Dress Up: Blackberry Vinaigrette

In my real life, I try to make companies and seriously accomplished business owners/writers/generally amazing people sound really good. For the most part they don’t need much makeup; their success is often all the glitter one could need (and let’s be real, no business wants to be known for their 1980s over-the-top blue eyeshadow marketing techniques). But sometimes, a little wordsmithing and tweaking of the truth to sound especially good to an outsider is all that’s needed to sell a product/service/book.

I’ve long been a lover of words, and while my real passion is writing for myself (and living in a castle someday), I pay my bills by using the written word to promote others. Some days it really sucks and can feel like you’re an ant in a content farm, and other days it’s kind of fun and not unlike playing dress up. You imagine you’re the consumer (or fan or whatever), and you dress up the truth to fit the audience. In other words, you make something sound and look good.

Fortunately, I’m pretty decent at doing that with words, but I’m not so great at dressing up other things. See, I have most certainly worn the same jean cut-off shorts for the last three days. There is nothing dressed up about shorts with holes. And while my closet is full of dresses, I’m much more comfortable in tank tops, t-shirts and Toms. In case you were wondering, California beach bum is not usually the uniform of choice in Washington, DC where the power suit and conservative pumps are the norm (IMO, nothing fashionable should ever use the word pump, which mostly makes me think of gas and lewd actions).

And I’m not great at dressing up salad dressing. This salad dressing is sweet, tangy, and a gorgeous bright purple/blue, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make it look pretty in a photograph. I may have a fancy dancy camera, but I don’t yet have fancy dancy camera skills.

So I dressed up a salad with lots of toppings and poured the vibrant, summer-in-a-bottle, perfect for a picnic homemade vinaigrette over crispy fresh summer veggies (<—– words are worth a thousands pictures, non?).

And if I ate the salad while wearing ratty jeans and a t-shirt with coffee stains, so what? I felt fancy.

Blackberry Vinaigrette

(vegan, mostly raw)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup blackberries
• 3 T balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 T agave
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• Zest from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 t dijon mustard

1. Place the blackberries in a food processor and process until broken down. Take a large glass bowl and place a  fine mesh strainer over the bowl. Pour everything from the food processor into the strainer. Some of the juice will easily strain into the bowl, but for the rest you’ll need to use a spoon to push the juice through the strainer. The goal is to get as much of the juice as you can without getting those pesky blackberry seeds. (Note: I wasn’t going to originally do this step, because I’m not really bothered by seeds, but J.D. assured me it was totally necessary. I leave it up to you.)

2. Pour the blackberry juice back into the food processor and add the rest of the ingredients except the olive oil. Process for 30 seconds or so.

3. Now, with the motor running, pour in the olive oil slowly.

4. Marvel at the beautiful color and see if you can figure out how to dress up an already fancypants dressing.