Secret Recipe Club: Lemon Vanilla Salad Dressing

For this month's Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned the blog Shockingly Delicious.  Shockingly Delicious is written by a woman named Dorothy who is a writer, long time cook, and mom.  Dorothy has so many amazing looking recipes on her blog!  I had such a hard time choosing one because the recipes look so interesting.  I considered Vegetarian Chard Soup, Slow Cooker Hawaiian Kalua Pork, Hot Gooey Caramel Pie, and Rustic Herbed Stuffing with Greens.  I'll probably make the stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving because it looks so good.  We don't even normally have stuffing at Thanksgiving because my family can take it or leave it, but that one looks too interesting not to try.

 

Anyway, I chose Lemon Vanilla Salad Dressing.  What unique ingredients, I've never seen vanilla in dressing before.  Though I was a little suspicious of how it would turn out, I'm happy to say it's quite good.  Unique and tasty, the flavors totally work!  My husband liked it, too, and he has pretty traditional tastes when it comes to salad and dressings.  I'm having flashbacks to his horror when I served a kale salad with chopped apples, walnuts, and dried cranberries topped with an avocado lemon dressing.  Usually he loves what I make, but he still talks about how bad that was.  I liked it...  Point is, even he enjoyed this dressing, unique and dare I say "girly" as it may be.

I served the dressing over plain bagged salad from the grocery store, but added some of the last of my baby tomatoes and peppers from my garden.  I meant to give the salad a sprinkle of dried cranberries, too, but forgot.  Oops!  What I can say for sure is that I'll definitely make this dressing again.  It would be great in the summer since the flavors are so light, or in the dead of winter to perk things up a bit.  Thanks for the awesomeness, Dorothy!

 

One last thing: I received a sad e-mail saying that November would be the last month of Secret Recipe Club because they're closing up shop.  I remember how excited I was to join 2 1/2 years ago.  The rules were that you had to have 100 recipe posts WITH pictures, and a recipe index, so I spent quite a while building up my collection of recipes with photos (it isn't second nature of me to take a picture of what I cook!) and making the index before I applied.  How disappointing for it to be over.  

  

I'll still lurk around some of my favorite blogs that I found through SRC, like Making Memories with your Kids, Chef in Disguise, Mother Would Know, The Pajama Chef, and BCMom's Kitchen, but it won't be the same.  All of the blogs I've been assigned to have been great though.  Many of the SRC recipes I've made are ones I still make, and I've tried a lot of recipes that I never would have tried. and I've thoroughly enjoyed the past two and a half years of Secret Recipe Club.  Does anyone know of other cooking blog groups like this?

   

  

  Lemon Vanilla Salad Dressing

 

4 Tbsp olive oil

3 Tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla bean paste (I used Nielsen-Massey brand, yum!)

pinch salt

 

Place all ingredients in a bowl and blend with an immersion blender for about 30 seconds or until all ingredients are combined and the dressing has thickened slightly.  Alternatively, you can mix it up in a blender.

 

Yield: 1/2 C dressing
   

An InLinkz Link-up