Three Bean Salad with Mustardy French Dressing

Okay, so the other day (Thursday) is the first day I've missed a post. I was so busy this week with work, family, car trouble, etc, etc, and any spare moment I had (spare moment--haha, what's that!?), I spent working on my novel. So I apologize. I was really hoping I'd get a post done every day for a year, but life happens.

To make up for the missed day, I'm posting two recipes that go together today. Although of course you can use the French Dressing recipe for salads and other things, I used it on this, so I'm posting both recipes to catch up.

This three-bean salad is actually an adaptation of a recipe called "Kidney and Green Bean Salad." But I wanted three-bean salad, and I happened to have both kidneys and garbanzo beans in the closet at once (miracles happen) so I went ahead and made it a three-bean salad.

For this, you will need:
1 c. red kidney beans, cooked and drained
1 c. garbanzo beans, cooked and drained
1 c. green beans, cut into pieces roughly the length of a kidney bean, cooked and drained
1/2 small red onion, minced
1/3 c. mustardy French dressing (recipe below).

Toss ingredients together in a bowl and let sit at least an hour, preferably overnight or make in the morning and serve at dinner.

Mustardy French Dressing:
Combine in small jar and shake well: 
2 tbsp. vinegar (I used apple cider)
1/4 c. olive oil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 tsp. garlic powder (or throw a crushed clove in the jar if you're going to let it sit a while...I made mine at the same time as the salad, so I used garlic powder)
1 tsp. ground mustard (or 1.5 tsp. Dijon if you don't have dried mustard in your spice cabinet)

French Dressing (salad dressing)

Cool separating effect of oil, vinegar, and salt.

I've been so busy lately that it's hard to find a spare moment to cook. This evening I realized that after gardening, repainting the closets in our new house, and blanching 5 batches of cabbage, I hadn't cooked anything all day. So I threw together some salad dressing, which is called French Dressing according to The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, but is nothing like the red-orange French dressing you get on a salad bar. This is more like what I'd call Italian dressing, aka, vinaigrette.

The recipe (which I halved):
1/2 c. salad or olive oil
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1/2 clove garlic

Add all ingredients to jar and shake. Remove garlic before serving.

For this one, I followed the recipe closely. I didn't think it had enough vinegar, so I ended up doubling that. And I like garlic, so I added a whole clove, cut in four.

It was pretty tasty, but will probably be even better the next day, once the garlic has sat in the oil a while. I have a couple other dressing recipes I like, but this one is super fast and easy, so I'd definitely make it again if I was in a hurry.

Salt effervescing.

Apologies for the many, many pictures, but this was so cool to watch as it came together. I usually make dressing in a bottle so I don't get to see the cool mixing process. It was really sweet watching it through the wide mouth of the jar.