Happy GreensLove Month!

One of my favorite blogging groups is the love blog hop group. Each month we pick a theme ingredient and then connect to bloggers all over the world who feature this ingredient in their recipes.

I am so excited about the theme of this month’s love blog hop.

GREENS! 

So considering that all of our meals start with this:

You would think that this love blog hop would be easy for me, right?

Not so much.

Well, here’s the deal. We start every dinner with a plate full of spinach and then we add whatever we are having.

So even though we eat spinach every night, I didn’t think my co-hosts would appreciate a recipe that went like this:

Put some spinach on your plate.

Now, put your dinner on top of the spinach.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think everyone would necessarily consider that a recipe.

It took awhile for me to find a recipe that would be based on raw spinach salad AND be clean AND be something that we would actually eat.

After looking through cookbooks and recipes online, I turned to one of my favorite resources:   The Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook.

Success!

And the best part? It came with a recipe for a honey mustard vinaigrette.

Remember a long time ago, I asked if you would like to see a clean makeover of salad dressings?

I got this response from Nadia Riese.

Nadia Riese
The salad dressing that I love the most is honey mustard. I can’t seem to find a healthy, homemade version that I like. Help?
Badger Girl Learns to Cook Oh man, that’s a good challenge. Let me saw what I can dig up. We’ll find a healthy clean recipe for you. I feel like a Clean Eating super hero. Now I just need a cape…
Well Nadia, this is for you. I found my cape and an amazing, clean honey mustard vinaigrette. I hope you like it!

Warm Mushroom and Spinach Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Modified from The Rodale Whole Foods Cookbook:

Dressing:

2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons oil 
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Salad:

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 lbs mushrooms (mixed), sliced

2 chicken sausages, pre-cooked and sliced
2 ounce sun-dried tomatoes, julienne cut
1 small onion, diced

2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
16 ounces of fresh spinach
1 cup toasted walnuts or croutons

 

To make the dressing:

  1. On low heat, heat the vinegar and honey until the honey is dissolved.
  2. In a small jar or tupperware container, add vinegar and honey mixture to oil and Dijon mustard. Shake to combine.

To make salad:

  1. Heat oil in frying pan at medium heat. Add mushrooms and chicken sausages. Alternate between covering the frying pan and stirring the mushrooms so the bottom layer does not get overdone.

  2. When mushrooms are browned, add diced onion and sun-dried tomatoes. Saute for one minute, stirring constantly.
  3. Move mushroom mixture to a large bowl. Toss with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
  4. Serve on top of bed of spinach with toasted walnuts (or croutons) and honey mustard vinaigrette.

Recipe Review: This was a dream meal!

Yes, we eat all of our meals on top of spinach.

Yes, we subsist on salads.

So, how is this salad any different?

It’s hard to tell. The lemon juice at the end seemed to heighten ALL of the flavors of the mushrooms, sausage, and sun-dried tomatoes. 

For our version, we used shitake, baby bellas, and white button mushrooms. For chicken sausage, we used Trader Joe’s Italian sausage.

Somehow in the combination of all of these flavors, I tasted a bacon, smoky undertone. I’m also embarrassed to admit this but Manatee and I ate it all: 2 pounds of mushrooms and 1 pound of spinach. This should probably serve 4 people, but we just couldn’t stop eating it. And at the end, we didn’t even feel stuffed.

The dressing is the perfect balance of sweet and savory. It has all the flavor of a hearty honey mustard but won’t weigh the salad down.

More Greens Love:

This is the kickoff weekend of greenslove. Check out some amazing recipes from my co-hosts:

Al Dente Gourmet ~ Aldy ~ @AlDenteGourmet
ASTIG Vegan ~ Richgail ~  @astigvegan
Baking and Cooking, A Tale of Two Loves ~ Becky Higgins
BigFatBaker ~ Erin ~ @BigFatBaker
Bon a croquer ~ Valerie ~ @Valouth
CafeTerraBlog ~ Terra ~ @CafeTerraBlog
Cake Duchess ~ Lora ~ @cakeduchess
Cheap Ethnic Eatz ~ Evelyne ~ @cethniceatz
Easily Good Eats ~ Three Cookies
Georgiecakes ~ Georgie ~ @georgiecakes
Kitchen Belleicious ~ Jessica ~ @kbelleicious
Mis Pensamientos ~ Junia ~ @juniakk
My Twisted Recipe ~ Dudot ~ @mytwistedrecipe 
No One Likes Crumbley Cookies ~ TR ~ @TRCrumbley
Oh Cake ~ Jessica ~ @jesshose
Queen’s Notebook ~ Elizabeth ~ @Mango_Queen
Rico sin Azucar ~ Helena ~ @ricosinazucar
Savoring Every Bite ~ Linda ~ @Spicegirlfla
Simply Reem ~ Reem ~ @simplyreem
Soni’s Food for Thought ~ Soni ~ @sonisfood
Sprint 2 the Table ~ Laura ~ @Sprint2theTable
Teaspoon of Spice ~ Deanna ~ @tspbasil 
That Skinny Chick Can Bake ~ Liz ~ @Thatskinnychick
The Art of Cooking Real Food ~ Laura ~@TAofCRF
The Spicy RD ~ EA ~ @thespicyrd
The Wimpy Vegetarian ~ Susan ~ @wimpyvegetarian
Vegan Yack Attack! ~ Jackie ~ @veganyackattack
Vegetarian Mamma  ~ Cindy ~ @VegetarianMamma

Got a Greens Recipe?

Please join in on the #greenslove fun by linking up any leafy green recipe from the month of March 2012. Don’t forget to link back to this post, so that your readers know to come stop by the #greenslove event! The twitter hashtag is #greenslove :) .

 

 

 

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