The Salad - My personal all-time favourite!

this recipe!

About 'the salad'

Warning - this is a long-winded post about my love for a salad. Remember, you can always click on the "Jump to Recipe" button at the top below the title 🙂

I've had these photos and draft post sitting here for awhile now. I would say about a month and half.

I made 'the salad' very soon after I launched my blog.

It's nothing over-the-top or out of the ordinary. Not a new trend or crazy vegetable that I read about on Instagram. It's just 'the salad'.

But it's NOT!! It's my new FAVOURITE salad. I'm pretty sure I said to hubby Timthe first time I made it, that it was 'my favourite salad ever'!!

The day that I made this salad for myself was the same day I cooked and photographed Spinach & Strawberry Salad with Honey Mustard Chicken.

Hubby Tim volunteered to eat the one I had photographed. I had a taste and it is delicious but I just fancied something different after working on it for the better part of the morning.

A Salad Is Born!

I had been thinking of creating a chopped salad recipe, then I got bogged down in the gazillion variations you could create and it just sat on the back burner and simmered 🙂

I had originally thought I would either make a lemony-basil dressing with a chopped salad but then decided to make a balsamic type dressing, thinking it might be a good recipe once fall comes around. (yep, once you work at Michaels you're alway a season or two ahead).

I laid everything out on the plate and kept piling on the ingredients. I made the Balsamic dressing and dipped my finger in - it was bang on. Really good.

THEN, I remembered seeing recipes over the years where Balsamic and poppyseed dressings were mixed together.

So, I mixed the poppyseed dressing from the Spinach & Strawberry Salad with a one-to-one ratio with the new Balsamic Dressing that I had just made and it seemed to taste pretty darned good with the finger test. Turns out it's my new favourite and it's SO easy to make!!

I have learned the hard way - always take pictures

I have made upwards of 15 recipes that were being tested without photos and turned out to be perfect. AAARGH. So, I learned my lesson and snapped a few quick pictures of 'the salad' on the plate before I ate it. I wish I had taken process photos, and may insert them at some point but do you really need to see all the veggies chopped and looking pretty on a plate right now to execute this recipe? nope.

I also learned the hard way that I need to write everything down so that I can duplicate it for the final recipe. I jotted down quick notes with ingredients and then I devoured 'the salad'. Or, I should say I savoured EVERY SINGLE BITE. It is by far my favourite salad ever.

The textures of the crunchy peppers, chewy dried cranberries, salty feta cheese. I recommend toasting the pecans at 350F for five to seven minutes but they are delicious right out of the package as well.

The ingredients

Basic ingredients - romaine lettuce is at the heart of the salad but you could easily substitute mesclun, leafy, iceberg - you get it 🙂

Change up the ingredients and add whatever your heart desires. Blueberries, sliced strawberries........

Pine nuts, hazelnuts, cashew nuts (anyone get the Best In Show movie reference)? One of the funniest movies ever!

Make the dressings separate, THEN mix them together. One-to-one. So, 1 cup of poppyseed with 1 cup of balsamic or whatever portion you need.

Thank you for reading and allowing me to share my love of 'the salad' with you. When you make this recipe, please let me know in the comments below and post a picture and tag me on Instagram!

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