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Fresh Food Wednesday: Cranberry Spinach Salad Recipe

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Photo by Maena. Used under Morguefile.com license.

Cranberry Spinach Salad Recipe

My husband teases me that I’m a dollar store junkie, and it’s true. Once I discovered that the local dollar store had a freezer section and a grocery shelf, well, I was smitten. What’s not to love about a bag of frozen peaches or blueberries (no sugar added!) for $1? Or sea salt, with grinder, for $1?

Sometimes I catch a shipment just right and can stock up on a few healthy items like these. At other times, the store seems to lie in wait, tempting me with Russells Stovers chocolates, Hershey’s and all sorts of junk foods that I now avoid.

Last weekend, I caught a sale on dried cranberries. Cranberries! Yum! I bought a bag, brought it home, looked at my garden and thought, “Spinach salad with cranberries. Yes. Why not?”

And it was FANTASTIC.

I grow spinach in the garden just for the tender leaves to use in salads. I don’t grow a lot – I’ve found that growing spinach to freeze is too labor-intensive, and takes up too much room. But adding a few rows of spinach for salad greens is easy and enables me to diversify my salads inexpensively. The seeds were available for 25 cents at Wal-Mart this spring, and I planted two rows which have yielded innumerable salads. How can you put a price tag on organic spinach like this? Boxes of baby spinach leaves in the organic section of the produce aisle typically cost $1.99 – $3.99, depending on the season. I think I eat that much in a day when I make a salad like this one.


This salad was deceptively simple, deliciously tasty, and a wonderful low-calorie lunch. The feta cheese is optional. I need protein with my salads to feel full and alert in the afternoon, but vegans can easily add walnuts to the salad for their protein and voila – done.

Fresh Food Wednesday: Cranberry Spinach Salad

Ingredients

  • Two cups of rinsed baby spinach leaves
  • One slice of sweet onion, such as a Vidalia onion
  • One tablespoon of dried organic, no sugar added cranberries
  • One tablespoon of walnuts or low fat feta cheese
  • One tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
  • Two teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
Rinse and shred the spinach leaves, placing them in a large bowl. Layer onion on top and sprinkle with dried cranberries and walnuts or feta. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Serve and enjoy.

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  2. Jo

    Sounds good. I had never eaten spinach as a salad til I came to Canada.