Spinach Salad with Feta, Apples, Bacon and Sweet-Spicy Nuts

Source: Mel, who else?

That's a big ol' honkin' silver bowl chock full of salady goodness!

Ingredients:
for the salad:
16 ounces baby spinach
½ small red onion, slivered (Mel had a great tip about tempering the onion flavor so it's not so overpowering to eat them raw in the salad - and I think it helped a lot! Just soak the onion slices covered in cold water with a bit of baking soda (I used about 1/2 teaspoon soda). Let them sit for 15-20 minutes then rinse and drain well.)
6 slices of applewood smoked bacon, cooked and crumbled or chopped into small pieces (I didn't use applewood smoked, just regular old boring (delicious) bacon)
1 cup Feta cheese crumbles, more or less to taste (I used less - more like ~1/2 cup)
1 cup dried cranberries or cherries, more or less to taste (I stuck with the full cup of craisins)
1-2 Honey Crisp apples, cored and sliced thin (I used 2 galas since that's what I had in my fridge)

for the sweet-spicy nuts:
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I went with pecans and they were delish!)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
Pinch of cayenne (more to taste if you want)
Pinch of salt

for the red wine vinaigrette:
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic, pressed or finely minced
1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (I didn't have Dijon so I just used regular yellow - 1 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt, more or less to taste
Fresh cracked pepper to taste

Directions:
For the dressing, shake all the ingredients together in a mason jar until well combined or run them through a quick blender cycle. Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve. The dressing can be made up to a week in advance.

For the nuts, lightly toast the nuts in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, checking often so they don't burn. While they toast, place the sugar, cayenne and salt in a skillet over medium-low heat. Cook the sugar mixture until it liquifies completely, adjusting the heat so it doesn't bubble and burn. Toss in the toasted nuts and stir to coat the nuts with sugar. Let the sugared nuts cool completely.  (This was the part that gave me the most trouble.  Read: it didn't work!  I read elsewhere on the internet to skip the toasting step (after I had already done so) and just throw the nuts and the sugar and everything all in the skillet together.  So I tried it.  Still didn't work.  I ended up with chopped pecans, nicely toasted, and hard sugar clumps.  But not much sugar stuck to the nuts for some reason.  Oh well.  I just threw it all on the salad and it was fine.  Just be warned - the sugar nuts are not as easy as they sound!)

To assemble the salad, toss all the salad ingredients together along with the cooled nuts. Serve immediately with the vinaigrette alongside. All the components can be measured out/prepped ahead of time and stored separately (I put everything in ziplock baggies to take to two Mother's Day lunches on separate days - I did all the prep work on Friday and then served and ate one salad on Saturday and another on Sunday  The only thing I did just before tossing was to slice the apple fresh so it didn't go brown in the fridge). Just toss right before serving. Enjoy!

Notes:
As I noted above, I brought this salad to two different Mother's Day meals last weekend - one to celebrate Gregg's mom and one to celebrate my mom.  The salad was delightful both times!  One thing to note - it's ginormous!  It definitely was enough to serve 12+ as a side dish with the Elwood gathering, and with the Blanchards, where we only had about 6 adults present . . . let's just say there was a LOT left over.  Which is not a bad thing!  I loved this salad - very flavorful and fun and much fancier than what I normally throw together.