This week, I did very little cooking. Between recovering from Thanksgiving and getting the house all prepared for the holidays (see below), I had no energy left to toil in the kitchen. But after finishing all of our holiday decorations this afternoon, I decided to get a little creative for dinner, and it turned out to be one of the best meals of the week.

I’ve been meaning to make my own homemade pretzels (I have a soft spot for the horribly unhealthy ones you can find in malls and airports), and after sitting on the floor for three hours making my own cranberry popcorn garlands today, pretzels sounded like an amazing dinner. And while yes, part of me wanted to just devour the pretzels by themselves (see the next post for recipe), I added in a fall chopped salad (really just so my mom wouldn’t disown me upon reading that I’d only had pretzels for dinner).

For me, the trick with salads is that I get in a rut. I throw in the same six ingredients, and am then shocked when I get bored with them. So tonight, I decided to do some perusing on Pinterest for a creative salad. The one I ended up settling on was perfect because I had all the ingredients in my kitchen, and because it had some good fall flavor in it. The salad had:

• Romaine lettuce, chopped really finely
• Dried cranberries
• Pecans
• Bacon
• Pear
• Feta cheese

I got the idea from here, but I didn’t really use the recipe besides to copy the toppings on the salad. I never measure anything with salads, but instead just throw things in a bowl until it looks like enough food. I also insist on making my own salad dressing. If you have good ingredients, I think home made dressings are so much better. And quite frankly, they are probably a lot healthier. Tonight I mixed one part white balsamic vinegar, one part lemon olive oil, salt and pepper, and one teaspoon brown sugar. Delicious!