As poor folk we sometimes have left over vegetables and no meat to put them with, so as a snack before doing groceries we'll actually go as far as making a salad with our left overs.   Most people know that salad dressing is easy to make, but often requires ingrediants that most poor people don't buy... like wine vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil, or butter cream and any kind of cheese other than kraft singles and the inside of mozza sticks. 

  During one of these days I threw together a few things in an attempt to make a creamy garlic salad dressing and it worked, and tasted great!

What you will need.  

Salt and Pepper

Dried Garlic powder

Mayonaise

Sour Cream

Parsely (optional and can be changed for pretty much any other herb you have)

Lemon Juice - does not need to be fresh.A little water.

Cost:  Next to nothing... most people have this shit laying around waiting to expire anyway.  But if your fridge literally is empty this stuff will cost around $20, but most of these ingrediants can go in a vast amount of other meals so really it's not that expensive at all.

This is pretty much a "go-by-taste" recipe that can't really go wrong.  Mix some mayo and sour cream together until you get the consistancy you want - which should resemble store bought ranch dressing.  I prefer a thin texture for better coverage.  The more mayo you add the thicker it will be, the more sour cream you add the thinner it will be.  I often add a little bit of water (maybe a teaspoon) just to help things mix a little better.  Add a couple small splashes of lemon juice, a little salt and pepper for seasoning, and some dried parsely for look.  The garlic is pretty much where you get all of the flavour... the salt & pepper, and lemon juice only excentuate it, so you can add as little or as much as you prefer.   It's hard to give measurements because you can really make as little as you need for one bowl of salad, or enough to keep for a week worth of strict salad dieting it's up to you. 

But please keep in mind that unless it's in an air tight container that it will go bad - fast. 

The finished dressing - even in an air tight container will not keep as long as store bought dressing - but really only almost as long as sour cream keeps in the fridge. Now I know it's really easy to go out and buy salad dressing, but this is more for a "running out of food before groceries" option.  Helps clean out the fridge, and helps reduce waste thus helps reduce the food budget as well... we all throw out mayonaise and sour cream because we didn't eat it before it went bad.. so this is a way to use it before that happens.