Sweet Strawberry Summer Salad

Growing up fruit salad was one sweet sensation, so sweet that I’m not sure I could stomach it these days. I recall cutting up a number of different fruits and dressing my “salad” with syrup. As I have matured a fruit salad slowly became a lighter, less sweet dish with a bed of greens that featured one or two fruits that are in season and this week’s strawberry barley salad is no exception. This dishes fresh strawberries and honey dressing certainly offers something for your sweet tooth, but also has some healthy greens and a good base of barley to keep you from getting attacked by that three or four o’clock snack attack. The spices bring another dimension of complexity to this simple yet flavour-filled dish.

Salad ingredients:

½ cup cooked barley

½ lb. fresh strawberries, quartered

½ cup loosely packed spinach

Dressing ingredients:

2 tbsp. honey

¼ tsp. grated ginger

¼ tsp. ground allspice

½ tsp. dried mint.

Directions:

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly until dressing is evenly distributed.

Serve chilled.