Sweet and Smoky Dressing

After a few weeks of soups, my husband requested - um, demanded - at least a week of rice and veggie meals. Rice and cauliflower with garbanzos, rice and peas with garbanzos, rice and corn with black beans topped with salsa, rice and green beans and pintos, rice with mixed veggies and limas, rice and carrots with cannelinis, rice with peas & carrots and (you got it) garbanzos. We each have our favorite toppings - our son always uses Bone Sucking Sauce. My husband has been back and forth between that, Trader Joe's Cowboy Caviar or Pineapple Salsa, and the Esselstyn 3-2-1 dressing. I use either Bone Sucking sauce, Bragg's or low sodium soy sauce, low sodium teriyaki sauce, the Esselstyn Sweet Fire sauce, and sometimes Jeff Novick's tahini dill sauce.

But not only am I now sick of rice, I'm sick of all those same old toppings.

Yesterday I decided to once again try one of Chef AJ's dressings. This one is called Sweet and Smoky Dressing.

Sweet and Smoky Dressing

1 cup of water
1/2 cup of lime juice
4 ounces of pitted dates - soaked
1/4 cup Westbrae salt-free mustard
1 teaspoon chia seeds
2 teaspoons SMOKED paprika
1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth and creamy.  Refrigerate any unused portion.

and it comes from episode 126 of her Weight Loss Wednesday series.



I soaked 8 deglet noor dates in boiled water for a half hour. Good thing I learned from Jeff Novick to never trust the front label of a product - although it says they're pitted, I found pits in 2 of them. Thanks, Jeff, for saving my blender blades once again. Gulden's mustard instead of Westbrae, orgainic bottled lime juice instead of fresh squeezed, and a bit less than 1/4 teaspoon of the chipotle powder. Well, I'm glad I did that - even with the smaller amount of chipotle this was still a bit too "hot" for my taste.

I didn't have time to refrigerate this for too long before serving it, and the dressing was still pretty watery. I'm hoping after it sits and cools for a day it's a bit thicker.

Conclusion: I wasn't a fan but my husband loves it. He'll be using this stuff for the rest of the week, and probably ask me to make it again in the future. He also requested I add the rest of the chipotle powder before I put it away last night so it'll be even hotter tonight. I'll probably grab the Bragg's, myself, for tonight.

Hopefully he'll have his fill or rice by the end of the week and next week I can get back to those soup meals. It's not even a full week of these rice meals yet and I already gained back 3 of the pounds I lost during those soup weeks.