Roasted Garlic Dressing

Using one word, how would you describe the last salad you ate? Would it be exciting, delicious, or whoa?  Because I wouldn't be able to choose just one of those words to describe the salad I had for lunch on Wednesday and then again for dinner on Thursday. :)

This salad dressing is fantastic!  And did you know that roasting garlic makes your house smell insanely good....even at 0730? haha....my poor family. :)

So, if your salad needs a kick in the pants, or if you're just looking for something a little different, try this dressing (and bring a mint) ;)

Roasted Garlic Salad Dressing

What's In It:
2 heads of garlic
1/2 c extra virgin olive oil
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
2 T lemon juice
1/2 t salt
1 t pepper
1 T honey

What To Do With It:
Roast the garlic* and allow to cool.  Once cool, remove garlic from it's skin.  Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.

Refrigerate until needed.

*I had never roasted garlic before, I was always scared.  Me, scared....of garlic?  Right, well now it sounds silly, but it seemed fancy to me and therefore made me nervous.  I shouldn't have been, it was so easy! I did it two ways and both seemed to work fine for this purpose, so do what'ch'ya feel. :)

Version 1: Wrap entire head of garlic in aluminum foil and place in oven on rack.  Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes.  Remove from oven, open foil, and allow garlic to cool.  Snip off top of garlic with scissors and remove garlic from skin (you can peel the skin away or squeeze the garlic out like juicing a citrus - the above pic is squeezed).

Version 2:  Cut off top of garlic with a knife, brush the top with olive oil, and place in a pan.  Bake at 400 degrees F for 25 minutes.  Allow to cool and remove garlic from skin. I had more trouble squeezing this one, so I peeled away the skin.  I felt this way did dry the garlic out a bit more, so if you're planning on using it as a spread, I'd go with version 1.

Roasted and Peeled

Look out Vampires!

I planted 130 cloves of garlic today!   :)  3 1/2 rows of Silver Rose and 4 1/2 rows of Inchelium Red.  I am so excited to see those little green sprigs pop through the dirt - it's a little embarrassing.  I also got some paint stir sticks to spray pain black and then use as row markers.  But I felt guilty asking the paint guy at Home Depot for 80 sticks (since my garden is very long and narrow and most of the rows will only be about 7 feet long, I'll have a lot of rows!) so I bought some 3/4" x 1 1/2" x 6' pieces of wood to cut into 8" pieces that I'll then also paint.  I won't have enough, but I'll hit up a few different paint departments and then I should be covered ;)

I also ventured into hamburger bun making today.  I made this Recipe ......twice.  First time around I made 12 buns as listed in the recipe and they came out beautifully!

They where, however, dollar roll size and weren't really going to work for the burgers I'd planned for dinner.  So I made a second batch and this time only made 8.  They were still light and delicious and now appropriately sized, but they were no longer their beautiful round perfect almost pre-split selves...we'll see what round 3 will bring, but first we need to eat all these rolls! I haven't heard a single grumble from the Z- squad, so I think we'll manage to slog through this trial in our lives.  hahaha.  I haven't even told you about the artisan bread I made today - we haven't tried it yet but I'm sure a review will follow.