Christmas Break Salad

 

I got a mandoline for Christmas this year (so excited!) and yes, I cut myself the very first time I used it but that isn't going to stop me.  Today for lunch I was feeling the particular need to break away from all of the rich foods we have been gorging ourselves on over the holiday - cheeseball, chorizo stuffed peppers, creamed eggs (another blog post for another day), homemade fudge, etc...  I was determined to make a salad.  Unfortunately, all of the salad greens that are the normal stock in our fridge had gone bad during our healthy balanced diet hiatus. Cue: mandoline.

 Here is what I came up with:

Juliened apple (pink lady is my favorite)
Thinly sliced purple cabbage
Thinly sliced celery
Thinly sliced green onions
A handful of pomegranate arils (from a stocking stuffer in one of our kids's socks - thanks Santa!)
A slice of crumbled bacon (from another daughter's Christmas present.  Yes, she got a package of bacon and she thinks it is one of the best presents she got - Thanks sweetie!)
A little crumbled Wenslydale cheese with cranberry (a stocking stuffer in my sock - again, thanks Santa!)
A little poppy seed dressing (though next time I think I would just use a combination of lemon juice, cranberry/pomegranate juice and olive oil)
A small handful of cashews
Fresh ground pepper
Fresh ground black lava sea salt (a present from my awesome sister - thanks Jane!)

It was awesome!  One of the tastiest salads I have made in a long time.  Obviously, I won't always have all these fun ingredients on hand but I think under normal real life circumstances I would substitute craisins for the pomegranate arils, almost any kind of fun cheese for the Wenslydale and almost any kind of nut for the cashews.  I don't know what I would substitute for the bacon... is there any good substitute for bacon???