Cherry Almond Blue Cheese Salad

Do you remember when Costco had this insanely delicious bagged salad in their produce department and then they suddenly stopped selling it?  Well I do, and it was their Cherry Almond Blue Cheese Salad, and if I’m being honest I was a bit heart broken for quite some time after they took it off the shelves.  After some healing time and quite a bit of self reflection, I’ve decided to take the fate of my food into my own hands and recreate this fallen salad. The main part of the salad really isn’t that difficult to figure out, I mean almost all of the ingredients are given away in the recipe title.  What took the most figuring out was the dressing for this recipe.  The original salad had this dressing that was perfectly sweet, tangy, and truly complemented each component of the salad.  After taking several stabs at the dressing, I finally landed on a balsamic vinaigrette with just the right ratios of oil, vinegar, and honey.  These dressing ingredients added together with the salad was just what I was looking for.  Another crucial step to making this salad delicious is toasting your almonds.  This may seem like a very small step, but toasted versus untoasted almonds is one of the biggest game changers.  When you have nuts in any recipe, toasting them brings out the most delicate nutty flavor that adds so much more complexity to your dish. This salad can be made for anything from a quick and delicious lunch, a side salad for your next holiday, or as your main dinner course.  One of my favorite ways to serve this salad is with our grocery store hero, the rotisserie chicken.  This salad is so easy to put together, and pairing it with the easiest of all proteins just makes sense.  Grab your salad bowl and your favorite fork because this is one salad that will be a great option for your family dinner that will have everyone excited for more!  Speaking of being excited, did you know about that time we went sledding and it got completely out of control?  We were in the dark stages of our winter break, specifically we were in the lull between holidays and in a full blown sugar detox.  We decided that we needed to get out of the house before we went crazy, so we bundled up and headed for the hills to go sledding.  Within a couple of hours, we found ourselves at the top of Mt. Slickery, the famed local sledding spot, and we were ready for some fun!  After a couple of rounds of gentle gliding to the bottom, my kids decided they needed something more thrilling, so they traded their standard sleds in for one of the ultra speedy sleds.  After a quick safety briefing, the kids were launched down the hill where they descended at an alarming speed.  The snow had melted slightly that day but had frozen again later that afternoon so it was extra slippery, perfect conditions to get some serious speed.  Within seconds they were at the bottom of the hill where safety officers were frantically trying to stop them.  After failing to stop, they crossed a busy street, skated over a frozen pond, and finally came to a stop when they crashed into a colony of snowmen over a mile away.  Thankfully everyone was ok, but after that incident, it was time to call it for a day and go home and have dinner.  After that scare, our stomachs were in knots and I was in no mood for a complicated dinner.  That’s when we decided to have a delicious Cherry Almond Blue Cheese Salad.