Apple Cranberry Spinach Salad with Pecans, Avocados and Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing Healthy Recipes

This Apple Cranberry Spinach Salad with Pecans, Avocados (and Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing) is so good, you might as well double the recipe when you’re making it! The recipe is filled with so much flavor, that I’m having a hard time finding the right words to describe it but I will try. 🙂 Let’s start with the salad ingredients. They are amazing: fresh produce (spinach), combined with fresh fruit, nuts, and dried cranberries.
But what really boosts the flavor of this salad and combines all the fresh fruit and the fresh produce together so well is the amazing dressing: Marzetti Simply Dressed Balsamic Vinaigrette. The dressing is so good that my husband, who never eats salads for lunch, ate a whole bowl of it at noon and asked for seconds! Eating a huge amount of salad for lunch is so out-of-the character for my husband that I was shocked.  It is really one of the best tasting store-bought balsamic vinaigrettes that I ever tried!

Apple Cranberry Spinach Salad with Pecans, Avocados and Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing Healthy Recipes

Ingredients

• 10 oz fresh baby spinach (about 10 cups of torn leaves)
• 1 Granny Smith apple, sliced
• 1 Gala apple, sliced
• 1 or 2 avocados, sliced
• 1 cup pecan halves
• 2 whole fresh mandarin oranges, peeled; or 1 can of mandarin oranges, drained
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

Instructions

1. Chop 1/4 cup of pecan halves into smaller bites - set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine all salad ingredients except for 1/4 cup of chopped pecan halves.
3. Drizzle the salad with the dressing and toss. Sprinkle chopped pecans on top of the salad. Serve immediately.

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HONEY MUSTARD CHICKEN, AVOCADO & BACON SALAD HEALTHY RECIPES

Being a number one fan of honey mustard everything, I gave up enjoying honey mustard dressing on salads because of all of the mayo and calories normally sneaking their way into them. Then, this morning happened. Waking up with the strongest honey mustard craving (weird, right?), I smacked myself upside the head when I remembered, um, HELLO, food blogger, remember? Which means, don’t-give-up-anything-just-find-a-way-to-make-it-yourself, type of thing.
And this dressing? THIS DRESSING. So creamy and sweet and tangy. So bad I made it again and again and again and again. I couldn’t believe something so simple could lead to something so sinful — yet, not. In my truest form, I didn’t want to taint the marinade with a different tasting dressing, so I left it and may the mustard gods help me.

HONEY MUSTARD CHICKEN, AVOCADO & BACON SALAD HEALTHY RECIPES

INGREDIENTS

Dressing / Marinade:

• ⅓ cup honey
• 3 tablespoons whole grain mustard
• 2 tablespoons smooth and mild Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• Salt to season
• 4 skinless and boneless chicken thighs or chicken breasts

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For Salad:

• ¼ cup diced bacon, trimmed of rind and fat
• 4 cups Romaine lettuce leaves, washed
• 1 cup sliced grape or cherry tomatoes
• 1 large avocado, pitted and sliced
• ¼ cup corn kernels
• ¼ of a red onion, sliced

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