Secrets of Great Salads and Dressings

The secret of a great salad with a super tasty dressing is to use the very best oils, vinegars, 
greens and herbs your budget can afford. The practice of being attentive to high quality 
ingredients immediately transforms a dreary, predictable tasteless salad into a salad that you 
look forward to because it's so very flavorful and delicious. 

I personally eat a lot of salad, always at least once a day and sometimes twice, especially in 
the warmer months when I have access to fresh, locally grown produce. My basic shopping 
strategy is to buy a supply of greens a week at a time, which I wash, make ready and re-package 
for storing in the fridge. Then the next week I buy a different supply of greens, and so on. This 
keeps things interesting. I also like to make up a couple of different dressings for the week, and 
then I alternate using them. Sometimes I get on a dressing kick and make the same dressing week 
after week, but my husband gets very bored with it. The practice of switching your dressings 
around will keep you from falling into the same-old, same-old salad rut. 

Occasionally I buy salad dressings off the grocery store shelf, but I always, always check to make 
sure there are no caloric sweeteners listed as one of the first four ingredients. Store-bought sugar-free 
salad dressing choices do exist, but you have to take the time to look for them. It's better to go for 
the ones made with oil and vinegar or the ones that have a cream base of some kind. Don?t be fooled 
by the word "organic" on the label. And keep in mind that most light, low-fat or fat-free store-bought 
dressings are loaded with sugar, HFCS and every other kind of sweetener you can imagine. Sugar has 
no fat, so it's a food manufacturer's dream. Since most people do not bother to look at the ingredients, 
they don't realize that all that sugar undoes any beneficial dietary effect.