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
