Most Manufactured Salad Dressing Isn’t Food

I recently decided that it was time to look at the ingredient lists of salad dressings, whatever that means, so I picked four popular brands to examine. You will be very interested to learn what I discovered. The first ingredient in the first product I picked up, Wishbone Italian dressing, was water. Frankly, that seems like a very expensive way to buy water. And surprising, too, given that Italian dressing consists primarily (and traditionally) of olive oil and vinegar. Not Wishbone Italian dressing, though. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Mario Batali’s Radishes Al Cartoccio

I’m gonna take a guess that you’ve always eaten your radishes fresh and raw, like in salads. I can certainly promise you that was the case for me up until just a couple of years ago. But then I began to cook them, and it was a whole new game. Like onions, cooked radishes release their bite to ease into a lovely, complex kind of sweetness with an entirely new set of flavors. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Three Delicious Salad Dressings

Have you ever noticed how so many different cuisines include a dish that pairs some type of greens with some type of fat? Whether it’s lettuce and olive oil, cabbage and mayonnaise (cole slaw), sauteed greens + pignola nuts, spinach with bacon dressing, or deep-sea fatty fish and seaweed (sushi), parsley salad with tahini dressing, you are apt to find green leaves combined with fats over and over again. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Kale Salad Like You’ve Never Imagined

Here’s another fabulous recipe from Sweet Amandine‘s Jessica Fechtor, just in case one wasn’t enough! You will not be sorry. In case you were wondering, kale happens to be one of those cold-weather vegetables that continues to grow even after the first frost. In fact, sometimes it seems like the frost kicks it into high gear. Try this recipe with whatever kale you can get your hands on, whether from the grocery store, or your own garden, or someone else’s. And thank you! to my friend Suze, who stopped by this week with a big bunch of kale from her family’s own prodigious garden. Continue reading