Salads are a delicious way to get in your vegetable servings for the day. There is no wrong way to make a salad; you can put just about anything in them. Now when it comes to your choice of salad dressing, that’s when things become problematic. You cannot put just anything on your salads.  

Anything that comes bottled and is affordable is a good sign that it is horrible for your body. Just look at the ingredients (not the calories). It’s nothing but a science project. Can you pronounce the ingredients? Do you know what they are or where they come from? The ingredients should read like a recipe. If not, leave it on the shelf.

Most bottled salad dressings that are good for you are pretty pricey. Keep in mind that a low –calorie salad dressing may be low in calories, but the source of the calories is what matters most.  You want your body to digest only nutritional ingredients that your body can recognize, not laboratory created chemicals that you can barely pronounce.

The best thing to do is create your own salad dressing to be in control of the ingredients used. You can make your own ranch, blue cheese, Catalina, or vinaigrette flavored salad dressings for a fraction of the healthy bottled costs. Here is how you do it:

Ranch Dressing

1 Tbsp. Hellman’s Light Mayo

1 Tbsp. Low Fat Sour Cream

½ Tsp. of garlic powder

1 Tsp. of parsley

1 Tsp. of dill weed

1 Tsp. of Sea salt

1 Tbsp. of Apple Cider Vinegar (a natural preservative)

Ranch is not bad for you when you prepare it without high-fructose syrup, hydrogenated oil, citric acids, and artificial coloring and flavoring.

Blue Cheese Dressing

1 Tbsp. Hellman’s Light Mayo

1 Tbsp. Low Fat Sour Cream

½ Tsp. of garlic powder

½ Tsp. of onion powder

1 Tsp. of Sea salt

1 Tbsp. of Blue Cheese Crumbles (or any type of cheese crumbles if you want to be creative)

1 Tbsp. of Apple Cider Vinegar

Blue cheese salad dressing is not bad for you, and you should not deprive yourself of anything that you want. Just control the ingredients of what you eat. Be picky about the ingredients your foods contain because they will affect your body, mind, and ultimately your spirit.

Catalina

¼ cup of Apple Cider Vinegar

1 whole tomato

1 Tbsp. of Pure sugar cane juice (extracted at the Farmers market) or use Stevia or Truvia and regular water

1 Tbsp. of Safflower Oil

½ Tsp. of garlic powder

½ Tsp. of onion powder

1 Tsp. of sea salt

Blend ingredients in a blender; and voila! This is one of my favorites. No unnecessary ingredients, just purity for your pure and sacred body. Remember who you were made in the image of. This must be how God intended for us to eat.

Vinaigrettes

When it comes to vinaigrettes you can be creative and add a fruit to create fruity vinaigrette such as a ¼ cup of: black berries, raspberries, or strawberries. You can even add 1 Tsp. of flax, poppy seeds, or chia seeds, and blend the ingredients with the following:

¼ cup of Apple Cider Vinegar

1 Tbsp. of safflower oil

2 Tbsp. of water

½ Tsp. of garlic powder

½ Tsp. of onion powder

1 Tsp. of sea salt

1 Tsp. of black pepper and/or red pepper (for those who like to spice it up a bit)

If you have bottled salad dressing that you paid one dollar or two dollars for, pour it out! You paid for the bottle; the crappy stuff inside is side is worth pouring out. Fill up the bottles with your own salad dressing. You can thank me later.