The warm weather of the past few days spoiled me. I am not pleased that it hasn’t even reached 60°F, today. I am totally ready for 78°F and no humidity. Sadly, it ain’t happening, today. [It’s actually not going to happen a lot here in the mid-Atlantic states – but I can dream…]

What is happening, though, is salads for dinner. I took a lovely piece of tri-tip roast out of the freezer, doused it with Carolina Gold BBQ Sauce, and set it to cook on the grill.

The salads, themselves, were just a mishmash of things in the ‘fridge – roasted beets, tomatoes, hard-cooked eggs, watermelon radishes, lettuce, green onions, fried hot peppers, French brie… – but the salad dressing was something decidedly different.

I took some of the Buttermilk Ranch Dressing I made the other day and added some of the Carolina Gold BBQ Sauce to it. It’s a spin on a couple of recipes we did at work years ago – Carolina BBQ Chicken Salad, and Carolina Crunch.

Mixing the BBQ Sauce with the Buttermilk Ranch really took it all to a higher level – mustardy, smoky, spicy, creamy… The perfect BBQ dressing.

Just about any BBQ sauce can be turned into a salad dressing by mixing it into mayonnaise, sour cream, yogurt… even oil and vinegar. It’s nice, because you can make as much as you need and not have a ton left over to become a science experiment on the ‘fridge door.

Just for fun, I also made croutons from a couple slices of the bread I made the other day. Cubed, toasted, and then drizzles with a bit of olive oil and dusted with garlic powder and grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

The 10-Day forecast is looking promising… maybe some meals out back by the end of next week…

I’m ready.