No More Naked Greens: Interstitial Cystitis Safe Salad Dressings
Early in my career, I spent too many hours working my way up the ranks, creating thousands of beautiful salad arrangements, snickering every time a chef whispered, “Make love to the salad Daniel, and be gentle with their leaves.” As a result, for years now I have avoided the salad dressing topic with those of you who have Interstitial Cystitis. I have avoided it like the plague. To me building salads and baking cookies had very little in common. You wouldn't have caught me dipping my fingers into a bowl of salad, or licking a spoonful of dressing. Nevertheless, I knew this moment would arrive.
The hard reality is that all salads rely on their salad dressings, and salad dressings rely on their ingredients to produce a crisp or creamy compliment to whatever salad green it is married with. In vinaigrettes the acid cuts the fat, and in creamy dressings the fats mellow the acids. In addition, the acids present in salad dressings prolong the shelf life of the product. All of the salad dressings we know of ride on the coat tails of acids.
Before we continue we must acknowledge a few things.
1. The maximum shelf life of an acid-free salad dressing is 5 days if refrigerated.
2. We cannot re-create Blue Cheese, Red Wine Vinaigrette, or Thousand Island. Reasons being, their main ingredients consist of blue cheese, ketchup, and of course red wine vinegar. All of which cause IC flares.
3. You will have to try your hand in homemade mayonnaise. Trust me; almost every salad dressing contains mayonnaise.
If your browse through the recipe section you can enjoy our many salad dressings. Some of our dressings include: honey, asian, ranch and ricotta dressings.