a green, a fruit, a nut and a cheese

That's all you need for a good salad, right?


Sometimes that salad is just better than others - even with the same basic ingredients - sometimes you get good salad and sometimes you get great salad!

Case in point - Saturday night we went out for an impromptu early kinda sorta Mother's Day Dinner. We went to Clinkerdaggers which is one of the few 'nice' restaurants in the city. They are totally welcoming to kids and even have kids' cups and menus which was a nice surprise. Plus, they are right above the river and we got stellar, walk-in seating. Perfect view of the river which the girls loved! As Sam said, even when we make reservations we don't get this nice of a table.

Anyway, back to my salad. We all know I love to eat and eating great food is Fabulous!!!

So, on the Fresh Sheet they have a special for today. It's a strawberry-chevre salad with a basalmic reduction. Let me tell you this salad was T.D.F. So so so so so sooo delish!!! I'll break it down for you so that you can recreate the delight that was. Maybe I'll have to go back for dinner with Sam and see if I can get a picture - it is strawberry season after all.


Greens - Spinach. Fresh, bright green, baby leaf spinach. This spinach was perfect and sweet enough to stand alone as a spinach salad - but oh, no, better and better.


Fruit - Strawberries. Perfect, Bright Red, ripe, sweet - sliced into quarters so easy enough to do in one bite - not having to cut them or whatever. Unfortunately, the girls thought so too so I ended with eating signifigantly less salad than I started with. Seriously - I could have just had this for dinner.


Nut - Walnuts. Normally, not such a fan of walnuts as they can tend to tast bitter. I mean, if they are in chocolate - helps to blunt the bitter, however, this was not the case. The walnuts were chopped finely enough that you didn't have a 'bite' of walnut - so that the flavor doesn't overpower the delicate taste of the strawberry or spinach. I also think the dressing helped out the walnuts. They were the perfect size to add just the *right amount* ;) of crunch and texture to the plate.


Cheese - Ahhh...remember those old commercials. "Behold the power of cheese." So, the rest of this salad was done incredibly well - and the addition of this chevre was pure genius!!! It was definitely a smoother, lighter domestic chevre. I think that was a perfect decision - because all of the other flavors can tend to be kind of milder flavors (except for those bitter walnuts, not to be confused with bitter almonds) - a stronger cheese would have overpowered the food. This chevre was nice and soft w/o being too soft - stayed in a good little ball, but not too wet or too dry. Again - the girls loved it! Ella kept picking the chevre off my plate - that's how delish it was! I think if you want to try to recreate this yourself to definitely go for a smoother chevre.



I just can't tell you how much I enjoyed this salad. Really - better than my entree, but that's another entry.

Oh, maybe I should do restaurant review blog - with the whole house selling thing we are eating out a TON! Kind of sucks actually because it's the perfect time of year to cook. Then I'd have to try new foods though and I really like my old foods...maybe not.

One other side note - Sam asked and then Ella wanted to know about the kind of cheese chevre is. It's a goat milk cheese and when you eat it in France it's almost, not quite, kind of runny. Because it's made from goat's milk it is a bit more tart than cow milk cheese and is quite soft. Ella is very interested in where milk comes from these days and is still quite insistent that we can make pig milk cheese. Not so sure that's going to happen but she really wants to try to milk a pig. The chevre we eat here isn't at all runny but still quite soft - easy to heat, or not, and toss in with veggies and salad.






This is kind of what it looked like - although no kiwi - although that might be interesting and it wasn't a basalmic dressing exactly - it was thickened and sweet and slightly warm. - Perfect!




In fact, this was soooo good, it might even be considered 'fingers to the face good' ;)