I really
dislike commercial salad dressings. To
me, they taste artificial. Their ingredients
include chemicals you can’t pronounce, artificial flavors, dies for coloring
and preservatives.
The
exception is, of course, mayonnaise – I love mayonnaise – just about anything
is improved if you slather mayonnaise on it. Makes any salad taste good.
But I digress:
Here is a
list of three easy to make salad dressings that are my standards.
My favorite
is Blue Cheese
For years I
tried to make a decent Blue Cheese dressing by experimenting, and often using
feta cheese … a mistake. This one works.
½ cup of
sour cream
¼ cup of
cottage cheese
¼ cup of
mayonnaise
¾ cups of
crumbled blue cheese
Blend in a
food processor until smooth – add some chunks of blue cheese of you like
Creamy
Italian
¾ cups of
mayonnaise (it is already starting good.)
¼ cup of
sour cream
2 tsp of
vinegar
¼ tsp each
of dry mustard, dried basil and dried oregano
1/8 tsp of
garlic powder
1/8 tsp of
salt
French
Dressing
2 tbsp of
sugar
3 tbsp of
vinegar (red wine vinegar is great)
¼ tsp of salt
¼ tsp of
dried mustard
1/8 tsp of
garlic powder
A dash of
red pepper flakes
¾ cups of
olive oil (a really good brand of extra virgin olive oil makes a difference.)
Vinaigrette
are easy
3 parts oil
to one-part vinegar and a dash of salt and pepper (experiment with the
different vinegar to find what you like.)
You normally
think of summer as a time for salads, but salads are great any time as a filler
to cut down on the amount of carbohydrates and fats that are consumed in most normal
meals.
Tonight, we
are having meatloaf, rice, steamed broccoli and a green salad with blue cheese
dressing – and of course wine.
I really
miss having good tomatoes in my salads.
Those genetically engineered red things that sit on the supermarket
shelf are a poor substitute for tomatoes.
We have a short growing season here in western Maine and only get locally
grown tomatoes in the summer for a few weeks.
I was raised in the south and remember the big ugly acidic heirloom
tomatoes with a taste that was out of this world: tomato sandwiches made with
great big slices of acidic tomatoes slathered with mayonnaise. I feel sorry for the young people today that
have been raised on store bought tomatoes.
the Ol’Buzzard
We had some good tomatoes this year, from a garden in Maine no less! I had to stop on the way home to buy bacon & lettuce!
ReplyDeleteThat BLT was good!
I'll keep that blue cheese recipe in mind, every now & then I like blue cheese..
There's nothing like a tomato grown on the vine in your (or someone's) back yard! mmmmm
ReplyDeleteI love Creamy Italian so I'll have to try your recipe. David loves Miracle Whip. You won't believe it but I got him off of it by buying Dukes Mayonnaise . Now that's all we buy. It has a nice tangy vinegar taste that is just right.
ReplyDeleteWe almost never eat store bought dressing. The missus used to make our mayonnaise, too. It won't combine if you do it during a thunderstorm, though.
ReplyDelete