Last week, someone was supposed to bring us dinner but it fell through because of illness. I had purchased groceries to make my very quick D-Hall Feta Pasta, but I wanted a yummy side dish. So I created this super easy spinach salad, and it was DIVINE!
It’s also easy to substitute what you have on hand. Swap blue cheese for feta, pecans for walnuts, strawberry jam for cherry, pears for apples. But for some reason this combination just hit the spot for me!
Five-Minute Spinach Salad with Cherry Vinaigrette
Baby spinach leaves – about half a bag or 4-5 cups, loosely packed
1 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
.5 cup walnuts (toasted if you want, but that may make the recipe more than 5 minutes)
half an apple, diced
Cherry Vinaigrette (see below)
Toss above ingredients. Try not to eat all the feta and walnuts before you put the dressing on the salad.
Cherry Vinaigrette
2 T cherry whole-fruit jam, such as Smuckers Simply Fruit
1 T pomegranate or pomegranate-cherry juice, like POM Wonderful
olive oil
salt and pepper
Whisk juice into the jam until jam is broken up and smooth. Whisk in olive oil until you reach desired dressing consistency. (I like just enough oil to make it runny so it is still very acidic, but it’s up to you.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle over salad and toss.
Makes 4 side salad portions.
Not sponsored by Smuckers or POM Wonderful, those are just what I used in this recipe when I created it and I thought they worked well!
Added to Mouthwatering Monday at A Southern Fairytale and Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.
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I love 5 min recipes. Thanks for sharing.
This sounds wonderful! Thanks for sharing!
This is such a delicious and healthy meal! Thanks for sharing.
Quick and easy. Plus healthy. Yum! I'd have to switch out that pasta for some protein since we're working on low-carb diets here, but I like your dressing idea.
I have been eating spinach salad using shredded carrots and red cabbage with diced tomatoes and adding some mandarin oranges or diced tropical fruit. The finishing touch was the cherry vinaigrette dressing which the store I used to buy it from they no longer carry. I guess making your own gives me more options. Other ingredients I use are dried cherries and/or cranberries, raisins, slivered almonds and grapes.
YUM! That sounds wonderful. I love making my own salad dressing because you can just add what you have on hand, too!