Fruit and Nut Salad...by Yours Truly

Standing in my kitchen comes with a new found sense of confidence. The confidence that allows me to offer to make dinner to three always hungry, always eating men. The confidence that allows me to glide through the grocery store as if I have been there millions of times before. The confidence, finally, that allows me to think up a recipe of my own! It doesn't take a chef extraordinaire to make a salad- all you have to do is combine a few of your favourite ingredients and voila, lunch!

Fruit and Nut Salad

Ingredients (these ingredients are for a single serving salad, to my liking!)

1 cup strawberries
1/2 Royal Gala apple
1/2 cup Swiss cheese
1/4 cup Cashews
1/4 cup Red onion
2 cups Baby Spinach
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive oil

Directions

Step 1: Wash and cut Strawberries and 1/2 apple into quarters and cubes, respectively.
Step 2: Cube Swiss cheese.
Step 3: Slice onion into longer-length pieces.Step 4: Chop cashews (Either by hand or with a food processing device)
Step 5: Mix ingredients together and dress with Balsamic vinegar and Olive oil to your tasting!
As you can tell by the directions, it is a very simple recipe to follow. I found the most difficult part was measuring out the amount of ingredients I needed. Usually, if you are going to make something this simple just for yourself, you can probably just eye out exactly how much of each ingredient you want. Recipes like this are great to be modified by your mood or your taste. If you don't like cashews, maybe try slivered almonds or pecans. And I learned something new on my "own recipe" adventure. Can you just imagine me shuffling around drawers and cupboards and suddenly I come across all these funky tools that makes me think "I wonder what this thingamajig here is for" and then I proceed to cut myself on the sharp zig zag blades that I thought was freakin' awesome? Well, now that I am comfortable in my kitchen, I found out that that thingamajig is a very handy food chopper that chopped my cashews into perfect, little pieces.

I would highly recommend my fellow new chefs to try out a recipe of their own. You might just be surprised at what you can think up!