For Thanksgiving dinner with my brother’s family I was tasked with making a salad. We all know how much I love a salad! Of course, I wasn’t about to make a simple iceberg lettuce and tomato salad! Be prepared for something fancy!!!!
So, there are a lot of different parts to this salad. I prepped some of the ingredients ahead of time, slicing up the cucumbers and carrots, prepping the dried fruits and nuts, and gathering everything together.
We will need some greens. I opted for arugula and baby spinach. I also (as mentioned above) got a cucumber and some baby carrots and little tomatoes. We will also need some apples (I opted for honeycrisp) and pears.
For the dried fruit mix I used cranberries, raisins, figs, dates, apricots, and cherries. For the nut mix I used pistachios, pecans, walnuts, almonds, and cashews. I also threw in some pepitas, sunflower seeds, and hemp seeds. Later, I toasted this nut/seed mix before adding it to the salad.
To start, mix the arugula and baby spinach, add the chopped carrots, cucumbers, and the little tomatoes. Add the dried fruit mix to the top of this. You can also sprinkle the flaxseed on top of the salad at this point. Flaxseed is super healthy and you can’t even tell it’s in there! I also squeezed a lemon on top of the salad.
Add the toasted nuts to the salad once they cool a bit.
Dice up the apples and pears. In a separate bowl, mix together cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Sprinkle this on the apple/pear mix and make sure they’re all good and coated.
Top the salad with the apple/pear mix.
Thought we were done? Wrong! Now we have to make the dressing! This dressing was super easy to make. We need some raspberries, balsamic vinegar (I opted for this delicious blueberry pomegranate balsamic vinegar that Mr. FBBQ and I bought at some point but I haven’t had a chance to use yet), a chopped shallot, brown rice vinegar (if you can’t find this, as we couldn’t, you can use honey or maple syrup instead), and some dried tarragon. Add all these goodies to a blender (I used our handy bullet blender) and mix it up! Your dressing is done!
