Tag Archives: Salad Dressings

You’ll Fall in Love with This Harvest Chopped Salad with Orange Ginger Vinaigrette

Summer is over but my salad bowl is still full! I’m a big fan of the big a– salad trend. Just a plate piled high with greens, veggies, berries, nuts and frankly anything else you want – it’s an entree that never disappoints. I always finish feeling full, satisfied, and not weighed down.

With Autumn as my muse, and my refrigerator quickly filling with the early seasonal produce, I crafted an entirely new entree salad. And it’s gooooood.

beet quinoa salad

“How is this even real?” was our photographer’s reaction upon tasting hers. And then she proceeded to demolish the rest of the food props.

Our Harvest Chopped Salad is like a farmers market truck unloaded in your kitchen. And then it rained down this homemade vinaigrette and what bloomed was just the best darn thing you’ve eaten in a while!

fall salad ginger vinaigrette

With red beets, carrots, quinoa, and ginger, this salad is not only hearty and satiating, but it’s also a great way to get your food experimentation on. If it’s been a while since you’ve tried some of these ingredients, or presents the first time, get after it! All of the complementary flavors blend perfectly together and it’s so darn pretty you won’t have any choice but to want to eat it. (more…)

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Natalie K

Homemade and Fat-Free Creamy Feta Salad Dressings Two Ways

If I told you that you could have big salads tossed with a creamy dressing and it would be fat free, would you believe me? Not only fat free, but extremely low calorie, fresh flavor, and maybe the best dressing you’ve ever had. Let me show you the way.

I prepare a big entree salad for dinner for my family once or twice a week. I swore off grocery store salad dressings years ago because they’re terrible, and frankly, I can whip up a vinaigrette on demand with a flavor that perfectly complements my meal. But I recently grew tired of the vinegar and oil and craved the creamier variety I used to douse my salads in. Inspiration struck.

Picking through the refrigerator, I found feta crumbles, Greek yogurt, and the strawberries and basil I usually add to vinaigrette. These were blended together, without the oil, and the sweetest pink dressing adorned our salads that night. And with that, my creamy feta dressing fixation began. (more…)

Posted on February 11, 2024 by Natalie K

Walden Farms Products Allow for Calorie-Free Indulgence

With countless types of diets buzzing around these days, women are eliminating some of their favorite treats from their diet, including chocolate. But as a result, this actually makes them desire those guilty pleasures even more. A lot of diets, such as the re-feed diet, suggest a cheat or reward meal in order to keep on track with your diet plan. And now, there’s another option for guilt-free indulgence.

Have you ever stood in front of your fridge and stared down that bottle of Hersey’s chocolate syrup thinking “Just a little bit won’t hurt,”  but deep down you knew you’d indulge in way more than you said you were going to? Ladies, it’s time to take the word “guilty” out of the phrase “guilty pleasure.” (more…)

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Danielle

Add Full-Fat Dressing to Your Salad to Make it Healthy

I grew up in the nutritional era where fat was seen as the enemy against our waistlines and health. Every food came out with a “New! Fat-Free” version of their product. Our kitchen was loaded with fat-free cheese, yogurt, crackers, even cookies. Those cookies were awful, but they were now “better” for us because they were fat free. It seems this is not the nutritional trend of this era.

While it’s confusing to hear at times, fat is no longer our enemy. In fact, those poor guys can come out of hiding and proclaim that they were actually healthy for us all along. So healthy in fact that research is telling us that in order to make our healthy salads even healthier, we need to put fat on them in order to absorb the nutrition of the salad.

Wow, really? Put fat on your salad? Can this be right? (more…)

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Lacy

5 Surprisingly High Sodium Foods

When you hear high sodium food, you usually think salty snacks: pretzels, chips, crackers and the like. You may be surprised, however, that some of the highest sodium foods aren’t salty tasting at all.

We all should be cutting down on our sodium intake, as recommended by the 2024 American Dietary Guidelines, so head to your pantry and see if any of these sneaky sodium-packed foods have found there way into your kitchen.

Breakfast cereals are notorious for not only being packed full of sugar, but sodium as well. Cereals “are more concentrated in salt than 50 to 60 percent of the items in the salty snack aisle,” says Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale’s Prevention Research Center.

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Posted on March 31, 2024 by Kelly

McDonald’s Healthiest Menu Choices

It’s happened to all of us. You’re on the road, you’re hungry and your only option is fast food. So what do you do? You choose the healthiest option possible! But looks can be deceiving. We did some research on what is the healthiest menu option at the popular fast-food chain McDonald’s and if you’re looking for a meal, there weren’t a lot of choices, but there are some.

We selected the below food options based on feedback from registered dietitian Rebecca Scritchfield. All meals have less than 500 calories and about 500 milligrams of sodium, as part of the new daily sodium recommendations from the U.S. government.

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Posted on February 4, 2024 by Jennipher

Salad Dressing May Not Break Your Healthy Diet

Salads are a convenient and tasty way to make sure you’re getting enough vegetables in your diet but sometimes, the addition of salad dressing can add fat and empty calories to your otherwise healthy plate.

Luckily, recent studies show that some salad dressing varieties, like types made with vegetable oils, can actually help your body absorb nutrients.

According to Patricia Groziak, M.S., R.D., the senior nutrition manager for Unilever, the presence of dietary fat is important for the body’s absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A and E.

“A variety of studies have looked at the body’s absorption of these vitamins from common food sources, including raw vegetable salads,” said Groziak. “Research has shown that absorption of carotenoids (vitamin A) and vitamin E is greater when salad vegetables are eaten with full-fat or reduced-fat dressings as compared with a dressing that contained no oil.”

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Posted on December 9, 2023 by Maris

I couldn’t believe it!

Being married to a Chef, I thought I knew a thing or two about cooking. Boy was I wrong!

To provide a bit of background, I was making risotto for the boys, and discovered I was out of butter. Just as a professional chef would, I usually add a tablespoon of butter at the finish to add a creamy sheen to the risotto, and bind the grains together. Without the butter, I thought to myself, this risotto is going to be inedible. My boys won’t eat it. My husband will laugh at me, etc.

Expectantly, I looked once more into the fridge, hoping a forlorn stick of butter would magically appear. Instead, what caught my eye was a container of low-fat yogurt, that I had purchased because I wanted to make yogurt cheese. For a moment, I wondered, could this work? Desperately, I added two large tablespoons of yogurt to the risotto, and stirred it in. I could not believe my eyes as the yogurt had exactly the same effect as butter, without the fat and cholesterol. I was thrilled, and hoped you would find this discovery equally wonderful.

For other great ways to use low fat yogurt, check out this awesome recipe for seafood salad dressing. With springtime fast approaching, this creamy dressing tossed with seafood, cucumber and celery is a great dinner idea for those lighter meals that we crave in warmer weather.

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Gretchen