamic vinegar

Feb3

Pint-Sized Caprese

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Caprese Pops

I love shopping at Central Market.  It’s a good idea to go on an empty stomach, as they are always sampling a ton of delicious food.  I was picking up some fresh basil when I saw a woman putting together skewers of tomato, basil, and mozzarella.  After enjoying my little treat, I decided we definitely had to have Caprese Pops as our salad with dinner.

This dish (I’m not sure you can even call it a recipe) was easy enough to assign to my seven and four-year old daughters — and they loved making them.  I set out grape tomatoes, basil leaves, cubes of mozzarella, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a grinder of sea salt (I like Maldon), and pepper.  They did the rest.  It seemed the tomatoes were magically removed from their skewers after reaching the dinner table, but I was happy that they at least tried them.

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Jan29

A Delicious Pantry Upgrade

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A Few Selections from Oil & Vinegar

I was recently out with my daughter Samantha at Watters Creek, our favorite outdoor shopping center.  I had heard about a new store that had dozens of oils and vinegars “on tap”, which sounded so intriguing.  Samantha was having a good time outside and resisted at first, but once I got her into the store, I couldn’t get her out.  We had so much fun sampling Oil & Vinegar‘s fares with the tiniest bits of bread on toothpicks; I could see I had a little seven-year old foodie in the making.

The concept is a lot of fun — you can pick from different sizes and shapes of glass bottles, which can be brought back to the store to be refilled (nice for the environment too).  You can try everything before you buy it.  In the end (literally, an hour later), Samantha chose the Rosemary Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which is great on its own, and also delicious mixed with the Parmesan Dipper mix she just had to have.  We also bought the Lime Riesling Grapeseed Oil (great for cooking fish at high temperatures), the Fig Balsam Creme Vinegar (so far we’ve just mixed it with Rosemary EVOO for dipping, but it will be perfect in salads and for vegetable dishes), and finally, the White Truffle Oil, which, as my friend Tara says, makes pretty much everything taste 1000 times better.

I want to go back to try a few more things, but I’ve told myself we have to finish at least one of these existing bottles first.  A fine excuse to keep on cooking.