eat your greens.

On Mark Bittman's new blog on the NYTimes website, which I'm liking (sorry, Bill -- I know you think he's a dunce), he posted a recipe for a simple vinaigrette. It's OK, but I'm not fond of raw shallot in dressing, especially because I tend to make it in a decent quantity and keep it in the fridge for a week or so (at which point the shallot gets too sharp and overpowering). I like this instead, my own variation on a Martha Stewart recipe that I make almost exclusively:

3 T dijon
1 T honey
1/4 cup champagne vinegar
1/4 to 1/3 cup of good olive oil
S+P

I dump it all into an old jam jar with a lid, then shake it all up (really shake it). The oil emulsifies just as if I'd taken the time to whisk it carefully. Come spring when the herb bed wakes up, I'll add some chives, parsley and tarragon -- or, even better, just snip the herbs right into the salad bowl along with the greens.

At Findlay Market last weekend, we came across a local grower who's doing hydroponic lettuce this winter -- she had a huge table of small bushel baskets filled with butterhead and red oakleaf lettuce. Delish.

It really made me (even more!) itchy to plant my vegetable garden. I took graph paper, pencil and my garden-plotting template and, with my Cook's Garden catalog for reference, sketched out how the veggie bed will come together. Here's what's to come:

Tomatoes -- one plant in each of the 4 corners
Zucchini and cucumbers -- on the short sides of the bed, trailing up on the same support system that will manage the tomatoes. I hadn't considered growing them vertically, and was pleased to come across that handy solution.
Lettuce -- four varieties, to be planted in succession during spring, early summer and fall
Beans -- the haricot vert style Triumphe de Farcy that I love, plus a new yellow filet bean that'll be fun to try
Bell peppers -- two red ones
Carrots -- a lovely mix called "Kaleidoscope" that has red, yellow, orange and red ones

Currently, my kitchen windowsill holds a pot of 5 or 6 fragile basil plants, which I'm carefully nursing along in hopes that I can transplant them back into the herb garden in May. I plucked the tiny seedlings out of the ground after last summer's basil had withered from cold; it had gone to seed, and as I was digging up the dead plants I spied these little guys and decided to tuck them into a pot with a bit of mulch on top, to see if they'd grow inside. Basil is just about as grumpy as I am to be locked up indoors during these cold, short days of winter. I keep talking to it, telling it that the days are getting a bit longer and that soon I might even be able to leave it outdoors on the driveway on a sunny afternoon. I think we've come to some kind of understanding that we'll both hold on fast, in hopes of warmer days to come.