Strawberry Vinaigrette Salad or: A Salad Convert's Testimony

Okay, so, growing up, I was never one for salads. My father didn't eat them, we didn't eat them in our house, and I turned up my nose at them at occasions which required me to end up with a plateful of salad in front of me. Thankfully, taste buds can change! My very first enjoyed taste of salad was at the East Side Mario's on Upper James. I believe I was there with my mother and one or both of my sisters. I tasted my sister's Caesar salad and I was hooked! Since that time, if a regular salad was offered, I would usually not eat it, but I would always take Caesar salad when offered the option. Little by little, other salads began creeping into my mouth. Usually what made it passable (tasty, even?!) would be a fruity vinaigrette dressing. 
I was totally unprepared for how deeply I would fall in love with salad when we went to our dear friends, Pete & Bri's, wedding last July (yes, I know the grammar was terrible just there - sorry, sorry). A honey-mustard dressing served over a bed of greens with pecans and roasted pears and, gasp, goat cheese. Oh. My. I have wanted to taste that salad again so many times since then I really couldn't count them.
The next best salad I had between now and then was a delightful concoction served to us at the Barbara Caffe, in Stoney Creek. Tom and I had gotten a discount voucher for a 5 course tasting menu at this fabulous, authentic Italian restaurant, where we had dined once before with his parents. The meal was fabulous all the way through, and I drank so much wine I was afraid of the high heels I was wearing. (No, I was not drunk, just feeling fuzzy - I usually only have maybe a glass or a half a glass, and that night I had 3 glasses of various wines!). But my favourite part of the meal? The salad. 
The description of this salad on their online menu is this:
Insalata Caprino: Mesclun salad topped with warm grilled vegetables, cherry tomatoes and soft goat cheese and tossed with a balsamic and sundried tomato dressing
Um, yum?
Again, it's the goat cheese that gets me. It looks all dry and crumbly but then it's warm and melt-in-your-mouth creamy-delicious. 


Anywho, Tom and I were discussing the possibility of me trying to make my own fruity vinaigrette dressing this weekend and when I asked him this morning what he wanted for dinner, all he requested was a salad with a fruity vinaigrette dressing. 
And this is what we had:

- Spring mix greens
- Strawberries
- Blueberries
- Grapes
- Chopped walnuts
- Warm crumbled goat cheese
- Strawberry vinaigrette dressing (which was sortof based off a recipe from allrecipes.com: 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp (I added lots more) of mashed strawberries, mixed together)


I see now that usually the ratio is a bit different, with something like 3 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic. But we love balsamic vinegar, so the taste of it in the dressing was something delightful to us. 
Maybe I'll learn to make proper salads that I can be proud of yet! This was surely a good start - it was sooooo delicious, we both probably could have just eaten that for dinner - all that fruit in there and then the goat cheese. Sigh....Delightful. My taste buds are still dancing, 2 hours later!