Dip your fork into your salad dressing or dip, instead of dunking your food or pouring your dressing over for food. Your tongue will still get the flavor you're wanting, not tons of it, neither will your hips. Plus, you'll not have to purchase the salad dressings as often, so you'll be saving on your food bill.
We buy lots of different kinds of salad dressing in our house. To save money, I pop out the insert that's in the name brand dressing when it's empty instead of throwing it away take the plastic part that makes the dressing come out slower...
All you need to make French dressing, put ketchup in the mayo or salad dressing and mix for the taste you like. Or use mayo or salad dressing, add mustard, and ketchup for Thousand Island dressing. For this one, you can put sweet pickle relish or any other herb or onions or hard boiled eggs, if you like. Sometimes, I just use plain salad dressing or mayo on the salad. I put it on just before serving the salad. You can also mix oil and vinegar, with herbs and garlic, if you want to make a nice Italian dressing.
I've found that creamy dressings are just too thick. They would put great dollups of dressing in one spot and then I would have to try to get it to spread around.
The new salad dressings with sprayers are pretty pricey even if you have a coupon. To control the amount of salad dressing we use at home, I do not remove the foil seal when opening the new bottle.
I have found that using my salad spinner to distribute dressing evenly all over my salad means that I use less dressing. It works great...
I save money on salad dressing by reusing the little inserts that are in the tops of some brands of salad dressings. These inserts have a hole in the top to limit the amount of dressing poured onto the salad.