Thursday, January 31, 2013

Secret Salad

"The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on a grocery shelf for weeks, even months--even years.  With your own dressing, everything is fresh--the best oil, your own choice of vinegar, fresh lemon--and a really good salad dressing is so quick and easy to make..." 
-Julie Child excerpted from Julia's Kitchen Wisdom

It's true ya'll.  Salads at home don't have to be lame.


We like to grate the cheese to closely resemble that of the California Dreaming Salad, one of our favorite guilty pleasures.  Now if only I could duplicate those croissants...


We buy the goatload box of organic mixed greens from Costco, 
and toss in whatever fruits/veggies we have on hand.


The secret sauce?  TJ's Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar.  Ingredients are as follows: Champagne Vinegar, Orange Juice, Sugar, Fresh Oranges, Muscat Grape Juice.  If you don't have a TJ's nearby, you could easily whip up something similar...


My sister Becky uses this ratio, and I think it is near perfect:

1 TBSP of Olive Oil
to
1 TBSP of Vinegar (again, we use the Orange Muscat)
to
A bit of sugar, or she uses strawberries.  I used blackberries tonight.

So tonight, since we are doing grilled chicken salads for our main course, 
I tripled this recipe for the two of us.

Easy as pie broccoli, right?!  Half oil, half vinegar, and a little something sweet.

Give it a shake, and pour it over your greens.
It keeps for a day, but I prefer to make it fresh since it doesn't take much time.

Happy & Healthy!



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