Spring Green Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

This Green Spring Salad is light and fresh for spring with a tangy lemon vinaigrette, avocado, apples, pea pods and zucchini.

Growing up on my parent's farm exposed me to many kinds of delicious Michigan apples. I remember when I was in about 4th grade being outside with my siblings picking up apples from the ground to feed to the deer. I remember feeling like there were millions of apples to pickup and like we would never be done. Looking back, it was a wonderful memory of time spent with my siblings. We would goof off, eat some apples and were doing something good by helping out my parents.

As the years went on, I continue to have memories of Michigan apples. Helping my dad prune the trees in the winter, seeing them bud in the spring, watching little apples grow in the summer and picking the ripe apples in the fall.

My parents trees produce a ton of apples (on good years) and we are lucky enough to be able to take a bunch of apples home to store for a couple months in our fridge. We mostly just eat the apples raw because I love them so much but we also do some cooking with them. I love making healthy baked apples and apple crisp.

Also, I make one or two giant pots of wild Michigan apple no-sugar applesauce which I freeze in containers. I used to just eat it myself but now, I feed it to my daughter who I think may be the biggest apple fan there is. She is 16 months old and calls them "papps" and picked her own this fall at my parents farm. Whenever she sees an apple, she gets super excited. I understand where she is coming from because I get excited too!

Outside of applesauce, apple crisp, baked apples and raw apples, I love to use apples in a salad. I picked up some Michigan Jonagold apples for this recipe and loved their sweet-tart flavor. This green salad is perfect for spring with light spring vegetables and a fresh lemon vinaigrette.



Green Spring Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette