Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing

I guess I'm pretty lucky, my kids love all veggies and are huge salad freaks. During high school my oldest son would get up in the middle of the night and make himself a salad as his midnight snack. Freak I know, I keep asking myself if I really birthed him. We try and have a salad every night with dinner and if I can't pull a full salad off we enjoy cut up veggies and dip. This recipe is a standard at our home, I use to make it only when I did my 'fancy Italian salad' (I'll post that recipe another day), but now we use it almost daily. Since I use olive oil it can't be refrigerated so making it fresh every night has become part of the routine.

Ingredients
2 cloves garlic, minced (you can use the store bought pre-chopped garlic)
fresh cracked pepper ( regular pepper will do)
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano

Mix all ingredients in a container with a lid and shake. Pour over entire salad and mix well.

You should have all of these ingredients in your pantry, 

if you don't, go get them now!

peppercorns before being cracked

I used the flat side of a large knife and my own strength to crack these puppies;

obviously if you have a pepper mill that would be easier :)

adding the pepper into my salad dressing jar, I bought this

at my local grocery store

Bottom of the jar- all photos courtesy of my favorite daughter Olivia

Peel garlic

once again take your large knife and smash the garlic, this is all you

need to do to mince it, if you want it smaller you can chop it up a bit

add the garlic

1 tsp oregano. don't ya love my holiday manicure?

sorry for the blurry pic, 2 T olive oil

action shot! 5 T balsamic vinegar

Shake it up, don't forget to put the top on the bottle

Yummy salad! If you have extra dressing at the bottom of your 

salad bowl use bread to soak it up, it's that good!

Enjoy!