Church Potluck

We had our church potluck today and we were assigned to bring a side or salad. We choose salad. Now around 6pm yesterday we remembered that we need to bring a salad to the potluck. I flipped through my recipes I have saved from magazines and found "Mixed greens with Berries and Sweet Spiced Almonds." It looked easy ;) just mix the ingredients together like a normal salad. I made out our grocery list but as I have now gotten into the habit of doing I read the recipe again to make sure I did not miss any thing. It was then that I realized that Sweet Spiced Almonds are not something that you can buy but something to be made. I then added the ingredients for the almonds to our list and we set out.

After dinner we made the almonds. We mixed the almonds with a combo of sweet and savory spices; brown sugar, cumin, coriander and such. Then we mixed in whipped egg whites. This made a sort of an almond paste. We baked it on a foil covered cookie sheet for 25 until crisp and it turned into a kinda of brittle that we then crunched up to put it the salad. The kitchen smelled great as the spices were baking.I think our almonds were closed to the being "over crisp" but they we taken out just in time.

In the morning I mixed together the greens, raspberries, chives and spices almonds together. Then I made the dressing with vinegar, honey Dijon mustard, and canola oil.

We then transported the salad and dressing separately in Saran wrapped bowls to the church with everything clearly labeled. I then left detailed instruction on how to prep the salad with hopes that it would all turn out. We dropped out dishes off before church and magically after church the potluck was all set up for the congregation. Our salad looked great and was a huge hit :)