Solid Salad Sauce

I reached into the fridge and grabbed the Greek Dressing. I had a salad already made in the fridge and I was ravishingly hungry. I wanted to dump on dressing and start eating. It isn't exactly Greek Salad Dressing - it's a sort-of all purpose dressing. You can use it for various meats to which you wish to impart a Greek air or on various vegetables to pretend you went to the trouble of making a Greek Salad.

However, it still settles like a Greek Salad Dressing. So I pulled it out of the fridge and gave it a mighty shake. Now before you envision the cap flying off and an oily concoction going all over my kitchen (which is newly cleaned), imagine instead that nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. I give the bottle a shake and the contents do not move. at all. nothing. For all intensive purposes, the dressing has congealed into a solid mass. I stood there perplexed. What on earth? I shook it again. It looked like it was semi-frozen-like. That was odd.

Then it struck me. I had recently played with the setting on my fridge. I found that the milk was turning quicker than it should. I spent several weeks blaming it on the milk manufacturers. Then I decided to make my fridge colder. It appears that the difference between mid-way through mild and medium and just plain medium is a lot. I checked some of my other sauces. They kinda moved but they were very sluggish. I needed to warm the thing up to see if I could get back to a liquid state.

I looked around my kitchen waiting for a brain wave or even a mild idea. I was in the middle of filling the sink to wash the dishes. Warm water - ah ha - I shoved the bottle under the running water. As I stood there holding the bottle, I decided that this was not an efficient use of my time. I briefly considered sticking the bottle in the microwave. However my microwave has a habit of destroying things. I had melted a container in it quite recently and it had several other ruined things on its score card. So instead, I stood the bottle in the washing up water.

I continued to scrounge up the rest of dinner. Every now and then, I would come back to give the dressing a good shake. I could see the olive oil slowing melting and the solid lump in the middle to which the heat had not yet penetrated. The bits at the bottom were slowing managing to mix themselves into the rest of the dressing. The bottle looked ludicrous bobbing up and down next to my dirty dishes.

Slowly it "thawed". Liquidifying the dressing took longer than getting the rest of my meal. By that time I no longer wanted dressing on my salad. I only wanted to see if I could get it to melt. Having accomplished that, I poured a bit on my salad and popped the bottle back in the fridge. Where I am sure it is now slowly solidifying.