The Serving Solution

My new salad dressing jugs

 

I don't buy salad dressings.  Are you surprised?  Probably not!  Actually, I need to qualify that statement - I don't buy oil/vinegar based dressings.  I do buy Ranch dressing and mayonnaise.

It's a decision I made a few years ago, once armed with some delicious and simple salad dressing recipes from the likes of Maggie Beer and Nigella Lawson.  My reasoning was not so much about any particular puritan belief about salad dressings, but rather a pragmatic response to the waste of them.  Our salad-eating season is relatively short-lived and confined to warm summer days.  This is probably because I have a tendency to prefer cooked vegies.  And probably why my family exclaim excitedly when the first salads of the season appear.  We don't avoid salads because we don't like them - we do.  
What I began to notice is that because of our short salad season, the dressings don't get used up.  What a waste!  So I began to make a quick dressing as we needed it, and that has been much more satisfying in all kinds of ways.

This has all presented somewhat of a dilemma.  I've also noticed that many families can't agree on what salad dressings they prefer and tend to put a variety of bottles on the table for each person to make an individual choice.  In the last week as we've entertained a couple of other families for meals, and knowing this is the practice in both families, I chose not to dress my garden salads.  But this meant putting the little jar, with the redcurrant jelly label still on it, on the table, as that is what I'd made my salad dressing in.  It just didn't look right and I knew I had to remedy the situation now, at the beginning of our salad-eating season.

I found the answer yesterday.  I was walking past House and these little jugs were in a big bucket, marked down for quick sale.  Upon exlaiming how cute they were and how perfect for salad dressing all three kids chorused "then BUY it!".  And so I did, for a grand total of $4.  I now have two little salad dressing jugs.  Never mind that they were labelled milk jugs - obviously the label was wrong!