Fruit Salad and Celery Seed Dressing

This recipe is from a Richards Ward R.S. Christmas lunch a long time ago. It is always a hit when I make it and it is soooooo beautiful.

Fruit Salad and Dressing

Assemble salad with romaine and other lettuces as a bed on plate. Place grapefruit slices, mandarin oranges, avocado slices, and pomegranate seeds on lettuce. Top with dressing. I also make a tossed salad with these ingredients and let each person put their own dressing on.

Dressing

10T sugar

1 t salt

1 t dry mustard

1 t paprika

1/3 c apple cider vinegar (go easy, not quite full)

1 T celery seed (If I don't have celery seed, I use poppy seed.)

1 c oil

In blender, put vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, paprika, and celery or poppy seeds. Mix together. Add oil slowly on first speed of blender until all ingredients are combined. Run blender 45 seconds to 1 minute to thicken. To store, drop 1/4 of an onion in bottle while in refrigerator. Don't serve with onion. Dressing is also good on cole slaw.

PS Most of the time I forget to store the dressing with the onion and it is still delicious!

Ranch Dressing

I've failed a couple times at ranch dressing until I found this recipe for Creamy Lemon Ranch Dressing on the back of a bag of Dole iceberg salad.  I modified it a bit for regular ranch.  It reminds me of the ranch dipping sauce at Arella's Pizzeria.

Creamy Ranch Dressing
1/2 C mayo*
1/4 C sour cream*
1-2 T milk (use 1 T for lemon ranch (below) and up to 2 T for regular ranch)
1 1/2 t white wine vinegar
1/2 t dried minced onion (I think I just used onion powder)
1/2 t garlic powder
Pinch of dried dill weed
Salt to taste (I used 1/2 t seasoned salt)
1/2 t pepper (omit if doing Lemon Ranch (below).  I actually didn't have any pepper, so I left it out.)

*If you use light products, you may need to adjust (lessen) your milk.

Creamy Lemon Ranch Dressing
To the above add:
1/2 t lemon pepper
1 T fresh lemon juice