Strawberry Salad with Mixed Greens and Strawberry Lime Vinaigrette

My parents and grandparents came over the other day to visit with Baby C.  They told me they'd bring lunch, and I volunteered to make a salad to supplement whatever they packed.  As I was pulling ingredients out of the refrigerator at 10 pm the night before, I realized that I could probably come up with a pretty interesting salad dressing using things we already had on hand.  Believe it or not, I'd never made salad dressing before.  I mean, I had mixed little packets of spices with oil or mayo and plopped it on some iceberg back in the day, but I had never made dressing from scratch.  I figured it couldn't be too difficult, so I  looked at the ingredients listed on a bottle of raspberry vinaigrette and started mixing. I really didn't know where I was going with this when I started, so I just took a lot of pictures of each step and figured that I'd just delete them if it didn't work out.  Luckily, the dressing was great and the salad turned out well, so I'm now able to share it with you.

STRAWBERRY SALAD WITH MIXED GREENS & STRAWBERRY LIME VINAIGRETTE

Ingredients:
1 small cucumber
15-20 small strawberries
1 small apple
6 cups of mixed greens
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. honey
2 limes, juiced
dash salt
Cheese for crumbling (I used queso fresco, but feta would also taste great)

1.  Cut and rinse greens.  Set aside.

2.  Chop cucumber, apple, and 10 strawberries into bite-sized pieces.  Toss with greens.

3.  Add olive oil, balsamic, honey, lime juice, salt, and 5-10 strawberries to food processor.  Pulse until smooth and runny.  I chose to use 10 strawberries.  This produces a very sweet dressing.  You might want to start with 5 and add more to taste.

4.  If serving immediately, toss salad with dressing and crumble desired amount of cheese on top.  Otherwise, store salad and dressing separately and combine before serving.  The day I ate the salad with my family, I left the dressing out for everyone to drizzle as much as they liked.  The next day, I poured the dressing and salad into a covered container and shook it to combine.  I definitely preferred it the second way!

Cut and rinse greens.  Set aside.

Chop cucumber, apple, and 10 strawberries into bite-sized pieces.

Toss with greens.

Add olive oil, balsamic, honey, lime juice, salt, and 5-10 strawberries to food processor.
Pulse until smooth and runny.  (I couldn't get a good picture of this in the food processor,
so I drizzled a little onto a white plate to show the color and consistency.)

If serving immediately, toss salad with dressing and crumble desired amount of cheese on top.  Otherwise, store salad and dressing separately and combine before serving.