may 15: immersion blender (aka Baptist Blender)

I received this lovely gift for Christmas, and I'm not sure how I lived without it.

I use it once or twice a week for soups and sauces. And yesterday a friend introduced me to the idea of using it for salad dressing. Genius! (I know, I bet the rest of the world already does this. I'm always the last to find out things...) I used about 3:1 olive oil to red wine vinegar, added a little salt and a splash of honey, and threw in a few strawberries for good measure (because we have them around every day now). This is what we ended up with:

I know, it sort of looks like a smoothie. It was this incredibly creamy, smooth dressing. The hand blender perfectly emulsified the dressing- no further mixing needed (even a day later). We had this over spinach and that was our entire salad. If we are going to manage a salad every day it can't always be fancy. But this dressing kicked it up a notch or two. I make most of our salad dressing anyway, but now I am excited to experiment with all sorts of creamy delights!