House Dressing

I am a fan of homemade salad dressing. For starters, it's much less expensive than that bottled stuff at the market, especially if you are prone to high quality bottled dressings. The ingredients are generally fresher. And then there is the taste. Homemade salad dressing is just superior on every front. My favorite dressing, and a staple in my house all year long, is homemade blue cheese dressing.

It's incredibly easy to make this dressing. Serve it with cold, fresh romaine lettuce and your belly will thank you. Plus: you'll never do bottled dressing again.

¾ cup mayonnaise
½ cup sour cream (or ½ cup buttermilk, if you have it on hand)
¾ cup crumbled blue cheese
½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp ground black pepper
¼ tsp garlic powder
1/6 tsp onion salt
½ tsp dried parsley

Place all the ingredients in a bowl.
Use a hand mixer to thoroughly combine salad dressing ingredients (it takes about a minute). If you used sour cream (instead of buttermilk), stir in a splash of vinegar (it makes the dressing tangy and you can use whatever vinegar you have on hand; I'm a fan of red wine vinegar). Let it sit for 30 minutes (in the fridge if the weather is warm) and then serve.

The dressing will keep in the fridge until the sour cream has passed, though I promise that you will have polished it off long before that.
A note on blue cheese: my favorite is Maytag blue, but almost any blue will do the trick. You can also substitute gorgonzola, in which case I guess you'd call it gorgonzola cheese dressing.

And another note on my photography skills...I thought that all of these photos were without flash. But maybe not? Let's just say that photography remains a mystery to me.