Cobb Salad

Cobb salad after tossing.

As with so many other recipes, the Cobb salad was invented in 1937 at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles. The owner, Robert H. Cobb, scrounged around his fridge to make a late night snack for Sid Grauman, of the famed Grauman's Chinese Theater. He chopped everything up because Grauman had a toothache. The salad was an instant hit with Grauman and it spread throughout Hollywood.

Since I had all these lovely tomatoes and had already made sinh to ca chua (Vietnamese tomato shake), bruschetta, borscht, and in plain salads with balsamic vinaigrette, I knew I wanted to make something really colorful.

The Cobb salad's many ingredients made me want to display them in such a way to show off all its colors. You can clearly see the hard-boiled eggs, avocados, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, chicken, blue cheese, and bacon. Drizzle with the balsamic vinaigrette I made the other day, and toss.

You'll need:

balsamic vinaigrette (Or substitute with ranch or blue cheese dressing if you prefer.)

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1 avocado, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

3 romaine lettuce leaves, chopped

1 large chicken breast, grilled or pan-fried (I pan-fried mine with balsamic vinegar for added flavor.)

1/4 cup blue cheese

3 strips bacon, crumbled (I prefer to slice the bacon before frying.)

Chop. Chop. Chop. Lay out on prettily on a plate. Drizzle balsamic vinaigrette over and toss. (Incidentally, I had already made my balsamic vinaigrette, but when I searched for a little bit about the history of the Cobb salad, I realized my dressing recipe was almost the same as the original.)

There are so many flavors in this salad that I never get bored munching on crisp lettuce, creamy avocado and blue cheese, salty bacon, juicy tomatoes. Mmm.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

The sun is out. Yay! Weather totally affects my eating habits and apparently my posting schedule. When the weather is gloomy I post about soups or quilting. When it's sunny, or when I hope it stays sunny, I post bright colors.

So much tomato goodness. I've eaten almost all of the 10 pounds of tomatoes I bought recently. I've eaten many of them plain. I've made sinh to ca chua (Vietnamese tomato shake), bruschetta, and added them to borscht. And I've also enjoyed many of them in my salads.

I love balsamic vinegar and often drizzle it plain on salads. But sometimes I kick it up just a notch in this basic vinaigrette. A vinaigrette is an emulsion of several liquids. In salads, that often means oil and vinegar. I really don't do any measurements here so these are all estimates. I just start adding in what I like into a glass jar, close the top, start shaking. Drizzle over salad.


Balsamic Vinaigrette

You'll need:
Any salad of your choosing. I have spinach and mixed greens with sliced radishes and tomatoes.

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
2 tsp dijon mustard
2 tsp capers, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small lemon, juiced

Add all ingredients to a glass jar and shake throughly. Drizzle over salad.

I served mine with pan-fried salmon with lemon pepper seasoning.

The dressing should keep for several weeks in the refrigerator. Although, I admit, mine usually gets all eaten before then.

I've got a really pretty and yummy salad recipe coming up that uses this dressing.

Assembling Your Quilt: Cutting, Measuring Margins, Ironing, and Piecing

So you've figured out your quilt design and bought your supplies. Now, it's time to assemble it all together. You can buy an expensive rotary cutter and board to cut the fabric, or you can use a ruler and mark out patches yourself. Then measure and mark 1/2-inch margins.

Line up the fabric's sides, where it tends to be straight and not where the store cut the fabric, which is not as reliably even. Then place your block on top and mark where you need to cut. You'll get a long strip. Just lay your paper pattern on top of the strip again and mark off the side seams. This gives me pretty straight and even blocks.

After you've cut all the blocks you'll need, it's time to figure out where to sew it all together. Fold your paper pattern where the 1/2-inch mark is and trace it with either a pencil or pen. You can buy special fabric pens that fade in the wash. I've used black ink pens on light colors and since it's on the inside, it doesn't show anyway.

Trace each side of the block. Then when you piece two blocks together, you only have to line up where you've traced the 1/2-inch margins to figure out where to sew. The 1/2-inch margins comes in handy when you have to iron the seams flat. The typical 1/4-inch margin means lots of burned fingers. I work horizontally, stitching two entire rows at a time before ironing them. Then I stitch the two rows together. Iron again. Also iron the topside to make sure the fabric and seams remain flat.

So as you can see below, I have my plain inner border, a row of sashing, and my first row of blocks.

Pin them together by lining up the seams, don't worry too much about whether one block may be slightly bigger than the other. I just pinch in the fabric of the blocks a little bit when I'm sewing so that the seams are still aligned.

This is what the backside looks like. Notice each row has been ironed flat, and as you start piecing together several rows, you need to iron it flat again.

This is what it looks like in front. Notice the even seams? And the black pen marks don't show on this light fabric so no need to buy special fabric pens either.

As for pinching in the fabric a bit, just as long as the seams line up? On the right side of the blue flower, you'll see where the fabric was pinched in to keep the seams straight.

Here's the zoomed out shot. That pinched fabric is beside the acorn-looking corner block, beside the blue flower. See? Barely noticeable.

Here's more as you piece everything together.

Work horizontally and then vertically to make sure your seams line up.

And in case you missed it, the first and last parts are: Start Quilting: Choosing a Design and Buying Supplies Finishing Your Quilt: Basting, Quilting, and Binding