Salads and salad dressings -

Now how good does this look?

It probably took me 5 minutes to throw together.

It is important to have things ready, like greens washed, onions already cut and bagged, etc. the avocado of course needs to be cut fresh, but most of the fixings can be pre-cut and stored ahead of time.

It just makes it a lot easier to put a nice salad together.

The only "unraw" thing here is the dressing - in a hurry I used Annie's Goddess dressing - now I normally don't do this.

Often people ask "what can I use for salad dressing?". It is so very easy to get in that mindset of having to eat bottled dressing, for whatever reason. What most people don't realize is that the best dressings out there are usually the simplest to make.

Some folks need to slowly get away from the idea that their greens and veggies need to be drowned with a fatty, rich blanket of sauce.

Dressing is really easy to make - The very easiest one was squeezing the juice of an orange over my salad - look out for the seeds - that's it!

Other ways to make dressing is a simple oil and vinegar dressing - just a slight drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a splash of vinegar.

If you don't want to use oil and vinegar here is a really great one - avocado and orange juice.

Dr. Doug Graham has often discussed using a natural fat and a natural acid, meaning instead of using oil which is a concentrated fat, you would use avocado, or nuts, or olive as the fat.

And then instead of the vinegar you use an acid straight from the tree, such as lemon, orange, lime, tomato, etc.

See?

So here are some great combinations:

+ Avocado -and- lemon or lime or orange juice or tomato, etc.

+ Soaked cashews -and- lemon or lime or orange juice or tomato, etc.

+ Almond or tahini butter -and- lemon or lime or orange juice or tomato, etc.

+ Olives -and- lemon or lime or orange juice or tomato, etc.

Now you may be thinking - that sounds booooring. Well, no it isn't at all. Because every combination is very different from the other. If you use a different combination each time the varieties will seem endless!

And if you are just starting out on raw foods, and not ready for the straight-forward flavor of simple combinations, then go ahead and add a little of this and that to it to give it more zip:

~ Fresh garlic or garlic powder

~ Fresh onion or onion powder

~ Dill

~ Basil

~ Oregano

~ Mint

~ Poppy Seeds

~ Sea Salt & Pepper

~ Honey or Agave nectar

~ Soaked sun dried tomatoes

~ Ginger

Anything that looks good.

Now the very best thing I've found to mix up a small amount of dressing is a Magic Bullet. There are many other personal size blenders around, but I like this one the best as it comes with a number of containers, solid lids and lids with holes, and two different blades. I don't use the blender or juicer but who knows, maybe one day I might.

Another tip I have for salads is to get the leaves washed right away, and keep them in plastic bags so it is easy to put them together. This is a huge time saver. I cannot fathom how much lettuce I've let go bad because I was too lazy to fuss around with washing. So then I would buy the pre-packaged, pre-washed lettuces, and now they are all supposedly not recommended for eating (talking about the big E-coli scare in the news) - besides the loose heads of lettuce just taste fresher than the packaged kind.

When I make salads, I try not to over-do the additions to it. I try to keep my extra additions down to 2-3 so it doesn't get too boring. By additions I mean:

• Bell peppers (I don't use the green kind, which are just under-ripe peppers)
• Tomatoes (fresh or sun-dried)
• Onions
• Parsley
• Olives
• Nuts
• Shredded Carrots
• Shredded beets
• Jicama (kids love this)
• Celery
• Cucumber
• Zucchini
• Corn
• Mushrooms

Happy Eating!