Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Fresh Express Salad Mixes

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to receive coupons to sample Fresh Express Salad Mixes through Foodbuzz's Tastemaker Program.  I even received extra coupons (good for one free bag of Fresh Express salad mixes up to $4 in value) to give to lucky readers of this blog. So if you want a free coupon....just scroll down to the bottom of this post to see how you can win a coupon. 

I decided to try out the Strawberry Fields kit, which included fresh spinach, strawberry vinaigrette dressing, dried strawberries, and almonds. I decided to glam up the salad mix by making it into a warm quick and easy dinner that's part salad-part pasta. Surprisingly, Mike really enjoyed this dish. I've been trying to incorporate more vegetables into our diet and I'm glad I found another way to enjoy fresh spinach. 
Here's the dish that I created with this mix. I call it my warm spinach, goat cheese, and strawberry pasta

Ingredients
2.5oz dry-Whole wheat thin spaghetti noodles
1 bag of Fresh Express Strawberry Fields Salad Mix
1/4 c. Goat Cheese (crumbled)
3 T. balsamic vinegar
Black Pepper-to taste

Directions
1. Place the contents of the Fresh Express Salad Mix into a large bowl (of course open up all the bags and pour out the ingredients).  Keep the dressing on reserve until the end. 
2. Cook the pasta noodles according to the instructions on the box. Drain the noodles and then place the hot noodles directly on the spinach, strawberries, and almonds and mix together.
3. Once the ingredients are well-combined pour in some of the salad dressing to taste. I used about 1/3 of the bag, but I usually lightly coat my salad.  If you really like dressing, pour the whole bag of dressing into the mix.
4. Add the balsamic vinegar to the mixtures and lightly toss.
5. Lastly add the goat cheese crumbles and then serve. 

*How to Win Free Fresh Express coupons*
If you are willing to disclose your mailing address to me via email at a later date, just post a comment on this post by Friday, October 22.  If there are more comments than I have coupons for, then I'll just have to draw names.  If you do receive a coupon, it'd be nice if you could post another comment letting me know your thoughts about the salad mixes.  No pressure or anything, it's just to let others know that there were actual readers who received the coupons.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just curious. Are the strawberries fresh or freeze dried? I would imagine that they are fresh and bagged separately, but if so, how long do they stay fresh in the bag? Shelf life?

M&DT

suraya said...

eating this salad mix, not just as a salad, but incorporating it into another dish is so something i would do. your idea was fantastic! (though i would have gone bleu cheese in place of goat.)

shayna said...

hi lauren! how nice that you got to try some of the salad and that you get to share with your readers! :) have you gotten to try all of the salad mix kits?

Anonymous said...

I simply LOVE this salad mix, I always add fresh cut strawberries. I find their freeze dried strawberries just dont give me the strawberry kick i wanted. SOOOOOO good, I am in love with this salad mix