Beautiful first-course salad for Christmas (or anytime) meal makes great impression

Don’t let the recipe title fool you. This salad can be the “Taste-of” whatever season in which you desire to serve it—a perfectly beautiful Christmas salad for the first course of a holiday meal; an Easter menu item; or a cooling, refreshing summer buffet number. Take your pick—but this recipe, named Taste-of-Fall Salad, is a winner.

The toasted pecan halves that have been bathed in a balsamic vinegar wash and seasoned with cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and sugar (or sugar substitute) make a flavorful, crunchy topping. The simple oil-and-Dijon mustard dressing is terrific; shredded Parmesan is dusted on the greens; thinly sliced pears, of course, represent the key ingredient.

The recipe hailed from my Taste of Home Thanksgiving Recipe Cards, which suggested it for the Thanksgiving table. I’m still mining them for ideas that seem to work just as well pre-Christmas as they did for the previous holiday. This salad is a beauty, for sure.

Taste-of-Fall Salad

2/3 cup pecan halves

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, divided

dash cayenne pepper

dash ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons sugar (or sugar substitute), divided

1 package (5 ounces) spring mix salad greens (I used fresh spinach)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 medium pear, thinly sliced

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

In a large, heavy skillet cook the pecans, 2 tablespoons vinegar, cayenne, and cinnamon over medium heat until nuts are toasted, about 4 minutes. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar. Cook and stir for 2-4 minutes or until sugar is melted. Spread nuts on foil to cool. Place salad greens in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk oil, mustard, salt, and remaining vinegar and sugar; drizzle over greens and toss to coat. Arrange the greens, pear slices, and pecans on six salad plates. Sprinkle top of salad with cheese. Makes 6 servings.

Mess o’ Greens Salad with Warm Pecan Dressing: a great way to bid farewell to our winter garden

Hubby says the secret with gardening is knowing when to roll ’em and knowing when to fold ’em. As far as the collard-green yield from our winter garden was concerned, the time definitely had arrived to fold ’em.

These delicious greens that practically were a foot-wide in some spots across the leaf were in their waning days. Leaves were on the verge of growing tough and yellow. The weekend that just passed seemed to be a good time to amass all those collards recipes that I blogged about uncovering on the Internet last week and to get to cookin’ while, as the advertisements go, supplies last.

My first task was to prepare Mess o’ Greens Salad with Warm Pecan Dressing, a delightful salad that used up an amazing amount of the collards plus some of our red-leaf lettuce that also has seen its glory days in our winter garden. (Recipe was from the Internet collection of www.nikibone,com, that I mentioned earlier.) Besides combining these two foods that we have been blessed with this season, the recipe also called for toasted pecans. As I’ve mentioned before, we have a big bucket of pecans in our freezer from the last time the dozen pecan trees on our property had their big output. This meant that all the key ingredients of this salad were home grown right here on our little spot of earth—just like our ancestors experienced in the olden days.

A simple dressing that combined balsamic vinegar, oil, and honey and was warmed on the stove was poured over the greens after toasted pecans fragrant from the oven were stirred into the vinegar mixture. The recipe says to serve warm; drizzling the dressing over the collards/red-lettuce wilted the greens slightly and made them tender for salad-eating.

Good things can’t last forever; the winter garden has to be cleared out to make way for the plantings of the spring and summer. We are thankful that some of those “good things” found their way to our table in the form of this wonderful new favorite.

Mess o’ Greens Salad with Warm Pecan Dressing

6 cups fresh collard greens, about 1 pound

6 cups other greens (mustard, turnip, red-leaf lettuce), about 1 pound

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons honey

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1/2 cup pecans, roughly chopped or broken, toasted

Wash greens well, dry thoroughly, then remove and discard the long stems. Tear the greens into salad-sized pieces and place in a large bowl. In a small bowl combine the vinegar, honey, and mustard. Set aside. In a small skillet heat the oil until hot but not smoking. Add the vinegar mixture and pecans and cook; stir regularly, for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour over the greens; serve at once. Makes 4-6 servings.