Those of my friends who know me know I love to cook.  No need to do that here with these great Thai chefs whipping up yummy Thai food that makes me turn bright red and sweat out of my eyeballs.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the spice!  It’s all very delicious or as I would say in Thai… A roi marrk ka (translation = very delicious).

And the salad here is grown hydroponically and is so fresh.  Only problem is… the salad dressing is the processed stuff.  So for the past several weeks I’ve made the salad dressings.  I made a maple vinaigrette (though I think it’s imitation maple syrup but still yummy), a ginger sesame vinaigrette and a lemon vinaigrette made from the lemons grown on the island. Sounds lovely to go out and pick lemons but it’s not so easy.  The island is for sure taking itself back over the years and being a bird refuge there are Petrel burrows everywhere.  I’ve mentioned this briefly before that if you step on a burrow you will sink into it and essentially kill the bird by suffocating and trapping it in there.  You have to step on the entrances of the hole because all the flat areas around it are the roofs and will cave in.  Of course the lemon tree is surrounded by petrel burrows and especially uneven ground.

The National Fish and Wildlife people have created these sort of snoopy like snow shoes made out of plywood that disperse your weight so you don’t sink into the holes.  They work most of the time but are not easy to walk in and especially not easy to walk in a mine field of  petrel burrows with Albatross chicks snapping at you wondering what the hell you are doing.    So to make this vinaigrette I needed to first get to the tree and get the lemons which was the hardest part of all.   I had to strap on my plywood petrel shoes and step my way through.  It felt like a vertical game of twister.

The lime trees are much easier to get to so I welcome any lime salad dressing recipes!