Pear, Beet, and Arugula Salad with Zinfandel Reduction

Fall seems to officially be here, and we have definitely started to make a shift in our eating habits. Gone are the heirloom tomatoes (I had some AWFUL ones earlier in the week!). Brussels sprouts are back with a vengeance, and I have been loving pears, apples, and butternut squash. Fall can be the best time of year to make salads, mixing it up from those tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn and adding a little sweetness from pears, apples, and beets, and that’s just what I did the other night.

I started with three blushing pears and three large, earthy beets.

While I got the beets cooking in a pot of boiling water, I cracked open a bottle of wine for the dressing, a Zinfandel from our visit to Amista. The dressing for the salad? A simple Zinfandel reduction, made by bringing the Zinfandel up to a boil, then reducing it and keeping an eye on it so that it doesn’t reduce too much. You want it slightly syrupy, but not completely stuck to the pan. The smell of simmering wine is pretty darn delicious!

The salad base was a wasabi arugula which promised to have a kick. Sadly, it did not. However, I did try a new product I received to review, Clearly Fresh BreatheWay bags, and they made a HUGE difference in how my greens kept throughout the week. I tend to buy a ton of greens like kale, spinach, lettuce, and arugula, and since I can’t eat them all immediately, they often get black and rotten very quickly. I transferred each group of greens into its own Clearly Fresh bag, pushed out the air, and sealed them up. A few days later, the leaves were dry and perfect. I am pretty excited about these bags and being able to preserve expensive produce a little bit longer.

Once the Zinfandel was reduced and the beets were peeled and cooled, I just tossed everything together and topped with crumbled honey goat cheese.

I love how a simple, easy-to-make salad can make a meal feel special. Even with just a few ingredients, this delicious combination was kind of spectacular. The fact that it was a healthy addition to our main course, an AMAZING chicken tortilla soup, made it even better.

I guess I can say that I am starting to get into the whole change of seasons thing. The food, and of course three new pairs of boots (Have you tried ShoeDazzle yet?! The shoes I got definitely aren’t the best quality ever, but they are so inexpensive, making it a fun place to shop for trends or short-term use/seasonal shoes and boots. ) make it a little more appealing!

How do you keep your diet healthy and full of veggies and fruits once the summer starts to wane?