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Today‘s Strawberry Avocado Salad is a dressed up version of the popular salad you know. The balsamic poppy seed dressing and spiced nuts make this salad one of a kind.
One of my favorite things about summer is our weekly visits to the local Farmer’s Market and the daily trips to our own backyard garden. I love the fresh produce! This year my husband planted a whole bed of spinach and other fresh greens for the daily green smoothies he makes for us. It’s also perfect for lots of spinach salads. It doesn’t get much greener and fresher than that! And my strawberry avocado spinach salad is a great way to use up all of this spinach!
A spinach strawberry salad is such a classic. And so good! I decided to make a good thing even better by adding a few things, avocado and spiced nuts! I love a little crunch on my salad and the addition of cinnamon, cumin, paprika and vanilla to the sugar on the nuts gives them amazing flavor and crunch.
Balsamic Poppy Seed Dressing
This salad also has an amazing dressing. We took the traditional poppy seed dressing up a notch by using balsamic vinegar. If you haven’t used white balsamic vinegar before you really should. It is quite lovely. I buy mine at Trader Joe’s but other grocery stores carry it as well. All these additions made a great classic salad even better.
All the flavors in the salad work so well together and I especially loved the spiced nuts and the nice little surprise they give the salad. I served the salad at a dinner party recently and it was fun to watch my friends try to figure out what seasonings were on the nuts. They guessed cinnamon but none of the rest!
Check out more of my delicious salad recipes:
- Celestial Salad
- Broccoli Salad
- Trader Joes Salad
- Check out more of my amazing salad recipes.
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Strawberry Avocado Spinach Salad Recipe
Strawberry Avocado Spinach Salad with Spiced Nuts
Ingredients
Balsamic Poppy Seed Dressing
- 1/2 C sugar
- 1 1/2 Tbsp poppy seeds
- 1 1/2 Tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 tsp paprika
- 2 tsps dried mustard
- 1 Tbsp dried minced onion
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
- 1/2 C white balsamic vinegar
- 1/3 C canola oil
- 1/3 C olive oil
Salad
- 1 bag baby spinach
- 1 head romaine lettuce
- 1 avocados peeled and halved
- 2 C strawberries sliced
Spiced Nuts
- 1 C sliced or slivered almonds
- 1/4 C sugar
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Mix salad dressing ingredients together in a bottle and shake until combined.
- In a pan, combine spiced nut ingredients and cook over medium heat until nuts are coated and sugar has melted. Then move to parchment paper to cool.
- Combine all of the salad ingredients together and enjoy!
Nutrition Facts:
Valerie A. H. says
Um……..Yum!
Leigh Anne says
Not sure what happened to the recipe!? I am out of town getting the girls settled at college and as soon as I can access the blog I’ll get the recipe posted. Sorry!!
Brittany says
Will you post your green smoothie recipe you’ve mentioned a few times on the blog? It sounds so good and I’d really like to try it!
Jennifer says
It looks delidious! Where is the recipe for the salad with your changes?
Lisa says
Hi Leigh Anne. This looks like a yummy salad. Can’t wait to try it and add it to the rest of the recipes I so often make from your site. Also wanted to say that you can freeze the spinach you want to use for the smoothies. We also drink a lot of green smoothies at our house and quite frequently freeze the greens that go in it. Just put the spinach in a freezer bag and the individual leaves will freeze. It will not freeze in big clump. Just don’t try to thaw it and use it for anything but a smoothie. We put the frozen greens right into the blender with the other ingredients.