I am a salad lover and I love to make awesome salads – but when I’m going to make a salad, any “plan” I have usually consists of:
Step 1: rummage through the fridge for vegetables
Step 2: throw it all together
Step 3: eat
Some plan, eh? Salads (and smoothies) are just not something I think to use a recipe for – but this also means I often make the same thing over and over again.
A salad recipe is nice way to change things up. I happened upon this one for a Blueberry Chicken Chopped Salad and it was a good reminder to look around for salad recipes more often! It gave me a reason to try something completely different and to combine some ingredients I wouldn’t have otherwise thought to combine.
Like blueberries and chicken, for instance.
Blueberries are definitely not something I would have thought to put on a vegetable salad – and definitely not something I would have paired with chicken.
The first time I used the red onion that the original recipes calls for, but it completely overpowered all the other flavors in the salad. (Maybe I used too much?)
I made it a second time and swapped red onion for mushrooms – much better!
I made a quick honey mustard dressing (inspired from the same recipe) – a little Dijon mustard, honey, olive oil, water and salt, whisked together at the bottom of the large bowl and then all added all the rest of the ingredients – chicken, blueberries, pecans, mushrooms and Asiago cheese.
The slight sweetness from the dressing and blueberries were great together – with the Asiago, chicken, pecans too – this was a perfect combo of sweet and savory. (I think some avocado could have worked in place of the nuts here too.)
This salad gets two thumbs up from me! The farmer’s market tables have been full of blueberries lately. I loved incorporating them into a salad meal like this.
That’s all I’ve got for today – blueberries on salad, I hope you try it! I hope you’ve been making some awesome salads this summer too.