This dressing has an Asian flavor and comes across less heavy as our normal American creamy salad dressings. I love it and have made it several several times. The girls both like it too. Do try!

Our dog Dotty went through a period of a couple days where every time she went outside she came back in smelling horrible. Like she found the smelliest pile of leaves and dirt to roll around in and rub her cute little head in. So she spent a lot of time here in the sink getting bathed.

I wanted to make a salad with our breakfast so I just decided to make our breakfast a salad. I looked for ideas on the interwebs and found one with cinnamon toast croutons, sold.

Cut up some bread and toss with some melted butter, sugar and cinnamon and bake at 350 degrees until crunchy. Make a simple vinaigrette using 1 T. apple cider vinegar, 1 T. real maple syrup and a few T. olive oil and you’re pretty much set. Add some crispy bacon, walnuts and whatever you like and top it off with a soft boiled egg.

This was my first attempt at soft boiled eggs and they were awesome. Bring water to a boil, carefully add eggs and boil for about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and cool or eat right away. I’m addicted.

J asked me “What’s millet?”. I said “It’s a grain or something, I don’t really know but I’ll pick some up”. I’d run across it many times in cookbooks and passed by it a million times in the bins at Whole Foods but never had enough interest to try it, until now. This recipe came from the first page I googled and it turned out decently ok. I think I’ll do some digging around in my cookbooks next and hopefully get a better handle on these beautiful little spheres. They themselves are a nice new medium to work with. I may even grind some up into a flour (or buy some millet flour) and make some pancakes or something.

J ate it all, Z liked the first bite then didn’t want any more but then later asked me to put it in her lunch for tomorrow, go figure. J thought there was way to much vinegar. Maybe our normal salad dressing would be better next time. 1 T. balsamic vinegar, 1 T. spring water, 1 t. honey or more *wink*, 3 T. olive oil and some herbs/spices if I’m not felling lazy. Mix everything together except the oil. Then add oil slowly while stirring to emulsify. Great for leafy green salads.

The Treehotel looks crazy. Recipe after the jump.

This is a tasty bean/vegetable salad that I made the other day. I’m not sure of the exact ingredient proportions for the dressing because I just tossed it together. The salad is basically equal parts tomatoes, sweet corn, garbanzo beans (or whatever beans you have on hand, black would be perfect) and some fresh cilantro. Here’s the recipe, or at least what I can recall for the dressing.

These buttons by John Caswell are hilarious.

So there’s the normal large carton of organic strawberries at Trader Joes which averages about five to six dollars, but the other day on the table right as you walk in there was an extra super jumbo mega carton for the same price. It was like two/three times the size so I snatched one up without hesitation. One of the first things I made was this fresh strawberry vinaigrette. I found the recipe in one of my cookbooks, it was for blueberry vinaigrette so just swapped the fruits and it turned out great. I’m sure there’s a basic formula here like your choice of oil, vinegar, sweetener and fruit using the basic amounts below. For our salad we used baby spinach, raw walnuts and thin slices of freshly cut Parmesan cheese.

This pic shows the dressing about 5 minutes out of the fridge so it’s thicker than usual.

In one of the cookbooks I’m reading now (The Frankies Spuntino, The Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual a wonderful book by the way) it talks a little bit about making a great salad. One of the techniques is to pour the dressing in the bottom of a wide bottom bowl then putting the salad mixings on top and tossing it together to let it “pick up” the dressing as opposed to “pouring it over” the salad. This coats the greens more evenly.

When we were visiting Florida over Christmas we went to a great little place called Pie’s and Plates which had a broccoli salad very similar to this one. It made think how I should be putting something like this in Z’s lunch’s instead of just plain old carrots or plain old raisins all the time (I won’t quit doing that but a little zip can’t hurt now and then). Carrot and raisin salad is so common that there’s actually a recipe for it in several of my cookbooks with slight variations. We tried out a couple and went with this recipe because of the diced apples, yum. It seams to be a very basic and versatile salad though. The almonds could be swapped for peanuts, the mayonnaise for sour cream. You could use a lemon or a lime or the carrots could even be replaced with yes, broccoli. Raisins are the only real guarantee here. J loved it, Z enjoyed it and I, well I like everything. So there you go!

Take me back… (Fort Myers Beach, Florida)

I personally love this dressing. J on the other hand has been putting her gigantic foot down on the sheer volume of vinegar that has been served in this house as of lately. I really can’t believe she doesn’t love this since it falls into the sweet category. Little Z on the other hand loved it and was asking mom if she was going to finish the green leafs on her plate. There’s really nothing better than watching your kid eat spinach by dangling it above her head as she chows it down. The dressing actually tastes nothing like “mustard” despite it’s name but more like a lemony honey vinaigrette. Also, you don’t need to add very much on the greens as it has tons of flavor, just lightly coating the leaves is well enough. Go salad!

Loved this mix! Italian dressing is the best marinade for tempeh but I had run out. That being the reason I went for homemade. I usually buy Italian dressing just for this reason (tempeh), not for salads. I really enjoy mixing up a bunch of spices to create an awesome seasoning be it for dressings or tacos or things like that because you can just have it on hand for whenever you need to dip into the spice jar to make these wonderful dishes. Now that I have made this I’ll continue to use homemade. It has all the great flavor without the additives, preservatives and chemicals. Mix up a batch and store it away. It’s a dry mix so you just have to scoop out a tablespoon and add it to the vinegar, oil, and water. You can get about nine or ten batches out of this stored mix.

Watermelon salad is freaking awesome. I’ve already been to the store and back to get more watermelon just because. So you know how you put salt on watermelon anyway? Well this is just like that on crack. Feta cheese, fresh parsley, walnuts, a simple lemon vinaigrette and salt and pepper. So it’s a wee more than just salt but it is pure awesome. It just works. Sweet and salty is one of the best combos. This is one of the freshest tasting salads I’ve ever had. J and I were very happy with how it turned out. Z on the other hand hated it. Spit it out and everything. I guess five year old’s don’t care to much for fresh parsley.

Sunset Magazines, $.29 at Savers. Get ya some.

I found this recipe in an old Sunset Magazine I picked up at Savers. I’m not sure if all Savers have a good amount of Sunset Magazines or if it’s just the one we go to but I can pick up stacks of these for like $.29 a pop. That’s a crap load off the cover price. One of the best purchases from the thrift store that I look forward to.

This salad came about from an extra watermelon we had from making these fruit kabobs for when Z was star student where she gets to bring treats to her kindergarten classmates and teachers. I heard they were a huge hit.

Never been a huge fan of ranch dressing, not even when it became super popular in the late 80’s. Not even cool ranch chips, I know, what a loser. I’ve always been more of a blue cheese man myself. J on the other hand has always been a ranch critic. Ever since I first met her she would comment on the ranch of a place, Their ranch is not very good she’d say. She would even return to a place with average food just because they “had great ranch”. I’m guessing that’s why ranch was invented. Foods not good? Dip it in some ranch! Don’t like vegetables? Dip em in some ranch! This was some time ago because I haven’t seen her order ranch with her salad in years, she’s all honey mustard now days, but I’ll never forget how she used to be. This homemade ranch didn’t really get a reaction out of her, or at least no commentary. She did eat the whole salad so I guess that could be a critique in itself. I loved it on the other hand and want to dip everything in it, black olives, tomatoes, avocados, you name it. It could just be my amazement at how easy it is to make this beloved dressing from scratch with ingredients a lot of us have around the house already.

This quick salad was awesome people. Organic everything, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, avocados, cucumbers, oh baby! Crunch crunch!