Wild Rice and Fruit Salad

This is a cold salad that they had at St Olaf, and which I always enjoyed. Between my memory and some online references this is what I pieced together.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups	uncooked wild rice
1 cup	sweetened dried cranberries
1/2 cup	slivered almonds
2	small apples, diced
1/2 cup	basalmic vinaigrette dressing
1/4 cup	olive oil
2 tbs	orange marmalade
1 tbs	honey

Procedure:
Prepare the rice as directed. Throw the almonds in a frying pan for a few minutes to toast them. Throw a cit of lemon juice on the apples if you like, as they may otherwise get brown from sitting around as you wait for the rice.

Mix the vinaigrette, olive oil, honey, and marmalade. The best way I found to do this was to start with the marmalade then slowly add the liquids. If you throw a lump of marmalade into a cup of liquid you'll have a hard time breaking it up.

Add the cranberries to the rice as it cools, then stir in the almonds, dressing, and apples. Serve cold.

This was a bit too much fluid; maybe decrease by a few tablespoons the amount of salad dressing.

The apples should probably have been granny smith, but all I had around were some small, soft, sweet ones. The softness was more a problem than anything, causing them to sustain damage during the mixing. Otherwise this was very tasty. It's probably really healthy too.

I took a picture of this, but I don't think I'll share it. As you may imagine, it doesn't look like anything. But I promise, it's worthwhile.

The Most Terrifying Thing

Take about half of a jelly jar and fill it with vodka (as cheap as possible). Add two sliced cloves of garlic and two seeded chopped habaneros. Let sit.

This was originally intended to be a beverage. I thought a bit of spice would perhaps distract from the cheapness of the vodka. Perhaps it would make for a very exciting shot, I thought. Note that it originally had only a fraction of that much spice. And hey, they had chili vodka in Hungary.

It proved to be quite strong, even at the original small dose of pepper. And it turns out that the spiciness didn't cover the bad taste of the vodka; it just added a horrifyingly potent aftertaste.

It gets stronger as it sits. This has been in my fridge for about a week. This morning I dipped the tip of my little finger in it for the tiniest of tastes. It woke me right up.


The plan now is to let it sit. Eventually it may be convenient to basically have liquid spice sitting around. it's basically some sort of sadistic cooking wine. Alternatively, it's an invisible way to do something terrible to someone's food or beverage. But that would be pretty mean.