salad dressing

It makes me insane when people waste their money buying salad dressing. Store-bought salad dressing is expensive, full of ingredients that do not belong in dressing, and basically just sucks. I've been making my own dressing since I was a kid, because that's what my dad did, and he taught me.

Salad dressing requires four things:
olive oil
vinegar
salt
pepper

Mix that up in a bottle, shake it good, and taste it. Too tart? Too oily? Add vinegar or oil to balance it out. Now you can put this on a salad and be good to go. If you want to get tastier, add these things:

dijon mustard
sugar or honey
chopped garlic

want to get all fancy? throw in this:
dried basil
lemon zest
fresh orange juice

unlike school, in the salad dressing world, substitutes are welcome:
walnut oil for olive
rice vinegar for whatever other vinegar you are using

oh, you think you're crazy? try this:
ketchup
poppyseeds... so good

Basically, you can add or sub anything to make a great dressing, just remember your foundation: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper!