Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts

If you’ve tried my friend Mary’s Perfect Salad Dressing for Spring Mix Greens, Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts is a kicked-up salad using it that’s perfect for a busy week during the holidays. And this perfect easy salad is low-carb, keto, low-glycemic, meatless, and South Beach Diet Phase One! Use the Diet-Type Index to find more recipes like this one.

Click here to PIN this tasty Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts.

December has barely started and already I’m having a hard time avoiding the holiday foods; do you know what I mean? It doesn’t help that my sister’s birthday and (yikes) my birthday are both close together this month, and with all the birthday lunches and dinners and holiday parties that happen in December, that’s a month when I’m always trying to eat salad more often for meals at home.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you might have stumbled on Mary’s Perfect Salad Dressing for Spring Mix Salad. That simple dressing combination from my friend Mary is the thing that helped me become good friends with those tubs of Spring Mix Salad you see in every grocery store.

But when I have time to do more than splash on some olive oil, lime juice, and red wine vinegar, Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts is the way I dress up this salad into something good enough to serve to guests. And this is seriously good; I could eat this for lunch or dinner most any time of year without feeling even a teeny bit deprived, because FETA and PINE NUTS!

Of course the variations are endless, but if you like Feta and Pine Nuts please try my favorite combination at least once. And if you find another variation of a salad with Mary’s dressing that really helps you eat more salad, please come back and tell us about it in the comments.

It’s pretty simple! Whisk together the olive oil, lime juice,  and red wine vinegar to make the dressing. You can skip toasting the pine nuts if you want, but it only takes a second and it adds flavor.Put the lettuce in a bowl, toss with the dressing, add the pine nuts and Feta, season with a little salt and fresh-ground black pepper and toss again, then devour!

And if you’re using this recipe as part of a dinner for guests, serve it in a nice glass bowl and no one will ever guess the salad only took you a few minutes to make!

More Leafy Green Salads You Might Like:

Kalyn’s Favorite Low-Carb Antipasto Chopped Salad ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen
Mom’s Green Salad ~ Shutterbean
Peperoncini Chopped Salad with Romaine, Red Bell Pepper, and Feta ~ Kalyn’s Kitchen

Print Recipe

Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts

Yield: 6 servings

Total Time: 15 minutes

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts is a kicked-up salad using Mary’s Perfect Salad Dressing for Spring Mix Greens that’s perfect for a busy week during the holidays.

Ingredients:

Dressing Ingredients:

• 2-3 T olive oil (Use good quality extra virgin olive oil for best flavor.)
• 1 T + 1 tsp. fresh-squeeze lime juice (I use my fresh-frozen lime juice most of the time.)
• 1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar

Salad Ingredients:

• 6-8 handfuls of Spring Mix salad greens, or your favorite mix of greens
• 1/4 cup crumbled Feta
• 1-2 T pine nuts
• salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Spring mix salad doesn’t usually need to be washed, but if you’re using greens from the garden you’ll need to wash them (preferably in a salad spinner.) I like to pull off the prickly stems of the bigger leaves, but that’s totally optional!
2. Whisk together 2 T olive oil, the lime juice, and the red wine vinegar. Taste the dressing and see if it seems too tart to you; if so add more olive oil a little at a time until you like the flavor.
3. If you want to toast pine nuts, put them in a dry pan over high heat and toast 1 minute (or a little longer), shaking the pan the whole time. They get too done pretty quickly so turn off the heat before they start to get brown.
4. Put the greens in a mixing bowl and toss with enough dressing to coat the greens. Add the Feta and pine nuts and toss again.
5. Season to taste with salt and fresh-ground black pepper and toss again; then serve right away.

Notes:

I use my fresh-frozen lime juice most of the time and I am happy with this one from Costco, but sometimes I splurge for the really good stuff for salads

This is a fancier salad idea using Mary’s Perfect Salad Dressing for Spring Mix Salad. You can see the dressing amounts at that post if you only want to make one salad.

All images and text ©Kalyn Denny for Kalyn's Kitchen.

Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
Mary’s Spring Mix Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts is 100% perfect for any low-carb, Keto, or low-glycemic diet, including any phase of the South Beach Diet and it’s a delicious way to get in some healthy diet-friendly greens. I love the Feta here, but if you skip it the salad would be Paleo or Whole 30 approved.

Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use the Recipes by Diet Type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.

Nutritional Information?
If you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into this nutrition analyzer, which will calculate it for you. Or if you’re a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.