Yesterday when I was planning what to serve for dinner, I decided a big old chef salad would hit the spot. Mainly consisting of a variety of veggies, with a few small pieces of salami, ham, cheese, black olives, and sun flower seeds thrown in for good measure. But what salad dressing to go with all these beautiful ingredients? So, I asked Mr. C. if he would prefer an oil and vinegar based dressing or perhaps a ranch style dressing as a change of pace. He thought a ranch dressing would be nice. So a ranch dressing it would be! I already had a Ranch Dressing and Dip recipe on this site, but I was in the mood to play mad scientist. So I donned my lab coat and pocket protector and went to work.

I have always enjoyed the combination of sour cream, mayonnaise, and buttermilk. So that was the starting point. And equality seems to be one of the most talked about themes in today’s society, so I decided equal amounts of these delightful ingredients should form the base of my new experiment. Then what next? Well, I took a look at my other ranch dressing recipe, and went from there. The dressings are very similar, but just enough different to be interesting. And of course I added my three secret “ingredients” that I always add to every dish I prepare. And in doing so yesterday afternoon, I realized I had never shared my secret “ingredients” with all of you. (And yes, incredibly remiss of me!) So here goes.   

As with all of the dishes I make, be it a main dish, side, salad, dessert, appetizer, or whatever, there are three “ingredients” I invariably add at some point in every preparation. These ingredients can’t be purchased in any store or even through Amazon prime. There is no cost involved, and no additional prep time required. They are simple ingredients really. But I believe they are essential to the outcome of any dish.

The first is a whole bunch of respect for the ingredients in the dish I am preparing. The second is a modicum of confidence in my ability to use the ingredients to full advantage. And the third and most important, is a ton of love thrown in for the person or persons for whom the dish is being prepared.

With these three indispensable “ingredients” always at the forefront of my thoughts with every dish I prepare, I figure I’ve got half the battle won. Even if no one else knows about my secret “ingredients”, I know they’re there! And that makes me happy. (And I truly believe it makes the food taste better.) So I would strongly advise that you too include these “ingredients” in every culinary endeavor you undertake.

As always, stay safe, stay connected, and try to enthusiastically embrace the main things we all should have learned in kindergarten:

– Share everything

– Play fair

– Don’t hit people

– Put things back where you found them

– Clean up your own mess

– Don’t take things that aren’t yours

– Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody

– Wash your hands before you eat

Peace and love to all.

½ c. mayonnaise

½ c. sour cream

½ c. buttermilk

¼ c. chopped fresh chives or 1 T. dehydrated chopped chives

2 T. minced fresh parsley or 2 tsp. dried

½ tsp. granulated garlic

½ tsp. granulated onion

½ tsp. seasoned salt

¼ tsp. dried dill weed

freshly ground black pepper

Combine all the ingredients together in a covered container. Refrigerate. Best if made a couple hours before you plan to serve. Before using, give the dressing a good stir, taste, and add a tiny bit more seasoned salt if necessary.

We eat a lot of salads at Chez Carr. And for Mr. C., there are really only 2 kinds of salad dressing that he could eat every single night of the week. Blue cheese dressing and Caesar salad dressing. And I must admit, they are my favorite dressings too. Along with Thousand Island dressing on top of a perfect crab and shrimp Louise or Italian dressing with a bit of finely diced Parmesan cheese lightly coating cold, crisp greens. Oh heck, when it comes right down to it, I pretty much like any kind of homemade salad dressing.

In our last farm box we received not just one, but two small red cabbages. I already had a head and a half of green cabbage in my fridge when their red cousins arrived. So I made coleslaw a few nights back and we feasted on it for two dinners and a lunch. But cabbage is never going to be Mr. Cs favorite edible, even though it’s insanely good for us.

So how to dress up a salad to help disguise the fact that there’s going to be a whole lot of cruciferous going on? I knew blue cheese or Caesar dressing would definitely not work with 2 kinds of cabbage, carrots, green onions, pea shoots, diced cucumber, a bit of red leaf lettuce thrown in for good measure, finely minced fresh ginger, and slivered almonds. I figured that what this salad required was a big, bold, blast of flavor. Perhaps a dressing of Asian persuasion?

So I went on line and found this recipe on the culinaryhill.com site. I made a couple of minor changes of course, but I must say, life was good around the Carr dinner table last evening. (Cruciferous and all!)

Now for us, this dressing is never going to take the place of a truly great creamy blue cheese dressing or a perfect Caesar dressing with lots of anchovy action going on. But as a change of pace, and with ingredients that are bold flavored and super crunchy like the one I fixed last night, this dressing was perfect. And it was different. And isn’t it nice to change things up a bit every so often. I frankly get bored making salads every evening. But if I’m making a new dressing, the whole process of peeling, hacking, and slashing the veggies is made better because I get to make something new to go on all those damn cut veggies! And I really like to try out new recipes. It’s actually quite fun. (At my age, I take my fun any way I can get it!)

So if you too could use a new salad dressing to enliven your taste buds, this is the recipe for you. It’s easy to prepare. And because of its bold flavor, it actually covers up some of the veggie flavors that might not be on your family’s all-time favorites list. If I can get (you know who) to eat his cabbage, then it’s got to be a truly tasty dressing.

As always, peace, love, and delicious salads to all.

And sorry about no picture. The dressing is brown. That’s all you really need to know anyway.

2 T. vegetable oil

1 tsp. toasted sesame oil

1/3 c. rice vinegar

3 T.  hoisin sauce, or more to taste

5 tsp. soy sauce, or more to taste

1 T. peanut butter (creamy or crunchy)

1 T. finely minced fresh ginger  

Shake or whisk all ingredients together. Let sit at room temperature at least 30 minutes before dressing your salad. Store in refrigerator.

    

OK, some dinners prepared in my kitchen are better than others. Last evenings dinner consisted of 2 brilliant successes, one near miss, and one epic failure. Let’s start with the epic failure.

I used sourdough starter to build my crêpe batter last evening. Let me rephrase that statement. I used sourdough starter to make a horrendous mess last evening.  Oh, the crêpes tasted spectacular. (The fragments of crêpe I could lift off my pan that is.) But there was not a thing I could do to get the darn things to hang together as they were being flipped. And believe me, this was not my first crêpe making rodeo (so to speak). Plus, I was using what had professed to be a great recipe for sourdough crêpes from a great chef. So I assumed it would work perfectly. And I had so wanted this recipe for crêpes to work. Yet another great sourdough recipe to share with you all. Well that sure as heck ain’t happenin’, at least until I get up the nerve to try again to create the sourdough crêpes of my dreams. Which of course, if it actually ever happens, I will then gladly share with you. (Don’t hold your breath!) But on to the near miss.

One would think that a combination of mushrooms, shallots, garlic, spinach, Gruyére cheese, and assorted other fabulous ingredients would make a delightful filling for crêpes. Well at least I thought it would be delicious. And it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t all that good. Like I said, a near miss. But on to my brilliant successes.

For our evening salad, I wanted a light, tangy salad dressing to lightly toss with a combination of greens. For the greens I chose massaged kale, red leaf lettuce, romaine, and pea shoots. And what a winning combination of leafy greens that turned out to be. Delicious! (Success number one.) But the real star of the show (success number two) was this amazing vinaigrette straight off the fifteenspatulas.com website. And truly, I can’t imagine a lemon dressing any tastier than this one. And it was quick and easy to prepare, and included ingredients I always have on hand. Who could ask for anything more? So I would highly recommend making this perfect dressing at your earliest convenience.

Well today’s another day. I plan to cook dinner again tonight, even after last night’s semi fiasco. I just hope that everything I set before Mr. C. this evening will be up to my self-imposed rigid standards.  But there is no guaranty, unless I prepare a dish that I know will turn out well. But what fun is that? Variety is the spice of life after all. And we definitely need some “spice” in our life, especially with all the chaos in our world today. So what better way to liven up our days than by me trying out new dishes? And I must say, we did laugh a lot at table last night. The crêpes that were to have been nicely folded around the filling, were just a jumbled mess on our plates. So what! Life is messy. Why not messy plates too. And a good laugh never hurt anyone.

So as always, laugh at yourself when appropriate, laugh with others as often as possible, and never stop trying to be the best possible person/cook/parent/spouse etc. that you can be.

“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.” Dr. Benjamin E. Mays – American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. (August 1, 1894 – March 28, 1984)

½ c. extra virgin olive oil

¼ tsp. lemon zest, packed  

¼ c. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 garlic cloves, finely minced  

½ tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

Shake all together and use sparingly on your favorite mixed greens.

I almost always make my own salad dressings unless we are in our trailer and I don’t want to buy a special ingredient or two just for a salad dressing. I’m thinking of buttermilk, for example. I use buttermilk in many of my favorite dressing recipes at home, as well as other dishes. But when traveling, what the heck would I do with the rest of the container? You catch my drift. So on the road I usually buy salad dressings. And yes, I am mostly disappointed.

But I’m home now. REALLY home now! And there is a lovely bottle of buttermilk just waiting for me to create something yummy with it. Well it’s just going to have to chill out for a little longer, because I decided to go wild and crazy and prepare an exotic and different dressing for our dinner salad the other evening. (I do travel in the fast lane every once in a while.) And because I often see honey-mustard on dinner menus, I thought maybe I would head in that direction. After all, if honey-mustard is offered routinely at restaurants, it must be pretty good, right? But I had never ordered it, because really, there is nothing better than blue cheese dressing. Inconceivable! But I was up for an adventure. So to the internet I went in search of the perfect honey-mustard dressing.

Now for all intents and purposes, I really didn’t know what a good honey-mustard dressing should taste like. But there are some cooking sites that I trust. And so when this recipe appeared on the cookieandkate.com site, I decided to give it a try. And oh my, was I surprised! What a refreshing change from blue cheese dressing. (I can’t believe I actually just wrote that. Consider it a circumstance brought on by being confined to quarters for too long!) And truly, what a delightful new way to perk up a salad. But be warned. This is not a subtle, quiet, and unassuming little dressing. This is an in your face, bold, and brassy concoction. And absolutely delicious when I served it the other evening tossed with red leaf lettuce, romaine, and massaged kale. Then plated it up liberally sprinkled with salted sunflower seeds on top. Yum.

So if your salads too would benefit from a new and delightful dressing, consider this recipe. It is absolutely scrumptious, especially with bold flavored salad ingredients.

As always, love, peace, and salad days to all. (Or should it be salad daze?) Your choice!

¼ c. plain Greek yogurt  

2 T. extra virgin olive oil

2 T. Dijon mustard

2 T. honey

1 T. fresh lemon juice

1 T. apple cider vinegar  

1 small clove garlic, finely minced

¼ tsp. fine sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Whisk all of the ingredients together. Taste, and adjust seasoning if desired. If the taste is too tart for your liking, whisk in another tablespoon of honey.

Store leftover salad dressing in the refrigerator, covered, for 10 to 14 days.

 

I made this salad the other evening because a) I needed to use the Persian cucumbers I had received in our last box from Klesick’s Farms. (We get their veggie and salad box every 2 weeks.) b) I needed to use the beautiful organic beef steak tomato that had arrived in the same box. c) I’m trying to serve salad most evenings for dinner. d) This salad is really, really delicious and super easy to build, especially the dressing.

I have been preparing this salad dressing, sometimes adding finely minced garlic or shallot, for as long as I can remember. It’s a very rudimentary dressing, but sometimes the simplest preparations are the best. And for this combination of veggies it is absolutely perfect.

Now of course I could have added red onion or any number of additives. That would have been delicious too. But sometimes I get a little weary of making salads. (Sometimes! Now that’s what is commonly referred to as an understatement! I often go just about prostrate over the very thought of fixing yet one more salad!) So anytime I can fix a quick and easy salad that looks and tastes great, I am one step closer to keeping my mental health intact.

So if you too get a wee bit tired of hacking and slashing veggies, fix this simple salad that actually takes a very short time to prepare. Sanity is a wonderful thing to maintain, and it’s especially difficult right now as we watch the world keep re-shaping itself on a daily basis. So we have to stay resolute. Say to yourself – I will keep myself and my family healthy by preparing delicious and nutritious food. I will endeavor to accommodate every family member’s fondest wish. (Wrong! I only threw that in to see if you were paying attention!) I will take good care of myself physically and mentally. (Right!) And if that means cutting yourself some slack in the kitchen, then by all means do so! We cooks are only human too. (And yes, I know that comes as a surprise to some of you.) We get just as discouraged, afraid, concerned, overwhelmed, exhausted, and weary as anyone else. But we have one advantage over some of the rest of the populace. We know how to bake brownies!  

So to all my fellow cooks out there – stay vigilant. Keep your sanity, and help those around you do the same. Keep cooking, but make it simple if that will help you maintain. As always, peace, love, and contentment to all.

4 T. extra virgin olive oil

1½ T. red wine vinegar

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

¼ tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper  

3 small Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced or half of an English cucumber, partially peeled, cut in half, seeded, then cut in half rounds

1 lg. tomato, de-seeded and chopped

1 T. chopped fresh chives

Whisk the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper together in a salad bowl. (Can be made ahead.) When ready to serve, gently stir in the cucumbers, tomato, and chives.

I hate to throw out perfectly good ingredients just because I didn’t use them in a timely manner. So I am often forced to search for new recipes using ingredients I have on hand that should be used within minutes. These are ingredients that I had planned to use, had every good intention of using, but for whatever reason hadn’t gotten around to adding to the other dishes I actually did prepare. (I’m sure this has happened to you at least once in the years you have been playing around in the kitchen.) Sorry, I’m being facetious here! This happens to everyone regardless of how well we meal plan. Stuff happens. Unexpected dinner invitations. Casual invite and you can’t possibly serve your guests that tuna casserole you had planned for just you and your family. Or, you simply haven’t the strength to cook your evening meal so your wonderful spouse takes you out for dinner. That kind of “stuff”.

And at Chez Carr, it’s beginning to feel like the rule rather than the exception that at least one ingredient (usually a veggie) is going to sit in my refrigerator until it guilt trips me into doing something with it.

In this case, it was two veggies screaming at me from the veggie drawer. Half an English cucumber and 4 lonely radishes. While at the same time, a half container of crumbled feta cheese was also yelling its head off, so I really had my work cut out for me!

But Holly at the Spend with Pennies site saved my sanity with this recipe. (Well her recipe with my minor changes, that is.)

And oh my, did we enjoy this salad last evening! Mr. C. just couldn’t stop telling me how much he loved it. And I could not have agreed more. The salad had a lovely crunch from the cucumber, radishes, and onion. And the salty savory goodness from the feta cheese was just perfect in combination with the delicious salad dressing. The whole mix simply could not have been more delightful.

So next time you want a salad that can be made very quickly, using simple every day ingredients, this is the recipe for you. Cheers to your good health and to the salad days of August.

3 T. extra virgin olive oil

1 T. fresh lemon juice, or more to taste

1 T. white vinegar

½ tsp. sugar

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. dill weed

¼ tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

4 c. chopped romaine lettuce  

2/3 c. crumbled feta cheese

½ English cucumber, partially peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced

4-6 radishes, halved and thinly sliced

scant ½ c. thinly sliced onion (red, sweet, or yellow)

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, Dijon mustard, dill weed, salt, and pepper in a covered container. Shake like crazy. Set aside. 

Place the lettuce, feta cheese, cucumber, radishes, and onion in a large bowl.

Drizzle with dressing, toss, and serve immediately.

Sometimes salad is the last dish I feel like preparing. Maybe that’s because cleaning the veggies and making the same old dressings are not very adventurous. And at my age, I need all the adventure I can get that doesn’t involve doing something illegal, immoral, or hurting myself or those around me.

So last evening when contemplating what to fix for our dinner salad, I decided I needed to change things up a bit. Also two things had to happen. I needed to use a bit of the kale growing in my backyard half wine barrel, and some of the basil overflowing a pot sitting on the counter of my outdoor kitchen. So I decided the kale should be one of the greens for our salad, and the basil should go into the salad dressing.

And if you are going to have greens and basil, it’s almost required that you have some tomato action going on. (Luckily I had some ripe cherry tomatoes in another half wine barrel just waiting to be plucked.) Then a forlorn shallot called out to me, and the rest is history.

The dressing recipe I found on the food and wine site. I changed their recipe just a tiny bit, but I have to say, this recipe is basically perfect. Easy to prepare and fantastically delicious.

You could also use this dressing simply drizzled over sliced tomatoes, in place of the olive oil and chopped basil in a caprese salad, or over any type of green salad. It would also be perfect as the dressing for a pasta salad. The possibilities are endless.   

So before summer is over and basil, tomatoes, kale, and romaine are only available at your local grocery store, treat yourself to this salad. Remember, these are our salad days. (OK, for some of us our salad days were technically over several decades ago. But we can still feel young at heart and enthusiastic about life, especially if we continue watching what we put in our mouth. And this salad just happens to be the epitome of healthy and pleasurable eating. Not only good for us, but delectable. And that my friends doesn’t happen that often!)

Enjoy!

• 1 small garlic clove, rough chopped
•  ¼ c. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 T. Champagne vinegar
• pinch crushed red pepper flakes
• ¼ tsp. kosher salt, or more to taste
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 c. packed basil leaves, coarsely chopped
• 1 heart of romaine, chopped
• 1 c. chopped kale, messaged (see below)
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 2-3 Campari or Roma tomatoes, sliced, de-seeded, and cut into bit sized pieces or about ¾ of a cup of halved cherry or grape tomatoes (really – just whatever tomatoes you happen to have on hand will do)

In a food processor, pulse the garlic, olive oil, vinegar, crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper until smooth.  Add the basil and pulse until the basil is finely chopped. Set aside.

Place the cut romaine, massaged kale, sliced shallot, and tomato pieces (and whatever else strikes your fancy) in a salad bowl. Pour on the dressing and toss lightly. (You want all the veggies covered in the dressing, but you don’t want the tomatoes beat up!) Serve immediately.

Massaged Kale

Remove the fibrous ribs, wash, dry, and chop the kale into small pieces. Rub the kale pieces together with your fingers for about 2 minutes or until the leaves turn a darker color as the tough cellulose structure breaks down. Massaging kale actually eliminates the bitter taste making it a perfect green for almost any salad.