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Sunday, October 4, 2009

Pear and Blue Cheese Salad


This is the salad I'm making this week for a group of friends I have lunch with each month. It's one of my favorite salads because of the contrasting sweet and savory flavors, plus the crunch of both the fruit and the nuts.

Like most salads, this one is quite versatile. It's great with pears and blue cheese, but also delicious with apples substituted for the pears or feta substituted for the blue cheese. Red fruit is prettier than green fruit, although the green fruit (especially apples) are usually a little more tart and give the salad a great flavor. It's shown here with red delicious apples and blue cheese crumbles.
The salad is originally from the Betty Crocker Entertaining cookbook, which doesn't include the possible variations.

Pear and Blue Cheese Salad
1 medium bunch romaine, chopped in bite-sized chunks
2 medium red or green pears or apples, cut in 1/4 inch slices
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese or feta (1 ounce)
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts (for the record, pecans also work well)

Toss these ingredients together in a large bowl. Then toss with the dressing until coated.

Dressing
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
Dash of ground pepper

Place ingredients in a tightly covered jar. Shake until mixed.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Kathy. Kudos on your blog! I aspire to have a blog more like yours. Some of my friends and family tell me that I need to add photos to my blog (I have only a few now) and to write more about my thoughts and feelings and experiences with the recipes, which is what you do. I'll try and work on that. I also want to try some of your recipes. They look delicious!

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  2. Kip, thanks for the kind words. I've followed your blog for awhile now and have tried quite a few of the recipes. Adding stories or editorials about them would be fun, especially because you are a good writer (Mrs. Vroman would be proud).

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