salad

Spring, spring, spring! It still feels like spring, and after a fabulous 10 mile run on Monday night, we decided to open the bottle of  Château Fage 2008 Graves de Vayres Blanc Bordeaux sent to me by the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign. You can read my post on the lovely red that they sent me here.

The white Bordeaux is a lovely pale straw color as you can see here on a sunny spring-like day 🙂

The nose was slightly floral and woodsy with a very mild citrus fruit taste. Its a very easy wine to drink, not a white that makes you pucker because its too acidic, and not at all buttery or oaky like a Chardonnay. It was perfect chilled for just about an hour as it was cold but still warm enough to really let all of those flavors come out. I am very grateful to the Life Goes Better with Bordeaux campaign for introducing me to another white wine that I like. With warmer days upon us, I have been looking at our wine rack and thinking we may have too much red 🙂 I had never tried white Bordeaux before, and I love that I had the opportunity to try this bottle. Life Goes better with Bordeaux is hosting an event in Boston this May, and I am looking forward to trying more Bordeaux wine, both at the event and before then! If you haven’t checked out their website, do, as it provides helpful suggestions for Bordeaux wine based on the wines you already know you like.

Since it was such a lovely day, and I was feeling super fit and healthy after my run, I decided on simple salads with lots of yummy ingredients to go with the wine.

Its funny how I pretty much never get sick of salads, because I am constantly buying new ingredients to add to them. Its a great way to fit in many servings of fruits and veggies at the end of the day. Plus its a nice way to get out of cooking if you just worked a whole day and had a big workout 😉

Our Monday night salad was a base of baby spinach (about 3 cups for each of us) topped with shredded cabbage, avocado, beets, pickled vegetables, olives, jalapenos, carrots, and Trader Joe’s mango chicken sausage. With all of those yummy flavors, you don’t even need dressing! The zing and the crunch of the pickled veggies especially bring a lot of deliciousness to the salad without adding any fat. The salad went great with the wine, and I suspect the wine would go great with any light meal or mild cheese. As the representative that sent me the wine noted, it would be great for a picnic! Ahhh dreaming of wine country picnics 🙂

What are your favorite salad toppings? Is a salad enough to fill you up as a meal, or do you like to eat something else with it?

Have you enter my Secrets of a Skinny Chef giveaway? It ends on Friday, and my charity raffle for The ALLY Foundation and the chance to win a $100 Williams Sonoma gift card, in addition to a bunch of other great prizes, ends on my birthday, March 20! Since its charity Tuesday on Twitter, might you consider helping me spread the word today? I’d appreciate it! 🙂