Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas… All the holidays’ togetherness around the dinner table, at parties with so much not-so-nourishing not-so-fresh meals gives me cravings no longer for sweet, but for freshness and ease on my digestive system. I wish it had to do with new-year resolutions but it does have to do with feelings of wellness..

My husband and I love to test new recipes. And since the whole household loves salad, we like to change them around!

The dressing that made Christmas more christmassy!

This salad we tested over Christmas time. And we all loved it. What really made a great difference is the grenadine dressing. If anything is a keeper in here, that’s it !

In my world, if a salad hits the following boxes, it’s a keeper: We need freshness, crunch, fruit, zing, optionally cheese or creaminess. This one ticks all: Lettuce and greens, pears and pomegranate for freshness, pecans for crunch, green onions for.zing, goat cheese crumbs for cheesy (optional) and the transformative experience of the grenadine dressing.

The pear and pomegranate winter salad is not a meal salad, it is not meant to fill you up. It is a side, as in you have your meat, grain and/or cooked vegetable on the side too. In my country, we would serve such salad either as an appetizer, or as an end of meal, before fruit for dessert ( the three courses meal).

Now as to HOW MUCH dressing you want to add, it’s up to you. My husband is on the “more side”, I’m on the ‘less taste better’ side. I feel a good dressing does not need to flow everywhere if it is tasty enough. I like to actually taste the pear, pomegranate and have a crunchy salad under my teeth!

By the way, vinegar breaks the fibers and cooks the salad, so too much dressing means your salad gets dark and saggy very quickly. In this case, it won’t be good to eat tomorrow IF you have leftovers.

But who’s talking about leftovers? Not me, not me…

What is grenadine?

I mentioned we had fun making a new flair dressing for that salad. And it does have a special ingredient – so it may not be a salad for today but a few days after you order it or find it nearby? This ingredient is grenadine.

Grenadine is made of a mix of summer berries.

Traditionally, French grenadine is a mixed berries syrup.

It’s confusing because its name suggests it has pomegranate in it: after all “grenade” means pomegranate in French.. Want a proof? One of the French brands carrying grenadine on amazon has two syrup: one Grenadine, one pomegranate syrup. As I say, same color, different product!

Syrup or sirop?

Here is a cultural difference we may want to address. Americans call “syrup” a very very thick sweet substance made of fruit, maple, you name it. It’s sweet, it’s very thick, and you eat it with bread or pancakes. I do love a good fruit syrup on pancakes!

Syrup is somewhere between a fruit spread and french sirop. To give you an idea, fruit spread, what we call “compote” is made of 100g /3.5 oz of sugar for 1 kilo/two pounds of fruit. Jam is traditionally made of 50% fruit, 50% sugar. ‘Sirop’ is a much more fluid fruit concentrate used to drink diluted in water or in cocktails.

Growing up, instead of having orange juice and soda, my parents would sometimes treat us with our Sunday drink of sirop of grenadine, spearmint, raspberry or lemon (name a fruit, it probably exists) diluted in water. Sirop is VERY concentrated, you need about 1 volume sirop for 10 or 15 volumes of water to have your sweet drink.

So, in this post, when I tell you about grenadine, I mean the French sirop version, as in the sweet drink you may like in your water or cocktails.

But as I said, there are many other uses to make of sirops, and dressings are what my husband and I tested it for!

What berries is grenadine made of ?

Grenadine is a mix of elderberries, raspberries, red gooseberries, and aronia berry (honestly never encountered at the market!) A nice mix of berries that together have the color of pomegranate. Neither do they taste like pomegranate! But I must say it’s very tasty !

BUT, basically, I don’t want to disappoint any consumer of this brand of American style “real grenadine”, THIS, is pomegranate syrup, not what grenadine traditionally is. However I can’t object to its ingredients (no corn syrup, yay! ) nor to the use it’s intended for ( craft cocktails).

From scratch dressing making

Did I get you excited now with my talk of exotic French dressing?

Are you the dressing making or buying type?

Here is my perspective: we all have our battles of the day, pick one. Dressing does not have to be it. But here is the thing: It does not mean you have to buy it either!

If you think about it, take the price per volume of quality nutritious olive oil, avocado oil or coconut oil and a basic dressing mix? Ingredients are very subpar, price per volume is higher for the dressing you guy than for the ingredients you buy and will use for other meals. Learn to make a few over time, you’ll save money! And you really don’t need to be a chef to make good stuff for yourself.

I’m never happy with store bought dressings

I must confess I do hate to buy dressings.

I rarely ever find them good enough. And I’ll pass on the list of ingredients that is probably subpar, even in organic products. Because anything at the store would need preservatives to keep shelf stable, I prefer making my own. I’m sure it’s healthy and that my tastebuds like it. If I don’t have time to be creative or am uninspired, I usually fall back on a few serving spoons of extra virgin olive oil and one serving spoon apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, done.

I have a few dressings I run with, A few I learned from blogs, a few I made up. Here is the secret: when you start making your own foods, you start getting a sense for ingredients you like, and you can start playing with them. If not, find a few dressing you like from internet, make them in bulk and keep in the fridge for immediate needs . One standard olive oil apple cider vinegar and old style mustard keeps well and is usually gone by the end of a few days ! For fancier meals , keep a few recipes in your notes and write what it’s good with!

New a few more dressing ideas?

I made an awesome dressing for my Tomato Salad in Tomatillo Creaminess , and created more dressings for other salads you can check out in my Salad category! Promise it won’t disappoint !

Fruity, fresh and cheesy

I love this salad because it is very fresh and fruity, colorful, crunchy and cheesy.

Alternative ingredients:

• Can’t have nuts? Try it with pumpkin or/ and sunflower seeds!
• Another fruit? Try apples, or a mix of pears and apples!

• You are Vegan? Can’t have cheese? You can make the dressing cheesy by adding a tablespoon or two of brewer’s yeast or gluten free nutritional yeast !

But if you can have cheese, why goat cheese?

Why Goat cheese ?

I promise I am not trying to be the posh French with my posh ingredients. I actually used to despise goat cheese. But It has grown on me because goat logs can be used so many ways, including on pizza.

The reason it goes well with this salad, is that goat cheese is soft, and when mixed in well, it gives the salad a creamy texture. Goat cheese logs are not very strong in taste and go well with sweet ingredients too. I like sheep cheeses too, but I prefer a softer cheese with fruit like pear and pomegranate. Sheep feta works well too, if you break it down into crumbs.

Why not cow’s cheese or yogurt?

Why not cow’s soft cheese? Personal choice. Like many people, my digestive system does not quite like cow’s dairy, like yogurt, or soft cheeses like brie. They are very heavy on me. They sometimes trigger eczema flares too. The reason is that cows, besides not being very well and naturally fed these days, have milk that is full of hormones, which are growth factors naturally present in cow’s milk so their baby can gain over 500 lbs within year. Comparatively, a human gains around 10 lbs. Cow’s milk is now well known to be an inflammatory food to humans. It triggers in many people low grade (meaning permanent, under the surface) inflammation, whereby your immune system constantly has to mobilize against something. Exhausting!

My readings led me to believe two things:

You don’t need dairy to be healthy

Should we, or should we not drink a ton of cow’s milk, as official nutritional guidelines keep recommanding? Well, I’m no doctor, nor am I yours. But my personal self-educated position is that we don’t need milk from other animals once we have all our teeth in. All nutrients are available in many different foods: unprocessed and fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, meat and fish, grains! However, getting that nutrient density requires eating a diet of diverse foods! Well, perhaps making an effort to eat less dairy would help us make more effort to have a more diverse diet, more nutrient dense ?

Try dairy from smaller animals

If I have to pick some dairy for my cooking, I try not to have it every day, and to pick dairy products from smaller. As they are consumed less than cow’s milk, they hopefully are better fed! I usually pick goat and sheep. Sheep milk is more rare in the U.S.A. than in Europe as are yogurts, sadly. However, I can find hard sheep cheeses like Pecorino Romano and Manchego fairly easily, which is what I use in my cooking when I need to.

Picking cheese, I try getting hard, aged cheeses. They taste stronger, but since undergo longer fermentation, my digestive system prefers them, hands down.

These choices are mine, they are products of my experience and the research I did subsequently.

My personal choice in favor of smaller animal dairy products

As a teenager and young adult, my skin would noticeably break out when eating dairy. In “dairy” I include butter, milk, yogurt, half and half, whipped cream, heavy cream….and all cow’s milk derived products, NOT eggs.

After stopping eating dairy for a while and trying smaller animal cheeses and yogurts, my skin problems resolved. Was it because of hormones, the amount or types of fats, the lactose? Fact is, it worked for me and many people I know.

Be your own body’s detective!

Now that we went through why this salad is so tasty, and why you should try it with or without goat cheese, lt’s go and look at the recipe! Bon appétit!

Let’s eat!

More Delicious Ideas:

• Serve this with or after Zucchini Leek Soup
• Need another meal idea for kids ? Try Fried Rice, Steamed Cuisine Style!
• Another Salad? Try: Kale & Quinoa Lemony Goodness salad
• Want another fruity recipe? Why not cake? Here it is: Lemon and Olive oil almond cake !

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