The Salad Bar

It is impossible to find one meal that seven kids will like.  Even when the oldest in the bunch is 32. When Mom and Terry came back from their Mediterranean cruise last week we managed to get all the step-kids together for a quick jet lagged meal before a couple of them scooted off to work.  So the limitations on this dinner were two-fold: it needed to be extraordinarily simple to prepare, and please the disparate palates and dietary restrictions of nine family members.   Present at the meal were: no-nuts-vegan, regular-vegan, lactose-intolerant-meat-eater, sometimes-vegetarian, I've-just-gorged-myself-on-vacation-and-I-am-only-eating-salad-and-water-for-the-rest-of-my-life, no-onions-please, and y'all-are-so-freakin'-picky.   A build-your-own salad bar was clearly in order.  The base salad consisted of mixed greens, strawberries, oranges, finely diced bell pepper, and avocado.  Available add-ons were soy chicken, toasted pecans, probably some kind of cheese, and actual chicken (ooh gross).  Here was the dressing, served on the side of course (to please the I-only-eat-Thousand-Island contingent):

Orange-Serrano Vinaigrette with Marinated Red Onions

1/2 cup orange juice (2 valencia oranges worth)

zest of one organic orange (ooh, don't eat the peel if it's been sprayed)

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

6 tablespoons olive oil

1 serrano chile, minced

1 teaspoon sugar

a pinch of cumin

salt and pepper to taste

1 red onion, sliced thinly

Add all ingredients to a jar big enough to hold them and shake (mine was pint size, with a wide mouth), if you don't have a jar, a bowl will do, but then you can't shake and everyone knows it's more fun to shake.  Refrigerate for a couple hours or even overnight to allow the red onion to get sweet and mild.  Everyone agrees on the sharp taste of raw onion.  Right?