Posts Tagged ‘fresh salad dressing’

January 20th, 2025 Blog, How To & Tips, Salad Dressings, Salads & Salad Dressings No Comments »

Fast 5-Ingredient with Fresh Garlic Salad Dressing Picture Book Directions

Picture book recipe shows how to make an easy, richly versatile 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic

The first post of the year showed how to make an easy, practical and terrifically versatile Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that required no knife skills. This post raises the bar a bit by substituting garlic powder with fresh garlic, and I’ll show you exactly how both to select and chop fresh garlic as easily as possible.

First, here are the ingredients you’ll need to make this 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing with Fresh Garlic. Yes, you’ll see 6 ingredients below because I sometimes use both cider and balsamic vinegar, but you don’t have to do that.

Ingredients needed to make 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic: fresh garlic, mustard, ground black pepper, olive oil and vinegar

The trickiest part of this recipe is selecting and chopping fresh garlic – not difficult at all. First, select garlic bulbs (bulb = the whole garlic ball you see below) that have some weight to them, are firm when squeezed, as shown below, and are made up of large, not small, garlic cloves (cloves = individual pieces of garlic that make up a garlic bulb), like those you see in the picture.

How to select a garlic bulb by weight and firmness

Here’s what I call a “3-shot” showing how to remove a garlic clove from a garlic bulb and how to remove the papery skin that encases fresh garlic cloves. (You’ll see how to do this in more detail if you download the recipe.)

3 pictures show how to remove garlic cloves from a garlic bulb and how to break and peel the skin from a garlic clove.

Here’s another 3-shot showing how to chop garlic with curled fingers on the garlic clove-gripping hand. (For more details on knife handling knife sharpening, see last post: 2 Keys to Kitchen Knife Safety: Keeping Knives Sharp and Hand Position While Cutting.)

3 pictures show how to slice and chop garlic.

Once you’ve chopped the fresh garlic, all you have to do is add mustard, ground black pepper, oil and vinegar and shake.

Finishing the salad dressing by adding mustard, ground black pepper, oil and vinegar and shaking the ingredients together..

All very easy – and fully flavorful!

Click this link or any picture on this page for complete step-by-step picture book directions.

Picture of 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic picture book recipe pages

Next post this week: The Clot Thickens – one of, if not the best, common sense books I’ve ever read about heart and cardiovascular health and what we eat – and much more.

Next food post: microwave warmed spinach, pear and feta cheese salad that I’ll shoot freshly and post here very soon that goes great with the 2 easy to make salad dressings posted here most recently.

March 11th, 2024 Blog, Fitness Food, Salads & Salad Dressings Comments Off on Senior Kitchen Empowerment Progress and Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing

Senior Kitchen Empowerment Progress and Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing

Senior Empowerment Progress and Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad DressingI’ve mentioned before here that I’ve started working with AARP and Eastway Rec. in Charlotte, NC, to provide skills to senior citizens, like me, so that they can empower themselves in the kitchen and make quality of life/life-promoting foods on their own. We’ve only had 5 sessions together, but we’ve already max’d out attendence and gotten positive feedback from those participating that they’re actually using the demo recipes and techniques at home. That’s where the rubber hits the road!

Here’s one of the recipes we worked on last Thursday: Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing, which is an easy way to change the flavor and calorie content of the fresh 5-ingredient salad dressing shown in the previous article: Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing.

Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing All you have to do is replace oil with nonfat yogurt. See the nonfat plain Greek yogurt to oil nutrition fact label comparison below and note that a serving of nonfat plain Greek yogurt is 1 cup (8 ounces) while a serving of oil is 1 tablespoon (1/2 ounce). That means that 1 cup (8 ounces) of oil contains 1920 calories and 224 grams of fat as compared to the cup (8 ounces) of nonfat yogurt shown below containing 130 calories and 0 grams of fat.

Nonfat Yogurt to Oil Nutrition Comparison

Here are the ingredients needed to make this dressing. Though any nonfat plain yogurt will work to make this dressing, I like using nonfat plain Greek yogurt for this dressing for its high protein content, thick texture, and rich flavor.

Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing IngredientsClick any picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe.

Fresh 5-Ingredient Nonfat Yogurt Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

March 6th, 2024 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Hiking Food, How To & Tips, Running Food, Salads & Salad Dressings Comments Off on Easy Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

Easy Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

About a month ago, I posted this extremely easy-to-make Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that’s so versatile, it goes great, of course, on salads, but also on pasta, rice, sandwiches, cooked vegetables – imagination is your only limit.

This post is about how to make that dressing fresh-er just by substituting garlic powder with fresh garlic. 

I’m a big fan of fresh garlic for its rich, bold flavor – and its broad spectrum health benefits that include: improved immune system, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, cancer prevention, improved athletic performance – and more (for more details in short, easy-to-read form, click this Spice World link).

Two quick practical tips about fresh garlic. First, choose fresh garlic bulbs, like the one shown below, that are firm to a hand squeeze, heavier in weight (more water content) and show no signs of dark grey mold under the skin or green shoots growing out of the bulb.

Second, to make peeling the garlic skin easy, which is the least fun part about dealing with fresh garlic, first crunch the individual garlic cloves with a forceful press and satisfying garlic skin pop using the side of a wide-bladed chef’s knife, as shown here.

Once you chop the fresh garlic, as shown briefly below, the rest is all down hill. Just add mustard, ground black pepper, vinegar and yogurt.

Peeling the skin off a fresh garlic clove, then slicing and chopping that fresh garlic clove

You can see all the above – and more – by clicking this link for the complete Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing picture book recipe.

July 9th, 2022 Blog, How To & Tips, Salad Dressings, Salads Comments Off on How to Use Easy-To-Make 5-Ingredient Fresh Salad Dressings Examples

How to Use Easy-To-Make 5-Ingredient Fresh Salad Dressings Examples

Two recent posts showed how to make an Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing and a Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing. The only difference between the two: the instant dressing uses garlic powder to avoid any cutting or chopping; the fresh dressing just substitutes garlic powder with fresh garlic – and shows how to chop that garlic as easily as possible with picture book directions.

Regarding how to use the dressing, of course, either dressing goes great on any savory or sweet and savory salad, like the ones shown below – with picture book recipe links: Peach, Avocado & Baby Pepper Salad (top middle), Fresh Spinach and Berry Salad (bottom right), and Heirloom Tomato with Fresh Basil and Feta Cheese Salad (bottom left).

But, then here are just a few examples of how I used either dressing with dishes I’ve put together on the fly like: Pan Fried Chicken, Tomatoes and Parmesan Cheese (top left), Beans and Cheese with Fresh Tomato Onion Salad (top right), and Open Face Grilled Cheese and Tomato Pepper Salad (bottom middle).

Bottom line: your imagination is your only limit to how you use either dressing – or any dressing. For another example, here’s something I just had: Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Pancake topped with tomatoes, avocado, cilantro and fresh salad dressing. Yes, all easy and fun to put together – more about that pancake pretty soon – and all always with a keen eye on full-on flavor!

August 16th, 2020 Blog Comments Off on Change We Can Manage: Food, Body, Mind Plus Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

Change We Can Manage: Food, Body, Mind Plus Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

I don’t think you’ll find a person on the planet who would agree that our current state of affairs points to a positive future in any sense. Instead, I’ve heard more people than I can count say they hope the extreme nature of what we experience daily – across the board – will finally force positive change.

Hope, no matter how passionately felt and expressed, won’t do it. Action is the only way forward. And that action, at it’s most basic yet most powerful level, starts with what we eat, moving our bodies and how we think. Food, body, mind: three simple words that make a world of difference to both our personal quality of life and to the world as a whole.

For now, right here, just planting the seed of personally managed change is enough. I’ll follow up – always briefly.

Regarding simplicity in an entirely practical sense, how ’bout something easy and fresh to make that both tastes great and is extremely versatile: fresh 5-ingredient salad dressing, which goes great, of course, on any kind of savory raw or cooked vegetables, over pasta, rice, fish, chicken or meat, on sandwiches – imagination is your only limit.

Here’s all you need to make this dressing (yes, you’ll see six ingredients below because I used two vinegars – all about flavor!).

Click this link or any picture on this page for complete, easy to use step-by-step picture book directions that show you how to make this dressing.

April 2nd, 2018 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Fitness/Health, Salads & Salad Dressings Comments Off on How Learning and Adapting Applies to Cycling and Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

How Learning and Adapting Applies to Cycling and Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

 

It’s all about applied learning and adapting.

First, regarding cycling. Since becoming the Ops Officer at VOmax (performance sportswear) and driving to and from Northampton everyday, I’ve had to adapt to splitting time between rippin’ it on the real road, which I love, and crankin’ it on the “living room bike” (trainer), which no matter how hard I pedal never gets me to the kitchen.

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