No-fuss Red-Leaf Salad with Sweet-and-Sour Dressing ideal for Easter lunch

The time had arrived for a parting with the last of our garden’s red-leaf lettuce crop. The enjoyment we’d derived from it left us wishing we’d planted far more than we had. Fresh-from-the-garden lettuce leaves tossed into a green salad has to represent one of the best parts of God’s creation.

MyRecipes.com gave us the pièce de résistance with which to bid our lettuce crop goodbye for 2011. Red-leaf lettuce tossed with green peas, slivered almonds, turkey bacon slices, and mozzarella cheese was swathed in a terrific sweet-and-sour dressing pulsed in the blender. I loved the fact that the dressing called for diced green onion—plucked from our garden rows, of course.

This one, which we enjoyed with meals last weekend, is destined to be a repeat performer on our Easter lunch table on Sunday. It’s an easy, newfangled take on the proverbial green salad. My mother used to call tossed salad combination salad (haven’t heard that term in decades), but Red-Leaf Lettuce with Sweet-and-Sour Dressing truly is, to borrow my mother’s phrase, a winning combination.

Red-Leaf Lettuce Salad with Sweet-and-Sour Dressing

1 bunch red-leaf lettuce, torn

1 cup frozen peas, thawed

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

6 turkey bacon slices, cooked and crumbled

sweet-and-sour dressing (below)

Sweet-and-Sour Dressing

1/3 cup sugar (or sugar substitute)

2 1/2 tablespoons vinegar

1 tablespoon diced green onion

1/4 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1/2 cup olive oil

In a large salad bowl combine salad ingredients. Into a blender container pour in all dressing ingredients. Pulse blender until all ingredients are well-blended. Toss, chill, and serve. Serves 6-8.