Experiment: Thai Shrimp Salad

Lamb's lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sweet red pepper, cold steamed string beans, mushrooms, shrimp, chopped cilantro, chopped parsley. Dressing: minced sweet red pepper, oil, sriracha, sweet mirin, fish sauce, soy sauce, fresh lime juice.

Unfortunately all I had on hand was precooked, frozen shrimp. Ideally, they would have been fresh and I would have seared them on the grill. Also next time I would try substituting the parsley for mint, add vermicelli rice noodles and chopped peanuts. But it was a gorgeous salad nonetheless.

If you're wondering if/why I am the sort of person who would have just a salad for dinner, I can tell you that it came after a large, potluck lunch that one of my schools hosted to say goodbye to me which was followed by a tea party with lots of homemade cookies hosted in the home of a teacher on maternity leave from one of Spencer's schools to say goodbye to him! Yesterday was our last day of teaching English is France (sorry to have skipped a blip), and it was sad to say goodbye to the teachers I worked with and the children I taught, but not so sad to leave the petty school politics and disorganization behind. After the gorgeous week we've had, the temperature has dropped back down and the mountains should receive up to 70 centimeters of snow this weekend in some places above 2,000 meters. I think we'll go skiing this weekend because, hey, why not? We're on vacation! And it'll be our last time skiing in France in a long, long time. I think we're more sad about that.