WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2023
FOOD / SALADS / DRESSINGS
I actually like leafy-green salads. Just plain old lettuce and some salad dressing is just fine with me. I prefer to make my own vinaigrettes, but that's not always doable. As is often the case with food, it takes far longer to properly make a good vinaigrette than it does to eat the salad it's on.
So during one of my shopping trips to Wal-Mart, I decided to pick up an entire platoon of good, old-fashioned salad dressings in a bottle. Most of these are just 8oz size, but variety is the spice of life--so I bought several small bottles to try rather than a few large bottles, even though that would have been far more economical. I only bought 12oz if the smaller ones weren't available in that flavor.
So we have, from left to right:
1. 8 oz Hidden Valley Ranch
2. 8 oz The Original "Western"
3. 12 oz Wishbone "Russian"
4. 8 oz Kraft "Thousand Island"
5. 8 oz Kraft "Raspberry Vinaigrette"
6. 12 oz Kraft Creamy Poppyseed
The Kraft Creamy Poppyseed only came in a 12oz bottle. Never had it before, thought I would give it a try, and I LOVE IT! Might be my new favorite factory made salad dressing.
If you've never had Kraft Raspberry vinaigrette, give it a try. It's lovely mix of sweet & sour that goes great with just about any vegetable. Highly recommended.
The Original "Western" is a childhood favorite, as is the very similar Wishbone "Russian". They are both very sweet, somewhat similar to Chinese "sweet and sour" sauce in taste, but not quite. These salad dressings have a ton more flavor than traditional sweet & sour sauce.
The Kraft "Thousand Island" is an absolute classic that most people like. You can even use it as a topping for cheeseburgers, or as classic ingredient for Reuben sandwiches.
Hidden Valley Ranch is an iconic classic dressing that goes good with lots of food, even chicken nuggets. It is the ONLY salad dressing of the bunch that has NO ADDED SUGAR. Everyone loves ranch dressing, and for good reason.
Kraft lets's everyone know, right on the front of their label, that they DO NOT USE high-fructose corn syrup in their salad dressings! Instead, they just use regular, plain old sugar. As a matter of fact, other than the Ranch dressing, these are all LOADED with sugar or corn syrup.
Honestly, the ingredients in most of these are a rather unhealthy combination of seed oils and sugar of some type. If you use them, use them sparingly. The one that might be the safest, surprisingly, is Hidden Valley Ranch.
More importantly, this photo is why I love living in the USA so much: we have such an incredible array of choices in life, even for what we want to put on our salads.
- Pseudo Boethius