DIY salad dressing

Something about warm weather (we are having a record breaking March in Iowa, it's been 70-80 degrees out for days!)  makes me crave crunchy salad.  That and cleaning out the fridge made me realize I had an abundance of veggies to use.  The other night I made a salad to go with our homemade pizza.

spinach, broccoli, green onions, red peppers and feta!

The giant aisle of salad dressings at the grocery store kind of scares me.  Have you seen it?  There are hundreds of bottles of dressing.  How overwhelming.... so, I make just my own salad dressing as needed.  It's very simple, if you make the initial investment in the ingredients, which will be extremely more cost effective and you will use the ingredients over and over for other things... so don't let that initial investment deter you!

You can find many DIY salad dressing recipes online, and food magazines regularly do articles on salad dressings. In fact, it was even mentioned on The Splendid Table this week. So once you get the hang of it and know what you like (spicy, sweet, acidic, etc.) you can put anything in it.  Here's what I made the other night.  This a pretty standard salad dressing at our house.

ingredients:
2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar (you can use any kind of vinegar balsamic, apple cider, etc.)
1/2-1 teaspoon honey
1/2-1 teaspoon spicy mustard
1 Tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Whisk vinegar, honey and mustard in a  small jar or bowl.
Slowly whisk in the olive oil, drop by drop if possible until mixture thickens.
Make this right before you serve the salad.  If you make it ahead, just whisk again right before serving.  The oil and vinegar will separate.

This amount serves two.  When I make one serving to take with me for lunch, I reduce the Tablespoons to teaspoons and just add a tiny dollop of mustard and honey.  However, I should let you know, that I don't like a lot of dressing on my salad so this may not be enough for you. If you like more, or want to make some to use the next day, just increase the amount, using the same basic ratio.  You will find differing opinions on the vinegar to oil ratios for other recipes online.  This is  what I like... find what you like and go for it!  

this is the tiny jar of dressing I made to  pack with my lunch