A salad can be boring without a dressing and a burger just wouldn’t be complete without sauce and mustard, right?

I have always loved flavour in my food and growing up we had a great variety of foods. Then I went overseas when I was 20 and visited many countries where I experienced so many different types of foods: some with amazing flavours, others not so good. No matter where I went there was always some type of local sauce, relish or dressing, which I had to try.

Fast forward to 2015 and I still love lots of flavour in my food; and I especially enjoy salads. But, to be honest, salad leaves on a plate are boring without a dressing. A delicious tasting dressing can turn an ordinary salad into something pretty special, but finding one that is nutritious and doesn’t contain unhealthy vegetable oils, thickeners and colours is almost impossible. After discovering what was in all the store bought dressings, I decided I would be better off making my own.

But this is a shop swap, isn’t it? Well, yes that’s true and the aim is to swap from an unhealthy item to a healthier alternative with minimal fuss, but I don’t believe any of the dressings you buy in the supermarket are anywhere near healthy.

There are some you can buy at health food stores, but I want to make all the swaps accessible to everyone, and all the ingredients available at the supermarket. So, before you start telling yourself it’s too hard and takes too long, let’s just take a moment. You can do this, and the reason I know is because I felt the same way when I first started. I am going to show you the ingredients you need to make a simple dressing, and you can get them from the supermarket.

The oil you use is very important, but I will be doing a whole blog post on oils later, so for now these are my Shop Swaps for salad dressings.

• Simple Salad Dressing – cold pressed oil & lemon juice
• Creamy Yoghurt dressing
• Sweet mustard dressing
• Basil Pesto dressing – just by adding some olive oil and a little water to some basil pesto it instantly becomes a dressing!

You’ll find the recipes and instructions in the Healthy Salad Dressings post.

Next on the Shop Swap list are sauces and jellies.

Before you ask: no, I am not going to ask you to make your own, but I will say that although I have found better options, tomato sauce/ketchup and jellies all contain quite a lot of sugar. I believe that condiments are not meant to be eaten all the time and only in very small amounts to accompany a meal. So in saying that, if you are like me and only have them occasionally, then that’s ok. The ones I have chosen have no preservatives, colours or MSG.

The following are my top Shop Swaps

Tomato Ketchup

Coles brand tomato sauce has no preservatives, colours or flavours, but does contain sugar.

Cranberry Sauce

Woolworths Select cranberry sauce

Ocean Spray jellied Cranberry sauce and whole Cranberry sauce

Mustards

MasterFoods Dijon mustard

Macro Organic Wholegrain mustard