Summer Strawberry Spinach Salad

Summer Strawberry Spinach Salad

If you're like me, you're always looking for some ways to make a healthy, but not boring meal.  With good intentions, I always buy basic salad ingredients like romaine, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc, but I have a hard time making it exciting enough to actually want to eat it all as a meal.  This week, I bought a bunch of strawberries and some baby spinach at Trader Joe's , not necessarily planning to combine them... Until now!  Don't we all want to at least start out the week eating well?  With my husband, Jay, coming home from work for lunch today, I decided to throw this sweet salad together.

Ingredients:
Approximately 4 cups of baby spinach and chopped romaine
8 sliced strawberries
1 small green apple, cored and cut into thin slices
About 1/4 cup sliced cinnamon and spice almonds (see below)

I layered the lettuce, spinach,  fruit, and almonds in a bowl and waited to add dressing or other toppings   until we had it on our separate plates (I wanted to add vinaigrette and bleu cheese to mine--Jay gags at the thought of those).

 Cinnamon and Spice Almonds:
Pre-heat the oven (I used my toaster oven) to 300 degrees
Spread out approximately 1/4 - 1/2 cup sliced almonds on a baking sheet
Sprinkle with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar (I used a grinder mixture I got at Trader Joe's)
Add a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, to taste.
Spray with a light coat of cooking spray (optional)
Bake for about 10 minutes until the almonds start to brown just a bit
Toss a few on your salad, and ENJOY!!

As you can see, I added some bleu cheese crumbles, a drizzle of low-fat balsamic dressing, and a few blackberries to my salad.  It was delicious!!  I can't wait to make this again!  It would make a great dinner salad with grilled salmon or chicken...yum.   Let me know what you think!!!

--Meghan :)