Fruity Salad

Boy, you people think I should eat a lot of salad. Evidently you are trying to tell me something. Am I a little round in the ass parts for you, perhaps?

This next salad was from Paul Allopenna and/or Emily Myers. Emily Myers is the daughter of Huntington family friends Ron & Cindy Myers. I'm pretty sure Josh may be friends with Emily or have babysat her or both or something. In the back of my mind, I think I may recall that she plays the violin, lives (lived?) in Rhode Island, and may have been up playing in Boston perhaps at T.T. the Bear's on one of Josh's and my first dates. Or, I am making this up entirely. Either way, I have no clue who Paul Allopenna is, although I'm willing to wager he is (was?) her boyfriend/husband/electrical engineer.

Whatever is or is not true about the above, what I do know for sure is that these Emily and Paul people have bestowed upon us a recipe for 'Fruity Salad.' Contrary to popular belief, it is not full of flamboyant crossdressers who insist on being called 'Barbara Anne.' Rather, it is a spinach salad avec fruit.

Josh and I hit our favorite Hollywood Farmers' Market yesterday morning, where I got at least some of the ingredients for said Fruity Salad. Unfortunately, we ran out of both money and time, so some of the ingredients had to be saved for the grocery store. Further unfortunately, I elected to go to the ghetto Vons when the time came. When will I learn?

This time I paid great attention to the check out lanes, got into the proper express one which took credit cards and hoped for the best. I laid out my would-be purchases and found myself once again behind a Royal Mess. This time it was some tiny Korean woman, whose English I'm guessing isn't terrific because she was having a hard time making the check out clerk understand what she wanted and basically was going, 'I want......' and then making him guess. Ultimately it turned out she wanted him to go get her 20 2-liter bottles of Pepsi. I always find the best time to decide you need a lifetime supply of a beverage is when you are checking out in an express lane and there are several people behind you, don't you?

Once this came to light, I nearly lost my mind wondering What Is It With This Grocery Store?! But the cashier, God bless him, informed Tiny Thirsty Nutjob that she would have to step out of line and wait and then come back again once her drinks had arrived, so I got out of there in a reasonable amount of time and without having to bash her in the head with my shopping cart. Although I admit I debated still doing it for fun.

In the end, I had to substitute a couple of ingredients due to stupidity/forgetfulness/laziness, but I get the general picture of what this salad should be. And to that general picture I say: 'Yes to spinach & cheese & candied nuts' and 'No to fruit.' I love fruit. And I love the other parts of this salad. Somehow I do not love them together. Somehow Josh does. Shock.

I sure is perty

Paul & Emily's Drag Queen-free Fruity Salad

1 bag bag spinach (or best estimate, given you got it at the farmers' market and not the grocery)
1 kiwi, sliced
1 handful of raspberries (yes) or pomegranate seeds (no!) or strawberries (no, but only in favor of raspberries)
crumbled goat cheese (aka 'feta')
1 cup walnut halves, coated with maple syrup and toasted at 350 degrees for 10 minutes*
dress with Brianna's Blush Wine Dressing

Go to Farmers' Market. Get 'bunch' of spinach that you estimate to be something like how much is in a bag, walnuts even though you know you have them at home, and raspberries. Fail to find kiwis. Pass on the goat cheese because they didn't have crumbles.

Go to ghetto grocery to get rest, but fail to find the Brianna's Blush dressing as you'd anticipated since it's the ghetto grocery and not the fancy grocery. Purchase a red wine vinaigrette as a surely paltry substitute.

Get home. Wonder how to cut up kiwi. Try to convince the dog to eat a piece of kiwi and get rejected. Wonder how it is that the dog and you have virtually the same exact taste in fruit. Discover you forgot the goat cheese. Decide your non-goat feta will have to be a sufficient substitute.

Preheat oven and toast walnuts. Be delighted with self for learning how to candy your own nuts. That sounds painful.

Assemble substitute-full salad. Decide to do just two bowls for you and Josh instead of the complete bag 'o spinach because, well, that's too wasteful even for you and you're pretty sure you can get the point of this on your own.

Dress (yours) right before serving. Leave Josh's naked because he's naughty that way.

*Heather note: This is very useful information and it worked well. Other useful information is that you can buy pre-candied nuts @ Trader Joe's.