Photo by K.C. © 2010 Kristin Conroy

I’ve been eating a lot of salad recently.  Hot weather–and wearing less clothing in such weather–gets me craving light foods.  In order to keep up my interest in leafy salad greens, I try to maintain a steady, creative stream of salad combination ideas.  This particular time, I wanted something a little savory, a little sweet, and loaded with goodies.  Behold, the Summer Strawberry Salad!  Some of you might be surprised by the inclusion of strawberries, but these beauties pair wonderfully with the rest of the ingredients and give the salad a sweet brightness.

Since this is more of a freestyle recipe, I’ll list the ingredients I used with no amounts.  I encourage you to get creative with nature’s summer bounty!

Recipe

Organic mixed salad greens – I used baby spinach here.

Chicken apple sausage, sliced – I wanted to add a protein and this is all I had on hand.  Worked well, but the salad would be fine without it.

Organic strawberries, sliced – Get organic because conventional ones have high levels of pesticides.

Raw Maytag blue cheese, coarsely chopped

Pecans

Fresh mint, chopped

Dressing

Basalmic vinegar – I used lavender basalmic from Pelindaba (on my list of fave sites on homepage).

Olive oil – I used a Meyer lemon-infused oil.  Squeezing a wedge of lemon into the mix would probably work.

Sprinkling of coarse sea salt

Freshly ground pepper