Honey Mustard Vinaigrette (and saving money on real food!)

I just recently started experimenting with homemade dressing and this is the first one that's a keeper for us.  I like that I can tweak the flavor to my own preference and use all-natural ingredients that are really good for you, like extra virgin olive oil and raw apple cider vinegar.

My old favorite dressing was loaded with GMOs, preservatives, high fructose corn syrup and food coloring.  While in part I believe that it's better to get down a lot of salad greens even if it means a little bad stuff going in with it, it still didn't sit well with me.  So, over the past couple years, I've tried my way through nearly every dressing variety on the shelves of Whole Foods in search of a healthier alternative.  I never found one I liked.  The more than double price hike over my old standby wasn't leaving a great taste in my mouth either.  I almost gave up completely until I went the homemade route.

In making my own, I spend about $3.15 for 16 ounces of dressing, and the best deal on an all-natural, organic bottle of the same quantity from Whole Foods costs just around $4.00, leaving me with roughly $.85 in savings.  That isn't nearly as much as I thought it would be based on all the talk I've heard about how much cheaper it is to make your own salad dressing, but it's more savings than any coupon I've found for a 100% natural dressing.  

However, that still means my homemade higher quality version is quite a bit pricier than the cheapest conventional dressing you can find.  I think it's well worth it though.  I really do think that cheap food comes at a high price for someone somewhere, even if it isn't you (or isn't you yet).  I just get frustrated that good, real food that hasn't been genetically engineered or synthetically designed in a lab is so inaccessible to so many people at this point in time because of how much it costs.  We personally may not have cable or iPhones in order to be able to spend more on good quality food, but we still have an abundance that allows us that choice.  So for now we do our best to take care of our bodies and support the farmers that are going to nourish us all best in the very long term.

So, if you too are looking to make some changes to reduce your intake of all the potentially harmful substances in our food, but you still need to be as cost-conscious as you can while doing that, try making your own salad dressing!      

Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

Largely adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Yield: 8 ounces
Time: 5 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

DIRECTIONS:

Combine ingredients in a glass jar, cover tightly with a lid, and shake until well-blended.  If desired, transfer to a glass cruet to avoid drips during use.  Store in the fridge.