Foodie Newbie: Salads

Tis the season to be jolly (and frugal)! So I know my the title of my post sounds like I'm preparing to share an elegant and fancy salad recipe, and it kind of is...but it is also a really fast and simple recipe. Today we ate like broke college students. And how exactly do broke college students eat? Well one time, when I was a freshman in college, in the middle of the night, my hunger pangs came a calling. Not wanting to spend our scarce and much needed money, my roomate and I actually shared one last cup-o-noodle in our room! Yes, it was a sad time for us.

So today, Nhat and I did something not as pathetic, but it did bring back memories of being amusingly frugal.

I decided to throw in a salad with our frozen pizza meal to jazz up our otherwise sad college style dinner. I like to buy a big container of the ready pre washed salad mix to have throughout the week. This time I had some baby spinach so I decided a warm spinach salad would go well with pizza. I used ingredients I had already, such as dried cranberries and walnuts which I just toasted up.

The dressing is not specific, it's pretty much a basic vinagrette.

Warm Spinach Salad with Toasted Walnuts and Dried Cranberries

3 cups of baby spinach
1/2-1 tbs of red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp mustard
pinch salt and pepper
1 tsp honey
1= 1 1/2 tbs of olive oil
1/4 cup thinly sliced onions
1/3 cup dried cranberries (roughly chop)
1/3 cup of chop toasted walnuts

Combine vinegar, mustard, honey, salt, pepper, and oil and mix. Add sliced onion and let sit in fridge while you prepare spinach.
In a hot large pan heat a tsp of oil and quickly toss spinach to slightly wilt. Turn off heat add cranberries and nuts and toss with dressing. I had some extra pepper jack cheese so I cut some up and topped my salad. There you go! A perfect salad to add a little something something to an otherwise regular meal.