Mixed Baby Greens w/ Homemade Dressing

So the oddest but most wonderful thing happened in one of our raised garden beds.  Lettuce grew on its own.  Volunteer, I think it's called.  Yesterday I harvested the baby lettuce gave it a nice shower to clean off the dirt, and then into the salad spinner to dry it off.

There was romaine, curly green leaf, red leaf, and arugula.  What a wonderful delicious surprise!

This lettuce is delicate and very tender, no heavy dressing will work...no ranch, no blue cheese, no thousand island.  The dressing recipe I made to go with the salad is light and a bit tart, and just delicious.

Dressing:

2 Tbl. White Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
3 Tbl. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 Tbl. finely chopped shallot*
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Put all ingredients in a small jar and shake, shake, shake.  Pour over baby greens and enjoy.

To the salad, I added dried cranberries and sunflower kernals.  Another option would be to add some crumbled bacon.

*We grew shallots in our garden last year.  It was quite a harvest, enjoyed them all winter and still this spring.

Enjoy Friends!

California Cobb Salad

More cheese from Wisconsin in the fridge--Billy Blue Cheese--goat blue cheese.   Hmmmm, Blue Cheese, Bacon, Avacado, Tomatoes, Hard Cooked Eggs, and Lettuce from the garden.  What else but Cobb Salad uses all these amazing ingredients!  We are having Chicken Amadine with the salad for dinner so I skipped the chicken that is usually included in the classic Cobb Salad.  (BTW you can find the recipe for the Chicken Amadine on this blog.)

This is lettuce from our garden--red leaf, butter crunch, leaf lettuce, and romaine.  It grew like crazy!

For the vinaigrette:

1 Tbls. Dijon mustard

1/4 Cup red-wine vinegar

2 tsps. Worcestershire sauce

1 garlic clove -- grated fine

1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt

1/2 Cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 tsp. black pepper

1/4 tsp. sugar

Place all the ingredients except the olive oil  in a blender, blend, then drizzle in the olive oil.  Done!!
Drizzle this over the salad greens.

Prepare the rest of the ingredients:  crumbled Blue Cheese, chopped hard boiled eggs, crumbled cooked bacon, sliced avacado, grape tomatoes cut in half.

Here's that cheese we bought in Wisconsin.

Arrange the Cobb Salad ingredients in little rows around the dressed greens.  Look for good color   combinations--put bright colors like the tomatoes next to light colors like the cheese.  I sprinkled the bacon bits over the top of the greens.

And to go with the salad, the Chicken Amadine.  

You can find that recipe on this blog, did I already say that?

Enjoy friends!