My 3 Favorite Salad Dressing Recipes

Many salad dressings you find at the grocery store are high in calories. And those calories can really add up if you use more than the usual two tablespoon serving on your salad like I do. My every day big green salads need more than that!

Commercially made dressings often contain ingredients that I either have never heard of or don’t know what the heck they are, such as: Guar gum, natamycin, calcium disodium edta, xantham gum, titanium dioxide, disodium guanylate, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate. I don’t know what any of that stuff actually does but I do know I don’t need it in my diet or my salad dressing.

About 10 years ago, I started making my own salad dressings. Today, I thought I’d share my three favorite recipes that are easy to make, lower in calories than most commercial brands, and are free of hidden sugars, extra sodium and weird chemicals.

First, I’m sharing my own loose recipe for a simple vinaigrette that’s easy to customize to your personal preferences.

Make it Your Way Vinaigrette

Here’s what I use:
Fresh lemon juice
One big shallot or two small and/or 2 to 4 garlic cloves minced
Fresh ground pepper
Sea salt
Dijon mustard – lots of it!
Red or white wine vinegar, or both
Herbs de Provence, Italian or Mediterranean seasoning blend

Truvia, stevia, monk fruit or your preferred sweetener
Good quality olive oil – I go easy, olive oil is good for you but it is high calorie. I use 2 tablespoons.
Balsamic vinegar

Fruit jam (optional)
Maple syrup (optional)
Honey (optional)
Fresh orange juice (optional)

First I mince the garlic and/or shallots and put them in the jar. If I have both on hand, I use both.

Then I start adding the other ingredients.I begin with small amounts, knowing I can add more later if I want, but I can’t subtract.

To the minced garlic/shallots I add 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard and/or stone ground mustard, a little sweetener (I prefer monk fruit or stevia. Be careful with stevia drops as a little goes a long way!)

A pinch of salt, fresh pepper, dried herbs of your choice, 2 to 4 tablespoons of lemon juice.
1/4 cup of red or white wine vinegar, 3 to 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Stir and then shake until emulsified.

Now taste it. Is it too watery? Add more Dijon mustard. Is it too acidic and harsh? Add more of something sweet, some mustard, and a few tablespoons water.

Sometimes I will add the juice of an orange instead of water for extra flavor. I have also thrown in a heaping spoonful of a sweet jam for thickness and sweetness. I recently used the last of some low sugar jam and made the dressing right in the jam jar.

When you’ve got a vinaigrette that suits your palate, screw the lid on your jar and stick it in the fridge. Since it doesn’t have any dairy products in it, it will keep for quite some time. I usually go through mine, having salads nearly every night, in about a week to 10 days.

As far as a calorie count goes, it will mostly depend on how much olive oil you use. I tried not using any but the consistency was too watery for my liking. I use 2 tablespoons of olive oil and make a big batch of dressing. So I log in my dressing as 40 calories per 1/4 cup. Also be sure to factor in any maple syrup, honey or jam added.

Caesar Salad Dressing

As I discussed in the previous post, eating the same old salad every night can get boring quickly. The same goes for the salad dressing. When you need a change from vinaigrette, have a Caesar salad.

I found this recipe a couple of years ago and like it so much, I printed it out and put it in my old school recipe box. I’ve also committed to memory, I’ve made it so many times.

I always have this dressing on a kale salad – Dino or curly – but Romaine would certainly work (I’m a little wary of Romaine after all the food poisoning outbreaks over the years). It also works great as a sauce for vegetables and I’ve even used it as a spread in a wrap.

Mexican Salad Dressing

My newest find is this Mexican Salad Dressing. I use 3 to 4 garlic cloves and a lot more cumin in my version. When I made this dressing the second time, I forgot to add the olive oil and I didn’t notice a difference. So now I omit that and add a few scoops of salsa instead, either on top of the dressing or mixed in.

My husband and I had chicken tacos the other night and I made a salad to go with them. I added defrosted frozen charred corn and black beans to the salad, then used this dressing to top it off. We had the dressing again a few nights later on tacos – instead of sour cream – and it was delicious!

I shared this recipe with a friend who thought the base – yogurt, garlic, lime juice – might translate well into a Ranch style dressing with the right herbs. I want to try that next.

Do you have a low calorie dressing recipe you love? I am always looking for new ones to add to my trio.

Adrienne

Every Day Habits: Big Green Salad

Nearly every day at dinnertime, I begin my meal with a big green salad. It’s similar in concept to the Big Bowl of Fruit: it fills you up with lots of foods that have low calorie density prior to eating your main course.

Eating green salads to help you with your weight loss endeavors and improve your diet and overall health is not a new idea. We’ve all heard that adding lots of fresh vegetables to our daily intake is a good step to a healthy lifestyle. But not all salads are created equal. They can be very high calorie and can get boring when they’re on repeat.

I’ve got 12 ways to liven up a green salad and make this healthy addition to your diet more appealing – all without blowing your calorie budget.

1.  Sliced red cabbage

Red cabbage not only adds a little flavor and crunch but it helps to beef up the volume of your salad. I like to mix it in to my salad regularly. It helps my lettuce inventory last a little longer.

2.  Beans

I love garbanzo and kidney beans on my salads. They add fiber, protein and healthy fats to your salad and they’re filling. A quarter cup – 2 ounces – of canned garbanzo beans has 80 calories, 3.5 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein.

3.  Dried fruit

Dried fruit is wonderful with a tangy vinaigrette. It complements the acidic flavors of the dressing. I like to use dried cherries, cranberries and raisins but dried apples and other fruits would be lovely too. Two tablespoons of raisins contain about 65 calories.

4.  Nuts

I love pecans and walnuts on my salad and they have some wonderful nutrients in them including good fats. Nuts are high in calories so I make sure I measure them before adding to my salad. Two tablespoons of chopped walnuts logs in around 100 calories and that same amount of pecans is about 70.

5.  Different types of lettuce

I always buy red leaf lettuce but that can get boring after awhile. Sometimes I make a salad with arugula or mix arugula with my red leaf. Other options are watercress, Boston, Little Gem, kale, micro greens, romaine, green leaf, Bibb, spinach and frisee. I even added nasturtium flowers to a salad once. They made an ordinary salad a beautiful and memorable experience.

6.  Parmesan cheese

I like to take a wedge of parmesan and a veggie peeler and peel some parmesan into several thin strips. The parmesan adds an umami flavor and the thinness of the parm keeps the calories low.

7.  Fresh fruit

Just like dried fruits, fresh fruit can add another sweet dimension to your salad. Try berries, apple chunks, melon and of course tomatoes and avocado are considered fruits too.

8.  Leftover veggies

I seem to always have some leftover cooked veggies in the fridge these days like roasted cauliflower, grilled zucchini, and steamed green beans. I put them on top of a salad, chilled, and treat them just like the rest of the veggies.

9.  Add an egg 

Full disclosure: I can’t stand eggs. But I wish I liked them because they check all the boxes – satiety, protein, convenience, availability, and extra flavor. One medium hard-boiled egg has about 70 calories.

10. Crumbly cheeses

Feta, goat cheese, blue cheese…they are all full of delicious flavor. Calories vary from 20 calories for 2 tablespoons Athenos fat free feta to 100 for 2 tablespoons of most blue cheese crumbles.

11. Lean meats 

When we have grilled chicken, I always try to grill enough breasts for more than just one meal. I can add a few ounces to my salad and make it more of a main course than a first course. And of course, beef, turkey, pork, seafood and vegan meats work too. 

12. Canned and jarred vegetables 

Olives, marinated red peppers, pickled onions, cornichons, artichokes can be delicious and flavorful additions to your salad. 

So what do you add to your salads to make them more interesting? I am always looking for more ideas!

Adrienne

Ask Adrienne

Since I began talking openly about my experiences losing over 80 pounds, getting the fittest I’ve been in my entire life, breaking up with alcohol while living in wine country, and purging my home of unwanted, unused stuff – all during the pandemic – I’ve received quite a number of questions.

So I started “Ask Adrienne” to answer your questions about my journeys. Each Ask Adrienne will focus on one broad topic. Today, the focus is diet.

Let’s get right to it!

Do you use exercise to knock off the calories you consumed?

I don’t work calories off after I eat because I only exercise in the morning and on an empty stomach. I also don’t add extra exercise the following day to try to balance out a heavy meal from the night before. It’s hard for me to plan the intensity of a workout anyway. Sometimes I am into it, sometimes I’m not. If I overdo it on food one day, I try to look for a lesson in it and move on. Every day is a new opportunity!

However, if I know I’m having a heavier, calorie-dense dinner – like homemade pizza, which we have often – then I might choose a workout that morning that burns more calories, like weight training or going for a long, brisk, hilly hike.

Mostly I see exercise as a way to relieve stress, tone muscles, get stronger, become more flexible and feel good! I focus more on food intake for losing or maintaining my weight rather than exercise. Exercise helps to burn calories but I find it’s easier to manage my food intake than depend on exercise for weight loss.

What are some of your daily eats and drinks?

Ah! I have so many and it really depends on my mood, the season and what’s in the fridge and pantry. Right now, I am enjoying my fruit bowls. I am loving the winter citrus and apples but I also can’t wait for stone fruits and watermelon this summer.

I am a big soup fan. I regularly make a veggie soup with or without chicken sausage. Sometimes I’ll add garbanzo or kidney beans. Making a batch of veggie soup is a great way to clean out the fridge when you have a surplus of veggies you know are about to go south. I always make a big batch of soup so I can freeze some for later.

I also like rice cakes. I finally found a brand that is both low calorie and not too airy – just 20 calories a cake. I have two with a slice of cheese, hummus or peanut butter after my fruit bowl. And I always finish lunch with an ounce of either dried apricots or prunes. Dried apricots are my favorite, especially if they’re on the tart side.

For a sweet treat, I like to have several squares of Lily’s chocolate. I am crazy about this new flavor!

For dinner, I almost always start things off with big salads. I make my own salad dressing so I can control the ingredients. Same old salads get boring after awhile, so lately I’ve been adding a little goat, feta or blue cheese crumbles or some chopped walnuts or pecans. A small amount goes a long way in the flavor and texture departments.

The main dish at dinner is always different but I try to always include a fresh green vegetable – steamed, roasted or sautéed – as a side dish.

For dessert, we often have popsicles but in wintertime they aren’t as appealing. These days we’ve been having non-fat Greek yogurt sweetened with some stevia, fresh or frozen fruit and topped with homemade granola. I use this granola recipe as my foundation but switch out the nuts with what I have on hand, skip the coconut and add chia seeds. I also use different dried fruits. Last time I used raisins and chopped dates. Dried chopped cherries are delicious too!

Drinks we enjoy include herbal teas and sparkling water. We have morning tea after our coffee and afternoon tea a few days a week. Last year we were going through so many cans and bottles of sparkling water after we gave up alcohol that we decided to buy a SodaStream machine. It’s much more convenient and we can flavor our water the way we want. Although I miss those colorful cans and fun flavors of Bubly.

I sometimes buy kombuchas as a treat but really, hot tea and bubbly water is all I need.

When we have warm weather, I love a tonic water over ice with a squeeze of lime once in a while. Fevertree makes a lemon tonic water that is so good! I also like Q Tonic Water.

How do you cope with desires for calorie heavy foods?

This has been a process for me over the last 12+ months. There was a time during my journey that I was afraid of eating heavier foods. My husband would suggest lasagne, and I would cringe and wonder how I would avoid blowing my diet that day. I used to think that enjoying foods like lasagne automatically meant I wasn’t adhering to my diet and would never lose weight, therefore I thought I could never eat things like lasagne.

Noom has completely changed my thinking on this. I can eat what I want and am not on a diet, but rather I am changing the way I eat. No foods are off limits. But if it’s a calorie dense food like lasagne, I will plan ahead a little.

For me, planning looks like:

Making that green salad a little bigger by adding extra vegetables. Make my side vegetable – maybe sautéed zucchini or steamed broccoli – to go with the lasagna. Then I start with a reasonable portion of the main course and a big helping of the side veggie.

Usually that satisfies me but if it doesn’t I will have more veggies and a little more lasagna. In the last 8 months or so, I have not gone crazy gorging on any food. I might eat more calories than Noom says I should for that day, but it has not resulted in any issues for me, physically or emotionally.

And what about sudden cravings?

Those darn cravings! They don’t happen to me very often anymore but it was a big problem initially. I ate all the cheese puffs, Red Vine licorice, ice cream sandwiches, Triscuits and so on. I caved in to every craving in the beginning. But I let myself indulge because not only was I trying to lose weight, I was breaking up with alcohol and needed to have substitutes and distractions.

After a while, I got sick of that – as in grossed out but also bored with it. When I started Noom, I began my food intake education (also known as calorie counting) and realized I was eating much more than I needed to. So I chose new and healthier treats, started weighing, measuring and logging my food and soon, I gave up the junk. Thankfully, the cravings soon diminished. Research shows that eating junk food increases your cravings for more junk food. It’s a vicious cycle.

The best advice I have for dealing with a craving is wait. Want that cookie sitting on the counter? Tell yourself to wait 10 minutes and then if you still want it, eat it and enjoy it. But it’s essential that you change your surroundings in that 10 minutes.

Leave the room, engage your brain in something else. But please don’t stand there staring at the cookie for 10 minutes (who could do that anyway?). Watch a video, text a friend, play with your dog or cat, paint your nails, clean out a drawer, drink a glass of water, sing a song or do a crossword. Just do something else in a different room. There’s a good chance you’ll forget about the cookie altogether. Also, do not leave cookies on the counter in the first place!

I love questions. Have one for me? Leave it in the comments or send me an email (info on my About page!)

Adrienne

How I Lost 80 Pounds

Last February, I decided it was time to address my growing weight problem. Since 2015, I gained 70 pounds. It happened slowly at first, then after my husband retired and we started traveling frequently, my weight began to increase more rapidly with no signs of stopping.

For reference, I’m 6’ 2” and I feel best at a size between 6 and 10 (150 – 165 pounds). In this first photo, which was taken January, 2020, I weighed between 235 and 240 pounds.

Over the next year, I would drop between 80 and 85 pounds. Here is how I went about it.

I lost weight doing 3 main things: 

• I quit drinking alcohol. That helped me lose the first 15 pounds, from 235 to 220. 

• Next I started intermittent fasting (IF). I have black coffee, a big glass of water with a little fresh lemon juice and plain green tea for breakfast. I eat my first meal of the day around 1:00 pm. That opens my eating window which goes like this: I eat lunch, snack if I want, eat dinner, have dessert if I want, then wrap all that eating business up around 6:30 or 7:00 pm. I have nothing but water until the next morning when I do it all over again. I lost another 8 to 10 pounds doing just IF, from 220 – 211. 

• When I first started doing IF, I went a little crazy. That was back in April, near the beginning of the pandemic, and I think we were all sideways back then, eating for comfort and stress relief. I was eating almost non-stop for most of my 6-hour window. And I was eating whatever I wanted – cheese puffs, ice cream, candy, huge portions of meals, lots of cheese, and so on. It’s no surprise that I stopped losing weight. When I went from plateauing to gaining, I knew I had to change what was happening between 1 and 7 pm. A friend told me she started Noom. I checked it out and from the start I knew it was for me. By following the Noom program, I went from 211 to 150 in 8 months.

The photo of me in a bikini was taken February, 2021.

I have not given up any foods or food categories. I allow myself to eat what I want, I just have to work it into my day. I weigh and measure most of my foods – especially the high calorie ones – and I count calories.

I workout 5 to 7 days a week. Yoga, Pilates, weight training, walking and running on the treadmill are my favorite ways to exercise.

If you decide to do what I did, you do not have to quit drinking alcohol, you just need to count the calories you consume. I gave up alcohol for many reasons, one being weight loss, and it’s helped me stay the course. This journey has been a lot of hard work and commitment but I’ve never felt better!

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have about my weight loss journey.

I am happy to answer them!

Adrienne