Kefir Ranch Salad Dressing

I haven’t talked about it much, but I’m pretty obsessed with homemade kefir these days. You don’t really need a recipe for kefir, you just need kefir grains (which are complexes of bacteria and culture, not actual grains) and milk – preferably whole, and as natural as you can find. You put the grains in a jar, fill the jar with milk, let it sit at room temp, loosely covered, for ~24 hours, strain out the grains, and voila! And repeat every day. Until recently I’ve just been drinking the kefir plain as Breakfast #1, but now I’m starting to have fun with it.

Kefir has a tangy, (almost blue-cheesy?) taste. You get used to it on it’s own, or you can sweeten or flavor it, or you can make it into salad dressing, like this one from Cultures for Health:

Mix kefir to taste with:
– Lemon juice
– Chopped garlic
– Garlic powder
– Dried basil (actually they say dried parsley, but I did the best I could)
– Salt and pepper

Let that all sit to meld while you make your salad – For the record, what I put in my salad was:
– Baby spinach
– Avocado
– Radish
– Cucumber
– Tomato
– Goat cheese
– Parmesan cheese
– Spicy maple pumpkin seeds (inherited from a friend for whom they were too spicy; not pictured; a delicious addition which I just realized I forgot to put in my salad today – damn)