Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Something a little lighter...

This was my test salad from lunch. For dinner we tossed the salad and added blue cheese and cut up fried chicken!

As anyone who follows my blog regularly knows I have been deep in the heart of cookie baking season! Back to some regular posts for a bit here and maybe some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes that can be used for Christmas Dinner!!!

My local CSA has started up but that sure didn't fit in with the 12 days of cookies now did it? But at least we have been forced to eat really healthy when I wasn't elbow deep in cookie dough!

Near the end of one of the weeks I had a head of baby bok choy, arugula and some mizuna. Now I could have done a stir fry or a salad and something else but I decided to chop them all up together! Am I ever glad that I did. I found the most incredible dressing that went so well with the bitterness from the greens. We chopped up some leftover fried chicken to top it and it was one memorable dinner!!!

Cranberry Vinaigrette (adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup fresh cranberries
  • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • Mizuna
  • Arugula
  • Baby Bok Choy
  • 1 cup toasted pine nuts
  • Crumbled blue cheese
Directions:

Pulse all ingredients but the pine nuts in your food processor and serve over your choice of greens with blue cheese crumbles and the pine nuts.

This was a delicious dinner for us. I also topped my salad with dried cranberries. Any nut can be used. Almonds is what the recipe called for but I couldn't find mine so made do with pine nuts!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

13 comments:

RecipeGirl said...

Mmmmm- love a good holiday homemade dressing. I'd add pecans to mine!

Elle said...

i love this! And such a nice change from the heavier holiday foods!

Anonymous said...

Mmm...I have everything but the cranberries. I'm thinking I can use either dried, or apples. This looks really tasty.

Coach J said...

Cranberry Vinaigrette sounds AWESOME. I'm totally trying this out.

Melissa said...

This is calling out to me, for real. Nice one Judy!

Aggie said...

It looks great Judy, I need a salad like this right now! Your dressing sounds delish!

Peter M said...

Judy, you must be cookied out, a little tired and in need of something light yet satisfying..chcken & salad it is!

Judy@nofearentertaining said...

Hey Lori-Pecans would be great with this!

Hey Elle-It really was badly needed!

Hi Kelly-Either would work but the fresh cranberries made it incredible!!!

Hi Coach J-Let me know how you like it!

Hey Melissa-It was nice!

Hi Aggie-I think we are all wanting something like this!

Hey Peter-Badly needed as you can imagine!!!

Thistlemoon said...

Yummy Judy! This looks so good and perfect after all that cookie eating! :) I love bitter greens in salads!

Valerie Harrison (bellini) said...

We need some lighter fare after all those cookies Judy...myself included big time!!!!

Anonymous said...

This sounds great--especially with the blue cheese!

genetrix said...

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sparklingcosmic said...

hi.
i am new here..
what is mizuna and aragula?

Thanks.
J