A Salad You'll Want Every Day!

A side note: I'm chatting online tonight, so be sure to stop by to win prizes and say hi!

I'm not a huge fan of the salad. I mean, I eat them. I have my favorites. Like Cobb. With lots and lots of bleu cheese dressing. And the Black and Bleu at O'Charley's. But most of the time when I'm eating salad, I feel like I'm being punished ;-) I'm a pasta girl, and I know pasta is the evil kiss of death for my hips, but I eat it anyway.

Then I came across this recipe, and after a few adaptations to make it more my own, because I wasn't happy with the dressing, I found a salad that I have eaten FOUR times already. And it's going to be my lunch today, too. :-)I've eaten it so often, and so quickly, that I kept forgetting to take a picture. Usually I have nice red Honeycrisp apples in it, but this day I had Golden Delicious in there instead, so you don't get to see the awesome contrast of colors as well. Honeycrisps are my favorite apples and they were all gone (because someone...er...me...ate them all). So I was stuck with my second favorite, the Golden D.

If you like apples and honey-mustard dressing, you have to try this. It was AWESOME. I highly suggest quadrupling the walnut recipe because I used them in other things, like my Candied Baked Apples.

Walnut Apple Feta Salad

Candied Walnuts:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup walnut pieces
1 tablespoon sugar (or Splenda, that worked fine when I tried that, too)
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Salad:
3-5 cups salad mix of choice
1 apple, chopped
3/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Dressing: (and a tip--make this in a mini food processor if you want to save time. It makes life SO easy)
6 tablepoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon sugar


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Then, in a small skillet, melt butter and add sugar, pepper, and walnuts. Stir until sugar is melted and walnuts are coated. Spread onto baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

Assemble salad--lettuce, apples and feta. Mix the dressing, either in a food processor or with a whisk, until all ingredients are well incorporated. Drizzle over salad, then top with candied walnuts. Serve. Makes two servings, or one for a very hungry salad eater ;-)

If you don't want to eat all that right now, just cut the salad ingredients in half, throw the extra dressing in the fridge, put some lemon juice on the cut half of the apple and wrap it up, and put the extra walnuts in the fridge. It'll all keep for a day or two. :-)

Okay, now I'm hungry. Seriously. :-)

Shirley
PS: Look for Christmas Weddings in stores this month!