Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Newman's Own Light Balsamic - you can't go wrong.

It's not exactly "store" bought but I came across Wistoria Garden's Very Nearly Famous House Vinaigrette at the farmer's market that the Eastern Market, in Washington, D.C. quite some time ago. To date I have gone ordered FOUR of their 12-bottle boxes. It's amazing and I love turning people on to it!

BUY IT, YOU'LL LOVE IT

I usually don't use store bought dressing, but when I do it's Newmans Own Light Italian with Lemon. It is very good.

Gosh, I am amazed no one cited "Ranch" dressing as a favourite - here in Canada, it is probably the most popular by far. Next time I am in the U.S., I will buy some, "Maries blue cheese" - several people have mentioned it and I love blue cheese dressing, but I make my own (not always convenient) because I can't find a good one. I don't think Maries is sold here.

Marzetti's Blue Cheese.

My husband also uses Marzetti's slaw dressing on sandwiches and in tuna salad, potato salad, and pea & peanut salad, in place of mayo.

I also use only Kraft Free Zesty Italian in pasta salad because it doesn't get slimy or soggy. If anything, if I keep the salad more than a couple days I need to add more dressing because it dries out.

I had a daycare for 28 years, tried everything on those kiddies but their favorite was american. Adults, like to try it with their favorite cheese. I like monterey jack the best. But tomato soup to dunk is the best.

OK, the disclaimer to Angus is mostly untrue, rather than true. We raised our own steers for a while, and one of the most important determiners of flavor is the feed that the cattle are raised and finished with. This also helps determine how lean or fat they are. To that end, grass fed steers taste a bit gamier than those who are finished with corn or a mixture. But there is an important caveat to all of this: to wit, bison, oxen, elk, and genuine Angus taste quite different than do most domestic cattle breeds, even when raised on a pure grass diet -- their meat is leaner, yet quite flavorful and relatively tender. The more that cattle run or graze over wider territories (like in the movies where they would herd them to the stockyards over hundreds of miles or more) the tougher the meat.

So saying that Angus taste like any other beef is false, but conditions do amplify or improve the final result. Why is Angus specifically different? It's because the Scots bred the Angus from hybrid stock to begin with, they are part old European zebu buffalo and more modern cattle strains. If you have ever actually seen Angus bulls in person, the resemblance to other cattle breeds ends fairly quickly. They are big, very big. And their heads look like something halfway between bison and cattle.

Again, all that being said, there are grades of Angus, just like any other beef and perhaps low grade Angus is indistinguishable from better grades of Hereford, Limousin (which I also like), et al, but a good cut of Angus can be easily taste tested as different from an equal cut of the others.

Let's face it, if all cattle tasted the same, or provided the same quality of meet, then they would all sell for the same price per pound, which they never have, even before the "marketing ploys" of the last decade. That is why dairy cattle are rarely the choice for meat, and why the Japanese can get $100 a pound for Kobe beef -- and yes, again, how they feed and prepare the beef is critically important.

There are many of my friends who cannot taste the difference between
ground chuck and sirloin, too. And those who cannot appreciate the difference between a Grand Cru Bordeaux and a low price bottle of California Pinot (don't get me wrong, there are some extraordinarily good California Pinots -- I live in the Central Coast!) but that does not mean that others cannot tell the difference or even recognize by taste the origins and identities of what they drink or eat.

Bon Appetite!

"I love drinking, and I love New Orleans." — "New Orleans," Benjy Davis Project

Crawfish Monica is fantastic. And the Louisiana boiled crawfish will knock you on your bum in spicy ecstasy. I used to live in La., and moved to FL, so I get the seafood but not the spice.
The music, the food and the love...that's my kind of city. Plus, throw in a fight between a man dressed as a phallus and another as Spongebob...I'm there with bells on.

I love TJs. They have great prices on frozen blueberries and edamame, organic milk and butter, nuts and dried fruits of all varieties, goat cheese, organic rolled oats, delicious freshly-squeezed OJ (it won first place in the SF Chronicle's tasting of store-bought OJs), and nitrite-free bacon. I'm also a huge fan of their eggplant hummus and tzatziki.

Try http://recipe.gauzza.com - free, and works pretty well/easy to use, and you can access your recipes anywhere with an internet connection.

I tend to do homemade: it's fast, it's cheap, and I can make small batches at a time so it doesn't go to waste.

My favorite dressing to go with my grilled beef and mesclun salad: once I've finished pan-searing my little steaks, I let it rest. In the meantime, under med heat, I stir in some olive oil into the pan to scrape up the good bits, squeeze in a couple of juicy limes, add fish sauce/pinch of sugar/chopped thai bird chili to taste. Then I pour in the juices that the steaks have left on the plate. Cut steaks, arrange prettily on top of some mesclun/spring greens, and spoon warm dressing over it all.

SO good.

I love making home-made dressing, and after living in Spain, I never dress my salads from a bottle. However - there is one large exception to this: Japanese salad dressings. I have been in Japan twice, of course, they know how to do packaged dressing right. I am always on the prowl for new flavours of japanese dressings to keep my palate surprised. Wafu, is of course, an old standard, but I can't seem to find it in the UK

B
http://handtomouthkitchen.wordpress.com

I make a fruit salad with assorted berries and mango, and I put orange juice, orange zest and honey. We eat it by itself, over yogurt, or on ice cream. Quite tasty!