Quick & Easy Salad Dressing

We had dinner at Matt & Jana's house last weekend. They are close friends of ours that we've known for years! They are also known as our card-playing-buddies. :) We put the kids to bed and stay up late playing spades.

They've been a year off of gluten now and I love that we can share in the same world of cooking/diet with them. They are actually on an even stricter g-free diet than we are. Jana is really sensitive to any trace amounts of gluten! I've heard that the longer you're off of gluten that can be the case for some people. They do a great job with recipes. They grow their own herbs and are growing as much produce of their own as they can. I love watching them work together in the kitchen.

For dinner we had a bed of greens with cucumbers, baked yams, sliced steak and fresh raspberry vinaigrette all over it. It was really good! The raspberry vinaigrette was so delicious that I've been thinking about it ever since! I think it, paired with the steak and salad was the perfect combo. Matt made this simple dressing with just 3 ingredients:

fresh raspberries (thawed frozen raspberries will work too if you don't have fresh on hand)
brown sugar
red wine vinegar

He first mashed the berries with a fork in a bowl, then eyeballed his measurements on the brown sugar (about 1/8 cup) and vinegar (2 tbsp?), mixed it all together with the fork, then dipped a piece of lettuce in to taste it to make sure it was the right balance, and it was. It was amazing! He just put a spoon in the bowl so we could scoop it onto our salad. I'm making it for our salads tonight, and we're also having toasted BLTA's. I'm pregnant and the combo of it all sounds good. lol :)

It's always less expensive to make your own dressings, and I think they taste so much better when made fresh! They can last about 4 days in your fridge, so when I make a dressing, I usually make just enough for the meal or one extra. One of my favorite ways I've seen another friend make her dressing is in a Pyrex measuring cup that has a pouring lip. The liquid measuring lines are right there on the side, you can mix your dressing with a fork, and put saran wrap over the top to store it in the fridge if you have any left-overs. Quick an easy.

I found this other raspberry vinaigrette recipe online tonight that I thought would be worth trying. To view it click here.

Also, about a month ago Josh and I were looking for a good homemade balsamic vinaigrette and we came across this one I love this recipe! The key was to mix the dressing in the blender! I halved the recipe and skipped the herbs. (This dressing is said to taste just like Cheesecake Factory's vinaigrette.)

If you've never made your own dressing let this be the week to try it! You'll be amazed!