lmarshal1

I especially like using rice vinegar for salad dressings and for marinating beans. I keep a jar of cannallini or red beans or both (with sweet pepper chunks and diced celery) in the fridge. I add a bit of honey or sugar or even leftover light syrup from canned fruit plus the rice vinegar, and some chopped chives. The beans are especially refreshing in the summer. I don't use oil at all for this.

Sounds like a good idea for flavoring. Thanks.

Annie H: I agree with you about the amount of oil in so many dressings. Ugh! Thanks for ideas.

kayb: Thanks for the dressing collections. I especially like the sound of the Jelly Jar dressing. Lots of good ideas. Thanks again. lkm

I'm looking for simple, healthy salad dressings that keep well in the fridge and are light on oil. Too many purchased dressings are full of fat, or worse, sugar. Thanks.

I've used the Aldi mayo for a long time and like it and its price. The Priano pastas are good, although haven't picked up any lately. Aldi chocolates are tasty and cheaper than most. Will head to Aldi later in the week. From the sound of Covid news reports, the new variants are highly contagious and are sending even vaccinated people to the hospital more than in the recent past. So...also looking for stores that open early and have few shoppers then.

I like the idea of the thickened vegetable stock. I want to try Norm's recipe too. A nice bean or grain salad sounds very tasty. Makes me think of a rice salad recipe I used to make and had forgotten. A barley salad might be good as well. Thanks for ideas.

Thanks, Norm, for the recipe. I will try that. Last week I made some of the dressing I mentioned earlier, but I left out the mustard, used apple-cider vinegar instead of rice vinegar, and added chopped chives, a bit of celery seed, and some pepper. Not bad at all. I do want to try yours. I like the addition of the dry milk and the eggs. And the potato salad sounds very good too. Thanks again.

I often make a bean salad with canallini beans, sliced celery, and green onions. I use a dressing recipe written originally for a pasta salad: sugar, dry mustard, cornstarch, and rice vinegar and a little water, cooked till thickened a bit. I have family members who are pre-diabetic, so I tried this dressing with a little artificial sweetener instead of sugar, and it turned out pretty well, but still not quite what I had in mind. Ideas/additions to make this more tasty?

Your cooked dressing for fruit salad sounds delicious. Will try!

Can't believe ten years have passed since I was here looking for a cookbook for beans and grains. Just today I made Priest's Soup from The Versatile Grain and the Elegant Bean cookbook. The soup's main ingredient is brown lentils. I added Mexican seasonings, diced celery and carrots, and a handful of leftover ham bits, but otherwise stuck to the recipe. Very tasty. Neither my husband nor I am pleased with some of our medical numbers from recent check-ups, so...out came the grain/bean recipes. I plan to try more lentil recipes as well as become acquainted with grains and beans I have never tried. Any suggestions for basic recipes? I already use a variety of beans, and we often have brown rice or barley. I add oats to anything I can think of. I love the above cookbook and have used it several times, but it generally is far from basic. Found a container of buckwheat flour in the freezer. Uses other than pancakes? lkm

Thanks for all your help. I've been experimenting with a couple other cooked dressings. I'd love to find a clear, light dressing for a couple of bean salads I make often. I've been using bottled dressings for this, but I like my experiments better so far. Still playing with it. Thanks again. I used to come to eGullet often and got out of the habit. Nice to be back here. Always helpful comments. Thanks again.

The three Aldi's near us have all recently been updated and enlarged. They are clean and orderly. I'm very pleased with my purchases there...milk, eggs, cheeses, ham, frozen vegetables, pickles, dried fruit, canned beans, rice, produce. All cheaper than other stores in the area. All quite tasty, fresh. Their cottage cheese is the best I've found, consistently fresh and not mushy/watery like so many. Better bread selection since the store updates. I've tried some of their Germany Week items...pretty good. We went to an Aldi in Dublin at Christmas time a few years back...yummy breads, cakes, sweets. Anyway...we shop at Aldi at least once or twice a month.

I am looking for a recipe for what used to be called boiled dressing, even though it wasn't actually boiled. What I'm thinking of contains vinegar and sugar and is thickened with corn starch. It is especially good on mild white beans and in pasta salads. It would work on salad greens and shredded cabbage. Any good recipes that work this way? Thanks.

Someone mentioned Constant Comment tea a while back. Tasty and good memories!

A friend gave us a box of 120 La Tisaniere herbal infusion sachets, long since used up. Boxes of 25 sachets in single flavors are available in the U.S. but are rather expensive, running from around $10 to as much as $23. I see them on line from the UK for from 2 to 4 Euros. We will be visiting France shortly. Is this brand available at French markets at reasonable prices? lkm

I've been given a bag of beets. The beets we love in a variety of ways, but I've been told the greens are good too. Raw in salads? Small leaves only? Stems? Steamed like spinach? How do YOU fix them?

Thanks for all your suggestions. I always keep a canola/olive oil blend and Chinese rice vinegar on hand. I'll start there with a pinch of sugar and a few herbs and see what happens. One of the German salads had dressing that was faintly yellow, so perhaps mustard was part of the recipe. A couple of you mentioned watercress. In several of the German hotel salads we had, what they called "garden cress" was an ingredient. Very tasty, slightly peppery. I haven't been able to find any where I shop, but I did find it in Germany in a shop. Tiny leaves. I may have to grow my own. It was a tasty addition.

Traveling in Germany in April, we ate in three hotels, all of which served fresh green salads with nearly identical vinaigrette dressings that were nearly clear, not oily at all, with bits of herbs, maybe slightly sweet even, just delicious. We thought the vinegar was probably a rice/wine vinegar and the oil very fresh and light. Any ideas for recipes?

Thanks for your suggestions! They all sound good. Thanks too for comments on storing the opened jar. I'll comment later when I've had time to try your ideas. lkm

I have a large jar of Costco sun-dried tomatoes in oil. What do I do with it? Thanks.

Rancho Gordo: Your new press is wonderful! Really a work of art. Thanks, all, for so many tips on making corn tortillas. I'm curious: what else can a tortilla press be used for? Does it work for flour tortillas as well as corn tortillas? Pie dough? Thanks. lkm

I bought a cast iron tortilla press on Amazon last week and am very pleased with it--perfect circles, thin tortillas. I used a dry cast iron pan to cook the tortillas. No problems with any of this, but I'm wondering about the masa to water ratio and the cooking time. The tortillas peeled right off the plastic. The finished product was tasty enough, good corn smell and taste, but the consistency wasn't pleasing and there was no puffing and little browning (not the usual brown spots here and there). Is it one of those things that just needs some practice? Ideas otherwise? Thanks.

I just ordered a used copy of The Versatile Grain and the Elegant Bean from Amazon for a bit less than $5. I'm looking forward to using it. Thanks for the recommendations.

Thanks for the tortilla demo. Always look forward to your Rancho Gordo newsletter! LMarshall