Cucumber-Blueberry Spinach Salad

Speak about a medley of attractive colours, flavors and textures—this Cucumber-Blueberry Spinach Salad has all of it! The blueberries add an exquisite fruity taste and pop of coloration, the infant spinach gives a young, leafy mattress, and the cucumber brings a crisp, hydrating chew to this summer season salad. The blueberry dressing is an excellent steadiness of candy and tart and enhances the creamy tang of the goat cheese. Almonds add a toasty-sweet crunch and wholesome fats. All in all, that is an antioxidant-packed salad. Preserve studying for our knowledgeable suggestions to assist make your salad successful at your subsequent gathering.

Suggestions from the EatingWell Check Kitchen

These are the important thing suggestions we discovered whereas growing and testing this recipe in our Check Kitchen to ensure it really works, tastes nice and is sweet for you too!

• For the very best taste, toast the almonds: place in a small dry skillet and prepare dinner over medium-low warmth, stirring consistently, till aromatic, 2 to 4 minutes.
• For sweeter almonds, you’ll be able to sweet them. Cook dinner in a nonstick skillet with 1 to 2 teaspoons granulated sugar, stirring till the sugar is totally melted and the almonds are barely toasted.
• In case you don’t have a meals processor helpful, you should use a blender, or you’ll be able to smash the blueberries in a bowl with a potato masher after which whisk within the oil.
• For a barely completely different taste, you’ll be able to substitute white balsamic vinegar for the champagne vinegar, and feta for the goat cheese.

Vitamin Notes

• Spinach’s deep inexperienced hue gives some clues into the depth of its vitamins. Full of the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, spinach has been linked to wholesome imaginative and prescient, pores and skin, bones, coronary heart, digestion and immune system. Frequently consuming spinach might scale back your threat of persistent illness.
• Regardless of cucumbers’ propensity to make you burp—due to the compound cucurbitacin—they’ve a number of health-enhancing qualities. For starters, they’re low in energy and made from 95% water. This implies they’re a hydrating veggie. As a result of they’re wealthy within the mineral silica, cucumbers assist promote wholesome pores and skin. And consuming cucumbers might assist decrease blood sugar. Moreover making you belch, the cucurbitacin might also assist scale back most cancers threat.
• Like spinach, the colour of blueberries signifies their antioxidant content material. Blueberries are linked with decrease blood sugar, diminished irritation and improved imaginative and prescient, digestion, blood strain, levels of cholesterol and cognitive operate.