Easy Wild Rice Salad With Home Made Ranch Dressing

What is the Secret to a Great Salad?
The secret to a really delicious salad, is a really delicious dressing. If you want to eat a bowl full of healthy, low calorie vegetables, make your own dressing. You can’t beat home made dressing and if you make enough for a week, it’s worth taking the time. If you want to keep it vegan, here is my Vegan Ranch Dressing.

Once you have the ingredients, this dressing doesn’t take a moment to make. Just put everything in the food processor and blend.  I like to make a mild dressing by scraping out the seeds and  the membrane of the Jalapeño. If you like a bit of heat, don’t scrape out as much.

Leftovers 
The rice and garbanzo beans were leftovers from another meal. With just a little preparation, you can eat home cooked, preservative free, delicious meals, that can be ready in a few minutes.

Menu Plan
Plan on making a dish with rice and then make this salad a few days later. This is when having a menu plan for the week can really help you. Even if you only start with 2 healthy recipes per week, and the rest is take out, it’s a great start to changing eating patterns.

How to Save Time in the Kitchen

• Start a weekly menu plan. Just start with one recipe, and master that dish. Build on your plan every week. Eventually you will have some go-to dishes you can knock up in a heart beat.
• When you chop a vegetable, chop twice as much as you need and put the rest in a PVA free Container with snap lid in the fridge.
• When you can, make double, eg soup, rice, salad, chopped onion, peeled carrots.
• Make enough to freeze a few portions (things that freeze well) like soups, burgers.
• Make double baked potatoes and use the leftovers the next day for breakfast hash.
• When you make salad, make it giant, and eat it 3-4 times.
• Know where everything is in the kitchen and have a place for everything.
• Take your recipe to the store so you won’t forget anything.
• Make the same dishes often. If you find a healthy, low calorie dish, keep the recipe and make it again. The more you make it, the faster you will get.
• Master some one pot recipes, Garlic Shrimp with Asparagus, Eat All You Want Soup, Black Bean Soup, Easy Lemon Chicken with Artichokes.
• Clean as you go. It’s so much easier to prepare food if your area is free of clutter.

 

Here is another salad recipe idea to use with your ranch dressing. Smoked Salmon with Jalapeño Ranch Dressing.