Thursday, March 25, 2010

MSG Free!

I like salads. And I like raw veggies. I do not eat either of those things without ranch dressing. Its a staple! And much to my surprise, I recently discovered that Zachariah will eat raw carrots, broccoli, celery AND salad... as long as he has ranch dressing on the side. (He loves to dip foods.) Here is the kicker. Ranch dressing has MSG in it. MSG is incredibly bad for you. And it is in SO MUCH of what we consume. (I will try and do a whole post on MSG sometime in the future. Your welcome.) Since I care about my son and the things he is consuming, I have tried to drastically cut out foods that contain MSG. Salad dressing is one of them.

That obviously caused a problem with the salad/veggie consumption, so I decided to make my own salad dressing! I found a super easy recipe and ended up loving it. The ingredient list, while not extremely healthy, contains no MSG. So I am a happy camper!



Here is what you need to make you own MSG free dressing. Mayonnaise, sour cream, salt, ground pepper, dried parsley, dried chives, dried dill weed, onion powder and garlic powder. I had every one of these ingredients in my pantry with the exception of sour cream. That is the only thing I had to buy. Not to shabby for a spur of the moment ranch dressing recipe!




I obviously have no rhyme or reason to the purchasing of my spices. I mean, seriously here folks. There is not a single brand that has a friend in that picture. Sad. I need to go through my spices and figure out which brand is dominating my cabinet. I'll be sure to keep you posted on this pressing matter.




Take a whole cup of mayo and half a cup of sour cream and dump them in a bowl.





Then throw in 1/2 teaspoon dried chives, 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley, 1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed, 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/4 teaspoon onion powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper.





Whisk them together and then, wala! You have some nice homemade ranch dressing. Seriously, it takes like five minutes. When eliminating MSG out of salad dressing is that simple, why would you not give it a try?




And just so you know, I ate a whole entire head of broccoli immediately after I whisked these ingredients together.



And I enjoyed every




last




bite.





Homemade Ranch Dressing

Ingredients:
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon dried chives
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
Directions:
Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl. Keep in airtight container in the fridge.

3 comments:

Raine said...

As far as the spices are concerned, I think that McCormick is in the lead.

Also, the last picture is awesome. :)

tammi said...

how long will it keep?

Amy Lynn said...

Tammi, I am not 100% sure. I usually use it up in a week or two. Since it doesn't have preservatives I probably wouldn't trust it after week 3 or 4.