Kitchen staples and homemade salad dressing

Step one: salad dressing

I would like to share the recipes for making this meal, beginning with the salad dressing recipe, as it is so easy to make and so very healthy for you, much better than anything that can be found on the salad dressing aisle at the grocery store.  In fact, my children have grown up on this dressing and it is their favorite.  My 3 year old son will not even taste another salad dressing.  They complain about eating vegetables every. single. night, BUT they will always eat a salad with my dressing on it. 

Guess what we have every night for dinner.

Unfortunately, there are no exact measurements for this dressing, it is all based on taste.

Vinaigrette Dressing

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• flavored vinegar of your choice or freshly squeezed lemon juice
• seasoned salt
• seasoned pepper

Directions:

1. First, make your favorite salad.  My favorite ingredients for salad include a combination of romaine lettuce and spinach leaves, grape tomatoes, cucumber, and avocado.   Sometimes I will throw in black beans and corn, or cilantro, green onion, bell peppers (red or green), or mushrooms.  My kids enjoy having apples, oranges, or strawberries.  If I am feeling really crazy (HA!), I might throw in dried cranberries or trail mix of some sort.  We eat a lot salads and I like to mix it up!
2. Drizzle olive oil over entire salad.  Be careful NOT to put too much olive oil.  You can always add more but you can never take off what has already been put on.
3. Drizzle your flavored vinegar of choice (or freshly squeezed lemon juice).
4. Sprinkle seasoned salt and seasoned pepper all over.
5. Toss!

I promise you, you will fall in love with the FRESH flavor of this dressing and if you are like me, you will never go back to bottled dressing again, really!