Salads are generally pretty boring posts, but when the list of ingredients include beets, avocado, bacon and blue cheese I figure they’re worth sharing. Pretty much anything involving bacon and blue cheese is worth sharing, come to think of it. This salad has a lot of the components of a traditional cobb salad (tomatoes, avocado, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, blue cheese) with a few extras thrown in to make it even better (beets! cucumber!). Everything gets chopped up, tossed together, and drizzled with vinaigrette – pretty simple. Minus the bacon and blue cheese, it’s a pretty healthy dinner. And thanks to the bacon and blue cheese, you’ll want to eat your vegetables.
Chopped Salad
Several handfuls of any combination of greens
3 stalks celery
1 cucumber, peeled, and seeded
Handful or two of grape tomatoes
Several springs of fresh herbs
2-3 small to medium beets, roasted
4-5 strips of bacon, crisped
3 hard-boiled eggs
About 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
1 avocado
For the dressing:
1 part Dijon mustard
1 part white wine vinegar
3 parts olive oil
Salt & pepper
Wash and chop the greens, then add them to a big bowl. I used several handfuls of baby spinach, about 1/3 of a head of red leaf lettuce and about 1/3 of a head of romaine.
Chop some tomatoes, celery, and herbs. Add them to the greens. I used several sprigs of both parsley and chives.
Chop cucumbers, beets, eggs, and bacon. Add them to the bowl as well as some crumbled blue cheese.
Toss everything together. Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve. If you think you’ll have leftovers, add the dressing to individual plates instead of to the big bowl. Same goes for the avocado, as brown bits of avocado make the leftovers much less appealing.
Goes well with a toasted slice of quinoa, flax, and poppy seed bread!
