Make Your Own Salad Dressing!

Since we started receiving our weekly share from the CSA, we've been eating a lot more salad than usual. The vegetables are so fresh and tasty, that making your Wednesday and Thursday lunches from a chunk of it seems like a logical decision. It also frees up room on the counter and in the fridge. We usually add in some hard-boiled eggs, kidney beans or chunks of cheese to give the meal some extra protein, but a good salad really needs dressing. We stopped buying packaged dressing some time ago, and, unfortunately, there has been some lag time before I started to learn how to make my own well. For a while it was just about pouring some olive oil, vinegar and some dried spices on top.

Thankfully, The New York Times' excellent food column The Minimalist focuses on salad dressing this week. (If you're not familiar with Mark Bittman, take some time to check out his blog, Bitten.) Bittman breaks it down to this:

a salad dressing contains three things... a fat, an acid and something else. While it may seem too general, it's not. Oil, vinegar, salt & fresh lemon juice is the most simple example he gives, but you can experiment by using different oils + different vinegars + different spices and/or sweeteners. The Maple Thyme Dressing I put together recently follows this equation as well.

So if you're getting a lot of greens from your CSA, or if you're looking to enjoy more healthful meals, save some money and make your salad even more delicious by making your own dressing! Of course, making your own dressing is fun too. Just don't forget to dress the salad right before eating it. If you're taking your salad with you to eat elsewhere, old, clean spice containers make the perfect vessel for transporting your tasty concoction.