Autumn Chopped Salad

i've been seeing some pins on pinterest for an autumn chopped salad that looked so good!  http://espressoandcream.com/2010/11/autumn-chopped-salad.html  and we've totally been craving salad since i made that yummy caribbean chicken salad and since we had delicious salads at slick rock cafe in moab.  i gave this one a try, and sadly, i did not love it.  neither did mr. d.  i think it had a lot of potential, but i made some mistakes.



first of all, i tried to halve the recipe.  i was making the salad for 2 and i wanted to mix the dressing into the salad, which means leftovers wouldn't really work, so i didn't want to use the 6-8 cups of lettuce the recipe calls for.  i used 3 cups of lettuce and 1/2 cup dressing, which was way too much dressing.  it was drowning.  second, i thought we had pecans, so i didn't buy any.  turns out mr. d finished them off, so i used sliced almonds instead.  while they were ok, i don't think it added quite the same flavor.  third, the pears i got with my basket were bosc pears, better for baking than snacking, i figured it would be fine, but the one i used wasn't quite ripe enough to add a lot of sweetness.  finally, in an effort to make this healthy, i used turkey bacon, which never brings a lot of flavor to the table.  also, i left out the cheese.  we're not fans of feta at our house.

Autumn Chopped Salad

3 c chopped romaine lettuce
1 medium pear, chopped
1/2 c dried cranberries
1/2 c chopped pecans
4 slices turkey bacon, crisp-cooked and crumbled
Poppy seed Salad Dressing

Balsamic Vinaigrette

On a large platter, combine the lettuce, pears, cranberries, pecans, and bacon. Drizzle generously with poppy seed dressing, followed by some of the balsamic vinaigrette. I used 1/2 a cup of dressing: 70 percent poppy seed dressing and 30 percent balsamic vinaigrette.