Broccoli Salad

It's spring! Or summer, as it is starting to feel like here in Florida. It's time to break out the salads. I just recently had a broccoli salad at a local cafe and I went gaga over it. It was delicious, it was crunchy, it was sweet and it was full of broccoli!

After I dissected the ingredients I discovered that I had all the ingredients at home. It was a forgone conclusion that I was going to recreate it as best as I could.

I cut up a bunch of broccoli, and included a lot of the stems.

If you cut the stems all the way up to the florets, you can then break the broccoli up into little flowers without having to chop them into crumbly bits. I like to keep broccoli as intact as possible.

Here are some of the other cast of characters. I used a little mayo (maybe a tablespoon) and about twice as much yogurt to make the dressing. I also added in a bit of onion powder to the mix. I just whisked it all up to combine. You may like more mayo or less, just taste it before you pour it over the salad.

I grate my own cheese, so that's the cheese in the background, in the black container.

Here we have broccoli, walnuts and dried cranberries. I add the dressing to this and mixed it all up real well. Toss toss toss. Then I added in the cheddar cheese. Probably a 1/3 of a cup. Toss a few more times and then serve or refrigerate.

This is the finished product. I think I used a lot more broccoli than the restaurant used. I have no idea what the dressing was from the restaurant, but this dressing is wonderful. It is tangy, from the yogurt and it goes so well with the crunchy from the walnuts and broccoli and sweet from the cranberries. My husband said that the cheese makes it the cheesiest! He's such a comedian.

Ingredients:
Broccoli - chopped and/or broken into florets
Dried Cranberries
Walnuts - chopped
Cheddar Cheese - shredded
Mayo and Yogurt dressing

Mix and eat

Have a great day!
Kristin