I was confident when I pulled out the ramekin of leftover diced pineapple (the rest had gone into baked pineapple chicken last week) and opened up a bag of favorite herb greens and lettuce from TJ’s. Pineapple is so sweet and refreshing, and reminds me of summer. When I opened the fruit drawer in the fridge, I discovered a trio of ripening kiwis that I felt bad for and decided to scoop them onto the salad as well. As I peered into the salad bowl I was having serious doubts about the combo- I had never had a serious salad with kiwis AND pineapple. Well, a friend was hungry and I was now plunged deep into this uncertain salad, so I went for it and with the addition of a few other ingredients I am happy to say that it turned out to be one of those neat culinary surprises, in a very real sense of the word surprise. Trust your intuition, fellow home-cooks: don’t be afraid to use what you have. Sometimes the result is worth the trouble. That being said, this salad is really no trouble. It is easy to fix and has a healthy portion of fruits with vitamin C and good greens.
The sweet flavor of the fruits complemented the tart balsamic perfectly, and the texture of the hard cheese and crunchy, lightly sweetened almond slivers were really nice finishing touches.
Here’s the scoop:
-TJs herb green salad bag
– diced canned or frozen pineapple
-TJs honey roasted almond slivers
-robusto cheese – a nutty, hard cheese )finely chopped into small pieces (we get ours most affordably from Whole Foods)
-TJs balsamic vinaigrette
If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s ( fondly, TJ’s) all these ingredients can likely be found at any supermarket.
Enjoy!
