Dressing for Success

Ever get tired of the same dressings on your salad? How about the staples of oil, vinegar and salt? While this simple dressing is delicious, it’s just not cutting it anymore after the hundreds of dinners consisting of just that.

Dressing has become monotonous and all the different ingredients you put in have all become uniform in taste. Bo-ring! It’s time to spread your dressing horizons and turn a healthy salad from bland to bliss — and it only takes one or two ingredients.  Playing with the seasonings and spices you already have in your cupboards will only takes minutes to turn into magic mouthfuls. And you can make it as original as you want it to be. Here’s how:

No Regrets with Vinaigrettes
They can be as basic as you want them to be. By building in the flavour with herbs, spices, garlic and different oils and vinegars your salad will come alive and burst with flavour.  Allrecipes.com features The Citrus Salad Dressing, Honey Mustard, Oregano Red Wine Vinaigrette and the Basil Cilantro Vinaigrette, which are great ways to make subtle changes to your salad, but provide that extra oomph in each bite.

If you like a bit of a fruity taste, a Raspberry Vinaigrette Dressing is a fabulously delicious alternative. It takes five minutes to prepare and all you’ll need are:

½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup raspberry wine vinegar
½ cup white sugar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
¼ tsp dried oregano
¼ tsp ground black pepper

In a bowl or jar, combine oil, vinegar, sugar, mustard, oregano and pepper.  Stir well.

Dreaming Creamy
Mmm, some days I just crave that cold, smooth creamy dressing on crisp lettuce and vegetables. Most of them have a base of sour cream, buttermilk, cream, yogurt or mayonnaise, and depending on how much you want to indulge, using low fat mayonnaise and yogurt are great alternatives for a calorie-reduced dressing. Cucumber Dill, Feta Cheese, Honey Poppy Seed, Creamy Garlic, Apple Mustard and Avocado Green Goddess not only sound delicious but taste delicious on a day when oil and vinegar simply isn’t an option anymore.

The Buttermilk Peppercorn Dressing from allrecipes.com can be whipped up in less then 10 minutes and will be a sure dressing for plenty of salads to come. You’ll need:

½ cup buttermilk
⅓ cup light mayonnaise
1 tbsp minced fresh dill or ½ tsp dried dillweed
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp wine vinegar
1 tsp cracked peppercorns
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 pinch salt

In small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, mayonnaise, dill, mustard, vinegar, peppercorns, garlic and salt.•

Photo by - www.martinssupermarkets.com