On Christmas Eve I made this salad and it was one of the highlights of our holiday meal. Let’s be honest, that usually isn’t the case with the salad. We had a veritable Italian feast, and everyone was talking at the table about this pear vinaigrette, the creamy goat cheese, the sweet dried fruit and the crunchy roasted nuts (get the Trader Joe’s roasted sesame almonds if you can find them!). I even saw a few people go up for second helpings of the salad, the salad!! I sat there kicking myself because I didn’t write down any of the ingredients or measurements as I was making it, and I knew I’d be working backwards trying to figure out what the heck I did to make it work. Well, I put in the time and got experimenting to recreate it so that I could share the details here — it makes a delicious lunch or side dish for entertaining — get the full recipe below: read more