Asian Cabbage and Cranberry Coleslaw

At my last cooking class I made a very basic coleslaw.  Pretty much just a dressing and cabbage.  The goal was to demonstrate that you can easily make your own dressings and it’s a great way to save money.  The demonstration was MIND BLOWING for a lot of the participants.  They had no idea that you could make your own dressings!  Their excitement was really contagious for me because I have so many dressing ideas to offer.  This cole slaw is made with my favorite Asian salad dressing recipe and has a little more pizzaz to it than the one we made in class.

As food bloggers we often forget that the rest of the country/world doesn’t necessarily see food the way we do.  For me, if we’re out of mayonnaise, I need to make some more or we simply do without.  If I want a salad for dinner, I whip up my own dressing because I always have oil and vinegar or citrus in the house.

But a lot of America thinks, if you need salad dressing, go to the store.  I used to feel the same way!  Is it advertising that has convinced us that we can’t make our own condiments?

I think of those ridiculous commercials for gadgets that make a simple task look impossible.  You know what I mean, like the lady trying to strain her spaghetti who either dumps the whole pot down the drain, or ends up scalding herself, so obviously needs a special built in strainer to suddenly make pasta easy.

Is that the way of our food world?  How much of America is convinced that if you want soup stock, barbecue sauce, salad dressing, mayonnaise or other condiments, you have to go buy it?

I’m trying not to get on a soapbox here.  I certainly don’t blame the people who don’t know any better.  I used to be one of them.  It’s funny because I grew up mixing ketchup with soy sauce or Worcestershire to make a sauce for my beef or french fries.  But I never really thought of it as steak sauce.  If I wanted steak sauce I thought needed to buy A-1 (now I make my own and it’s way better!).

Let’s move on to the cole slaw before I get too passionate 😉  This is a pretty basic side dish.  The dressing ingredients are mayonnaise, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey and rice vinegar.  You can use white vinegar instead of rice vinegar but use a slightly smaller amount.

When you taste your dressing, it will be pretty tangy, but keep in mind that the cranberries in the salad add a lot of sweetness that mellows the bite of the rice vinegar.

You can skip the black sesame seeds or use white ones, I just like that they add some color and drama to the salad.

So, why do you think so many of us don’t realize how easy it is to make a lot of basic food items from scratch?