Sometimes all you want is a salad. Especially when you’ve found wonderful tasty fresh veggies and a nice piece of feta cheese. Okay, so I admit, I also grilled some steaks and made gratin dauphinoise, but really, it was mostly about the salad! Even though I have an incredible sweet tooth, the taste of fresh vegetables with good quality oil just does the trick every time!

I have stopped buying ready made dressings. I plain and simple just do not like them anymore. Partially because of all the additives that don’t do anything for the taste, or just fake a taste. Partially because it’s a waste of money. Mostly, though, it’s because my home-made salad dressings are just as easy as squeezing a bottle, but taste a million times better!

I have no specific recipes for dressings. I always just try and combine some things. 8 out of 10 times it’ll just be good quality olive oil, pink himalayan or sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Sometimes I add some garlic or herbs to this. And usually, I don’t even make the dressing separately, but just sprinkle or pour the ingredients into the salad bowl and mix the dressing by tossing the salad.

Other favorites include the same, but adding balsamic or white wine vinegar to the mix, or a little squeeze of lemon juice. Sometimes I replace the plain olive oil with flavored oil. And once in a while I mix it up a bit…

A spinach salad with bacon, vinegar a little oil and some sugar. Just cook the bacon so it’ll release it’s fat and use that as a base. The taste? Awesome!

A very basic salad of plain iceberg lettuce and tomato becomes wonderful if you add a fresh made honey-mustard dressing. Just good honey, good mustard and a drizzle of good olive oil. And again, you can mix it up by using a different kind of honey, mustard, oil, or by adding some fresh herbs.

It’s all so simple, really. Why would you want to spend money to buy something synthetic when it’s so easy to make yourself. Good mayo, some oil or buttermilk and blue cheese? Fresh blue cheese dressing! Buttermilk, mayo and Mt. Elbert spice mix? Fresh ranch dressing! Yoghurt, garlic, parsley and mayo usually make a creamy garlic sauce, but if you substitute the yoghurt for oil, use a little less mayo maybe add some salt and pepper, you’ve got yourself an awesome garlic dressing. And for my taco salads, really, just mixing sour cream and salsa might look awful, but it tastes wonderful!

So this weekend, we ate lots of salads. And I kept it simple. The brightly colored, tasty veggies really didn’t need many extra flavors. So I went with the classic. Just oil, pepper, salt and a tiny little bit of pressed garlic (which was left from the potato dish). And we loved it!

The steak and potatoes were very good as well! (Entrecote and gratin dauphinoise)