homemade Italian dressing

Our veggie garden is cranking out veggies now that we’ve been able to block neighboring animals from snacking on all of the plants.  But, even with the better harvests, sometimes we only have a few of each veggie on a particular day.  When that happens, I do some quick cooking of our garden harvest with a homemade Italian dressing in my cast iron pans.

On this particular day, I dug some baby potatoes, collected a large handful of green beans, and picked some wild cherry tomatoes.  I already had some basil and oregano that I had picked the day before and dried in my food dehydrator.

Heading into the kitchen, I mixed up some homemade Italian dressing (see recipe below) and everything was ready to cook.  Don’t buy bottled dressing when you can make your own healthier version at home for less than a dollar.

I cut up the potatoes and cooked them on medium in my cast iron skillet in some butter and avocado oil with a little added salt.  Then, I added the green beans and cooked for a few more minutes.  Finally, I added the tomatoes and some of the homemade Italian dressing and heated it until the tomatoes were warmed through.

I was out of onions or I would have started with sauteeing onions and fresh garlic.  If we weren’t having steaks that night for dinner, I would have thrown in some leftover cooked chicken to make this a yummy skillet meal – all in one pan.

Don’t be afraid to cook with cast-iron pans.  They are a little bit heavier to use, but I consider cooking with cast-iron as part of my daily upper arm workout.  Cast-iron holds heat really well.  The main thing to remember is to season your pans well with fat and make sure they are fully dried before storing them away. I store mine in my oven since I use them every day and they are easy to grab.  I just got this set as a gift and I absolutely love them.

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