Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

Confessions of a salad hater

[To skip the witty diatribe (just get to the recipe, will ya?), click here. - Ed.]

Full disclosure: For most of my life I must admit that I hated salad - it just took up room on the plate, and it was something I rarely ate unless I was suffering through another short-lived diet fad. I know it sounds hard to believe to the readers who are completely focused on their health (and considering that eating more vegetables is one of the focal points of AlmostFit), but honestly? Eating salad before everything else was like having to go to the dentist before I went to the local burger joint (Any Kow Korner refugees out there?).

That all changed when I met my beautiful and intelligent wife, April.

In fact, when it comes to just about everything, my life changed dramatically for the better when she entered the picture. Among many other things, she completely revolutionized (and improved) my relationship with food - not the food alternatives that I had grown accustomed to, but real, whole food.

And in particular, for this week’s recipe, she has shown me the light of what a salad can be.

C’mon - how can anyone hate salad?

When it comes to eating things like salad, I think that I grew up the way most folks my age did; It was the 70’s and 80’s, where convenience stores, our obsession with creating low-fat chemical alternatives to “real” food, and the revolution of the microwave were just hitting their stride. We were consumed with making products that accommodated our increasingly fast-paced lifestyle.

There were a lot of casualties in the War on Pace (ha), not the least of which was salad dressing, which became the poster child for low fat processed alternatives that were sort of like their full fat processed cousins, but with that odd, chemical taste, and a slightly plastic texture. They’ve improved a little in their delivery since then, but as I recall the chemical alternatives at the time were a lot less refined. Of course, we were also in the time when Margarine and all of its trans fat glory was generally considered to be the healthy alternative to the real thing.

That’s a long way of saying that I grew up more or less enduring “salad” (usually iceberg lettuce and some celery slices) primarily by drowning my vegetables in low fat plasticine pseudo-dressing, or more likely, as a soup bowl of chunky Blue Cheese dressing with a piece of lettuce on the side, somewhere, buried beneath the mashed potatoes and fried chicken, or perhaps still in the “crisping drawer”, which would have been more aptly named the primordial incubator for what happened to 90% of the lettuce that never left the refrigerator’s hanging plastic box.

Enter: Real Balsamic Vinaigrette

That all changed when I first experienced April’s salad preparation. She has been making her own salad dressings for many years, which sounds more complicated than it actually is - as you’ll see. But I can safely say that her vinaigrette has been the key to restoring my relationship with salad. Well that and her charm, wit, and feminine powers of persuasion (apparently she wants me to stay around on the planet for a while too).

A basic vinaigrette is really pretty simple (and quite honestly, boring); in fact, at its simplest it is just oil and vinegar mixed together in an emulsion that is continually trying to separate itself back into the two distinct liquids that it started out as. A small amount of mustard is sometimes used as an emulsification agent (and for an additional flavor dimension). In fact, when you see “Lecithin” on a label of a bottle, that is generally a food-derived chemical compound that is added to the oil and vinegar (or what’s left of it after its been processed to death) to make the molecules of the oil and vinegar bind together rather than separate, as they are likely to do. I’ll take the mustard, thanks.

Without further adieu…

Friday Fit recipe #2: April’s Balsamic Vinaigrette

Note: By her request, I have to qualify the title of this recipe by saying April does not take credit for “inventing” this recipe; this is just how she makes it. In my heart however, she gets the credit.

Ingredients

1/4 cup decent balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. dijon mustard
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. real sugar or honey (preferably not artificial sweetener - see below)
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 tsp. salt, preferably sea salt, to taste
1 sm. clove of garlic, chopped and mashed into a paste
1/2 tsp. herbs de Provence or other herbs of your choice (Rosemary is a good alternative)
1/4 cup decent Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Preparation

Time to prepare: 5 minutes

In a small mixing bowl, briskly wisk all of the ingredients except the olive oil together until blended. Then drizzle in the olive oil while wisking to emulsify.

It’s that simple!

Options

My wife uses this recipe as the basis for her vinaigrettes, but will often change it up a bit for variety. Here are few alternates that you can rotate in:

- Instead of lemon juice and sugar, substitute orange juice and a little bit of honey
- Substitute finely chopped Thyme as an alternative to the herbs de Provence
- Use fresh raspberries if they are in season instead of the juice

Serve

To serve, wisk to restore the emulsion, and drizzle lightly on the salad ingredients of your choice. You don’t need much. I have yet to meet a leaf that this dressing does not complement.

For me, I have a bias against iceberg lettuce for some reason, probably because I grew up hating it. I typically enjoy this dressing over chopped romaine, fresh spinach leaves, or mixed greens like mesclun.

That said, it goes well with iceberg lettuce too.

In addition to the greens, we almost always add some fruit (cranberries, sliced pear, dried cherries, raisins, fresh mandarin or satsuma orange slices, or raspberries when they are in season) and nuts (sliced and toasted almonds, toasted pecans or walnuts, sometimes candied lightly) to add a new dimension.

Good quality olives (the salty ones, not the sliced black olives out of a can) are also great in a salad with this dressing because the salty nature of olives balances exceptionally well with the sweet acidity of good balsamic. Sliced red onion also goes well.

When serving, we also typically add in a crumbly cheese like blue cheese or feta - if you are having sliced pear in particular, there are few things that go better together with this recipe than sliced, sweet pears with crumbled blue cheese. Complete the bite with a candied pecan and a leaf of baby spinach, and you are in sweet and savory heaven.

Tips and comments

When it comes to making a good vinaigrette, it involves more than just the two key ingredients of oil and vinegar (and a binder). To get it just right, I’ve found that it is a little more delicate. The recipe won’t tell you everything; In some ways it is a “feel” thing. You have to do it fairly often to get a good feel for the balance of the ingredients, primarily because it will vary according to your taste. For me, I enjoy a vinaigrette that is closer to the balsamic side. You on the other hand may enjoy the other fruit elements of the recipe (lemon, orange juice, and such).

The bottom line is, this recipe is a guideline for an exceptionally good vinaigrette, and is the basis for a staple in our household.

An interesting sidenote: In France, it is not uncommon for families to make this type of dressing in slightly larger quantities for the week’s salads.

A note on artificial sweeteners

There is a huge, raging ongoing debate over the safety (or danger) of chemical sweeteners like Aspartame and Splenda. With such divergent, passionate opinions, I don’t know which side is 100% correct really; I’m not a scientist, so I couldn’t tell you if it is safe or not. However, my opinion is to stay away from chemical substitutes to real food at pretty much all cost - I don’t think they’re worth the overall health risk since the consequences may not be known until years from now. As Dr. Will Clower says, “If its not food, don’t eat it.” Simple as that.

And in fact, for this recipe, even more so. To me, the question is this: Is it really worth taking in a chemical sweetener to save a measly 15 calories spread over the entire amount of this dressing (you’ll likely use less than a quarter of this dressing at any meal)? Meaning, the calories derived from the sugar are probably less than 4. Blink 10 times fast and I think you may have just burned that off.

Or better yet, leave a comment on this article - that’s gotta be 15 calories right there!

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