Seasonal Salad

The green salad is a boon for keeping the calories at bay and adding some nutrition to the meal at the same time. I tend to use mesclun, a mix of small sweet and bitter lettuce. It's sold at our local store as 'Spring Mix', even when it ought to be 'Fall Mix' because you know those tiny leaves have not been growing since the spring.

One of my favorite ways to uses these cute greens is to mix in some sort of cheese, some sort of fruit and some sort of nut. Recently I made a salad that seemed perfect for the autumn. To the lettuce mix I added some slices of 'Red' Gravenstein apples from the tree down by the garden...they have a little more red on the skin and they ripen later than the greener Gravs...plus some tangy blue cheese crumbles and walnuts from the tree out back. I toasted the walnuts first to bring out their flavor. A handful of chicken chunks from an earlier meal (although you could buy a cooked chicken at the market and use some of that, too) added some more protein and flavor. I dressed the salad with a sprinkle of rice wine vinegar that was seasoned with a little balsamic vinegar. The salad was refreshing, savory, and seemed just right for Fall. (I know there is no chocolate in this post...a girl has to have low calorie meals sometimes... but there will be some soon :)