Better-Than-Bottled

I’ve been making salad dressings lately—-and using recipes to do it.  In the past, I’ve tried the approximation method with dressings and I’ve learned my lesson.  It rarely works for me (and generally ruins my salad) when I just dump things in that sounds like they might go well together.

My last two dressings were primarily recipe-based, but due to lack of available ingredients (and also laziness—why juice the orange when you can just add the whole thing to the blender!?), I’ve modified a bit and been lucky they turned out so wonderful.

The Creamy Raspberry Vinaigrette

Add to the blender:
1/4 cup raspberries (I used frozen and it worked fine)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp tahini (the recipe called for mustard seed–you could use this too, or regular mustard would work too)
2 Tbsp honey (I used raw local honey)
1 Clove garlic
Sea salt to taste
pinch of cayenne

Blend———> I consumed this dressing for 5 days straight, until it was gone….on everything. It was so good, and I believe the tahini made it really creamy.  You should make this, seriously.

Orange Creamy Vinaigrette:

Add to the blender:
1 orange (peeled and sectioned)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp honey (raw local!)
2 cloves garlic (you could use one…I used two)
splash of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (you could use sea salt too)

I blended this on low while I constructed my salad, and then turned it up to high for a few seconds to make sure the orange was completely blended.  This was really really (really) good—-creamy and still vinaigrette-y.

In case you’re wondering, the other things in this salad include:

spinach
celery
mushrooms
sprouted sunflower seeds
pine nuts
Thompson raisins
sprouts
a few capers (just because I saw them in the fridge—but I’d probably leave them out next time because I didn’t notice they were there when I was eating….and for some reason capers creep me out a little bit!)

One of the things that I really like about these dressings is that because I know exactly what is in them, and because there is actual fruit making up a lot of the quantity, I feel like I can put more on my salad than I would put of bottled dressings. My salad-eating method usually consists of eating all the green leafy parts out, and then eating all the accessories last—occasionally, I leave the greens out altogether (and put them in a smoothie later).

Making dressings is not only really easy and cheaper than using the bottled variety, but they taste a lot better!!