Columbus Foodie

We can just call this one “the salad that damn near ended my marriage”. After last week’s artichoke debacle, when I found out that this week’s Whisk Wednesdays also incorporated artichokes, I kind of curled my lip and procrastinated all week, because last week I discovered that I don’t like artichokes unless they’re an unidentifiable ingredient in another dish (still don’t know what I’m going to do about next week’s soup, which have one of the things I loathe most in the world - mussels). And since initial reviews of the other Whiskers was “meh” at best, I really wasn’t looking forward to it.

So needless to say we waited until the last minute to even start, planning on making it Wednesday night as part of dinner. Mistake #1. Knowing my history with artichokes, I decided to forego the whole boil/pluck process and instead just opened a can of artichoke bottoms. My husband fine honed his knife skill by chopping the tomatoes, cauliflower, green beans, etc. Let’s just say that my husband’s knife skills, while precise, are snail slow. He was done chopping by midnight. And I don’t know about you all, but a heavy mayonnaise dish doesn’t sound appetizing right before I go to sleep. So we decided to hold off on finishing the dish until morning.

Making the mayonnaise was tedious. Almost a half hour of whisk whisk whisking, always having to do it drop by drop lest the emulsion break. We took turns whipping and dripping, and by the time we got ready to add the vinegar both of our arms were sore. And here’s where things went really wrong.

Knowing that the mayonnaise recipe, as written, makes a ton, we decided right off the bat to scale it down to half. My husband goes looking for a tablespoon measure to add the vinegar, and makes it clear to me that we needed to add a tablespoon. So, with that in mind, I grabbed the half tablespoon measure and added a tablespoon of vinegar to the emulsion. It looked kind of watery at that point, so I asked him “you did scale down the vinegar, right?” and the next thing I hear from him is “aw shit”. My head spun around faster than Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. And at that moment, I channeled Satan. Visions of another half hour of that whipping hell went through my mind and I flew off the handle. He made things worse by blaming the whole thing on me. Wrong idea. The mayonnaise tasted beyond vinegary, and at that point I was ready to throw the whole kit and kaboodle, including my husband, right out the back door. Let’s just say that this led to a fight of epic proportions, one of the worst we’ve had in a long time.

We never did remake the mayonnaise. The salad, frankly, was awful. But I kind of expected it to be, because the combination of flavors just didn’t sound good to me. We kept it around long enough to photograph, and then tossed it, along with the leftover vinegaraise. So sorry about the delay in getting this up, but I had to calm down first.

Let’s just hope that mussel soup next week doesn’t land us in divorce court.