Tossed Salad with Fresh Fruit

Tossed Salad with Fresh Fruit

Adding just a little fresh fruit to a run-of-the-mill green salad will give it a completely different attitude.  For me it usually does not require buying something special at the grocery store. I will use fruits that we have at home, for one reason that these are the fruits that I know will be eaten, and sometimes the fruit needs to be used.  No one but you will know your reason for adding a touch of fruit to your salad, but generally it adds a level of excitement to that otherwise dull green tossed salad. 

photo by: Goodmami  under Creative Commons

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/  http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodmami/

If you chose to add some fruit, it makes the pairing for the correct salad dressing critical. If someone puts ranch dressing on a salad with some fresh fruit in it, I am sure they may not like it.

Below are some suggested fruits that I sometimes add to salads, and some fresh, simple, salad dressing that you can make to pair with your salad.

Suggested fruits

Blueberries are among my favorite.

Oranges, nectarines, tangerines, clementines, or most any citrus fruit.  

Pears are wonderful if they have fully ripened and are soft/tender but not mushy.  You should be able to stick a fork into the pear without it breaking in half or being so soft that will not stay in the tines

Apples

Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries are all good however; they tend to be tart if I use berries that are tart I like to lightly dust them with sugar while they are damp from rinsing.  

Grapes

Whatever you decide to add be sure that they are cut into bite size or small pieces.

Spicy Honey Dressing

2 tablespoons honey

1 1/2 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon (or less) crushed red pepper

Place all of the ingredients in a small jar screw on the lid and shake.

Clifton