Our guilty pleasure, and a fig vinegar salad dressing recipe.

Our kids had last Thursday and Friday off for fall break. I needed all day Thursday just to put my life and house back together after being gone for almost a week, but we were determined to take an outing on Friday. Tia had to work, but we thought we could squeak something in before 3:00.

The kids voted for Gardner Village. Actually the girls voted for that. Kai kept asking where we were going, and I said I wasn't telling him. I knew that unless I said we were going to Salt Lake to play video games all day he would say he didn't want to go.

We got a couple of blocks from Gardner, and ran into huge traffic jams and crowds, and decided no way did we want to brave that. We went to our most favorite place on earth (almost): Tony Caputo's. 

Tony's is a deli/gourmet food store/specialty chocolate store (see the jewelry like chocolate above?)/wonderland.

I worry a little about turning my kids into gourmands, which I think is a wasty, expensive way to live, but oh well. I'm taking them down the hole with me. So far we are just responsible, reasonable foodies.

It is stinking hard to get out of here without spending a mint, but we started at the clearance section and then worked our way around. It didn't help that we were a little hungry...

The cheese cave. Actually I think now they may have two? 

We looked, but passed on the cheese.

But not the olives! We have done an assortment a few times, so now we know our favorites. We filled a half pound cup.

At the end, this was our haul: Beluga lentils, Lebanese couscous, dark chocolate covered orange slices, Italian candies, Fig vinegar, a date and coconut cake (actual dates and coconut pressed into a cake form), Our olives, some almond halva, and three citrus and pink pepper chocolate bars.  This is not all we WANTED to get mind you, but I felt lucky getting out without twice this much. SO many temptations!

We hurried home because Tia had to get to work. I'm so pleased with how responsible she is about her job. While we were there we thought about getting lots of stuff (it's a bakery), but ended up with some free bread samples and a cookie for Jeff.

Tia multi-tasked taking our order, and taking an order over the phone. She does good work!

Here's a recipe for a great salad dressing using this sweet, mild fig vinegar (it almost tastes like fig jam mixed into the vinegar --very yummy if you ever get up to Tony's)

Fig Vinegar salad dressing:

1 cup mild oil (olive, vegetable, etc. --or use EVOO if you prefer)

1/2 cup fig vinegar

2 t. brown mustard

1 t. orange zest -optional

salt and pepper to taste

Throw everything but salt and pepper into a small blender jar, and whiz for a few seconds. Taste, then season accordingly.

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