Spring Green Salad with Kiwi, Raspberries, and Date-Balsamic Vinaigrette is a refreshing, crisp healthy salad for any time the craving strikes. Serve it alongside your main entrée or enjoy it for a light lunch.
I wanted to name this post, “Basically a Really Rad Salad,” because what do you name a salad that is fairly theme-less, but…just…rad…?
I emailed my mother with a photograph of the salad, and said, “Muuuhzah, what in the haystack do you call this?” Her response: “Razmataz Salad.”
Thanks, mom.
We did a little back and forth via the emails. Short story longer: we ended up with…drumroll please… the exact title of this post.
But this salad, though.
It’s spring-inspired with field greens, kiwi, and cucumber; summer-ish with raspberries; timeless with pecans, goat cheese, and date-balsamic vinaigrette. So I guess you could call this an In-Between Seasons Radness Salad. Plus, it’s a marvelous de-bloater, so there is that. In-Between Seasons De-Bloating Salad of Rad. There we go.
What makes this salad so rad (in my humble opinion) is the combination of cooling cucumber with tart and snappy kiwi and raspberries, along with crunchy pecans, earthy sprouts, creamy goat cheese, tied together with the tangy-sweet date-balsamic dressing. It basically explodes in your mouth the best way a salad possibly can.
I was inspired to make this salad after going to Outer Aisle in Murphys, CA over the weekend.
They’re quite literally a farm-to-table restaurant, as they use ingredients grown on their local farm to prepare their menu items. They have a pretty killer salad bar, complete with all sorts of fresh vegetable, fruit, nut, and seed options, as well as home-pickled veggies and homemade dressings.
When I went through their salad bar (you know, to offset all the wine and ice cream I had been consuming), I selected field greens, roasted red and golden beets, sauerkraut, pumpkin seeds, and a fruit medley of kiwi, apple, and blueberries. I always love adding fruit to salads for a pop of flavor, texture, and – do I daresay it? – moisture.
I could eat this type of all-the-things salad every single day. So I decided to pick up some farm fresh ingredients and make my own all-the-things adventure.
This salad fills you up (provided you eat a lot of it) without making you feel bogged down or like you need a post-meal siesta. It’s got all the pep, all the rhythm, all the music, eat it for breakfast, kidding, not kidding, but seriously please do, you’ll thank yourself for it, don’t make this weekend a repeat of last weekend, just my two cents, I’ll stop projecting, over and out.
Get it!
Spring Green Salad with Kiwi, Raspberries, and Date-Balsamic Vinaigrette
Ingredients
- 5 ounces spring greens or red leaf lettuce
- 2 ounces alfalfa sprouts
- ¼ cucumber peeled and thinly sliced
- ¼ small red onion thinly sliced
- 6 ounces raspberries
- 2 kiwifruit peeled and chopped
- ¼ cup raw pecans chopped
- ¼ cup goat chevre crumbled
Date Balsamic Vinaigrette
- 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 2 large medjool dates pitted
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- sea salt
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients for the date-balsamic vinaigrette in a small blender. Blend until smooth. The dressing will be very thick - you can add a couple tablespoons of water if desired.
- In a large salad bowl, combine all of the ingredients for the salad. Toss in desired amount of date-balsamic vinaigrette and serve!
Wine and ice cream is basically the reason I eat salad, which I would fully enjoy with this beaut! I love that you have these convos with your mom, because I do too! Moms are pretty hella awesome, right? Happy weekend love!
I love the sweetness in this salad and paired with the chevre – UGHHH yes please!
It’s alllll about the goat chevre, mmmmhmmmmm!
This looks great. I love reading your blog–you are very funny and entertaining! I wonder though, do you have control of the ads that come on your blog? Some seem a little, not sure how to say it, low life?
Hi Lisa, thanks for the compliments. I do have some control over my ads. If you’d like to send me an email and tell me which ones specifically you don’t like, I can let my ad networks know to take them down. – roastedrootfood@gmail.com
Is there any way I could possibly reach through the computer screen and have this salad? It looks amazing.
http://askmelissaanything.blogspot.com/
A salad with sprouts AND fruit? My dream salad!
I know, right? So earthy, so sweet, just all the flavors in yo face 😉 xo
So the amount of balsamic and olive oil is shown as a ?. I would like to know the amounts you used. The salad sounds absolutely wonderful, like something I’ll have to make. 🙂
Woops! Thanks for catching that, Susan! Coding issue 😉 I fixed the recipe 😀
after mountains of meat ans liquor on our weekend away, were eating only salad this week. Pinned!
This looks awesome and I’m super intrigued by the Date-Balsamic vinagrette! Yum 🙂
Ha! I love your mom’s response! Why didn’t you go with Razmataz?! 😉
Outer Aisle sounds amazing! I love adding fruit to salads too so all of these ingredients sound perfect to me. And that dressing is pretty much the best thing EVER!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, lovely! xo
Lol, mom language! Sometimes my mom asks me why I’m giving her the razamataz if I’m being super annoying about something (almost never happens).
The date balsamic vinaigrette sounds awesome!!
I have been wanting to try a salad with kiwi in it for a while now, but I’m afraid it would be too adventurous for me! It’s definitely on my to-do list!
I have a LOT of bloatedness that I need to…debloat. With at least five dishes of this salad. All that berry fruity vinaigretty flavor! I love.