Fortunately, I was reading a book on creativity just before I settled on the dressing I would prepare for my festive holiday salad. "Positive Living and Health: The Complete Guide to Brain/Body Healing and Mental Empowerment" by Mark Bricklin and the editors of Prevention Magazine was a vintage tome of more than 500 pages that I bought last year at my local health food store, inspired when the book buyer there shared some favorites from her large collection. It was published in 1990. That was just after I had left to be hired by Prevention Magazine Health Books. I worked on books like this one, which today I find almost surreally helpful with what appears to be its more than 25,000 health and mind tips from what is still the country's leading health magazine and publisher.

I was creative then and I am creative now. However, something about the book's readings and exercises done while bundled up in a jacket at my patio table, as it turned from sunset to dusk to dark, really cleaned out some creative cobwebs. This is a time of day — which I knew even before reading the book — scientists say, if light hits the pineal gland near the brain through the eyes, it can create more of the hormone melatonin, affecting circadian rhythms and possibly helping one to sleep better. From this twilight reading, I learned formally for the first time that the four aspects of creativity are: "Fluency: the ability to come up with many ideas in relation to one situation; Flexibility: the capacity to look at the situation from a whole new angle; Elaboration: adding details to the situation; Originality: the ability to come up with a completely new, never-before-tried, super idea."

The authors then, noting a New Age Journal article of that time, recommended drawing 30 small circles on a piece of paper and, within a few minutes, drawing as many different things stemming from the circles as you can. Then the authors added their own task: thinking, within a minute, of as many different things as you can to do with a brick. Keeping with the culinary theme, I drew things from the circles like cracked eggs, plates, dish brushes and mixing spoons, and used my brick as a weight for a pie pan, a cookbook collection bookend and a stepladder for my pantry. Last was a 17-question test with statements like, "I'm attracted to the mystery of life," for which you get the most points if you agree.

I was attracted to the mystery of salad dressing, and had been independently trying to think of how I would craft one for my festive artichoke heart and hearts of palm mixed greens salad. Upon entering the house, even though I was chilly, I couldn't resist taking a sip of my homemade super antioxidant iced tea, which had always been flavorful, with a white and green tea mango-peach foundation, honey and lemon juice, but which I'd recently made even more delectable with an addition of a cinnamon-based spicy rooibos tea. Suddenly, with my creative fluency and flexibility flowing, I knew I had found my salad dressing. It fit the mode of a mock red wine vinegar or pomegranate salad dressing (since the concoction is sweet with a tang and the rooibos turns it a beautiful shade of ruby), and had so much flavor when I dipped some romaine lettuce and pear tomato halves in it that it didn't need any oil, but easily surpassed any of the many such oil-free dressings I had ever purchased at hefty prices.

Thank you to the author, Mark Bricklin, then-editor-in-chief of Prevention Magazine, who had been my big boss all those holiday seasons ago. Without this blast from the past, which, in our Internet-based sales world, is always still just a few days shipping away, I never would have fired up the cognitive process in such a way to have thought of a glass of iced tea as a salad dressing.

In addition to that recipe below, following are a few other "fluid" and "flexible" foundations for festive feasts that came to mind immediately upon waking the morning after that night of dusk-influenced sound sleep:

— Prepare gourmet nut butter and jam crustless canapes for passing at holiday parties. A few ideas: cashew butter and peach jam sprinkled with minced rosemary on rye toast; almond butter and cherry jam with freshly ground black pepper on multigrain sprouted bread; and peanut butter and mint jelly sprinkled with minced fresh mint on Hawaiian bread or challah.

— Hot chocolate popcorn or granola. Add mini marshmallows to popped popcorn, spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray and drizzle with packaged hot chocolate powder, or sprinkle packaged hot chocolate powder over your favorite granola recipe to which you've added mini marshmallows before baking.

— Pull apart a few chocolate-covered peppermint patties into small pieces and bury within a candied mashed sweet potato side dish before baking.

SPICY WHITE, GREEN AND ROOIBUS TEA SALAD DRESSING

2 tea bags peach- or mango-flavored white tea (see Note 1)

1 tea bag caffeine-free cinnamon-flavored rooibos tea (see Note 1)

Juice of 1/2 large lemon

2 teaspoons stevia natural no-calorie sweetener

1-teaspoon honey

Yields about 1 1/3-cup salad dressing. (See Note 2.)

Boil enough water to make 1 1/3 cups tea. Brew all tea bags for 4 minutes. Remove and discard tea bags. Add each of the rest of ingredients one at a time, carefully stirring after each addition. Let sit for 30 minutes, then place in refrigerator, uncovered, for at least 8 hours or overnight.

Before serving, bring to room temperature. At least 10 minutes before, but not longer than that, pour desired amount over and toss with Festive Artichoke Hearts and Hearts of Palm Salad (see Note 3), mixed greens and grape tomato halves salad, or greens-based salad of choice.

Note 1: On my supermarket adventures, I found delicious widely available teas that are reasonably priced, since some white teas are considered rare and costly. They are Lipton's Peach-Mango White Tea (which also contains some green tea) and Good Earth's Sweet & Spicy Caffeine Free, which includes rooibos and cinnamon and other spices. Rooibus is a legume and does not contain caffeine, and white and green teas contain minimal amounts of caffeine.

Note 2: This recipe yields about 1 1/3 salad dressing. If desired instead, it also yields the same amount of hot tea served immediately, or iced tea, which tastes excellent as soon as fully chilled, and even better after flavors blend more overnight in the refrigerator.

Note 3: For a festive salad, combine amounts to taste of mixed greens, jarred artichoke hearts and hearts of palms that you've drained and chopped, halved grape tomatoes, cubed, peeled cucumbers, canned, drained mandarin orange slices that had been packed in juice only and walnut halves. Dress the salad as instructed above.

AFTER-WORK GOURMET COOKBOOK SHELF

Melissa d'Arabian, author of "Ten Dollar Dinners," advises, "I freeze bread crusts and bread heels in a resealable bag to make fresh bread crumbs. Since ends and crusts have more heft to them than the interior crumb, they don't need to be toasted before using."

Photo courtesy of Walnuts.org

Walnuts give a delicious and nutritious crunch to holiday salads.

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.