Roasted Pear Salad

I made this for Thanksgiving and everyone loved it! Even the non-vegetarians (i.e. everyone at Thanksgiving besides me). My mom clipped the recipe out of a magazine. Here it is on the Marzetti salad dressing website.

It's pretty easy and really fancy-looking, like restaurant food!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup balsamic vinagrette dressing (Marzetti.com would prefer you use Marzetti brand but I betcha any brand is fine)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (the original called for 1/4 cup but I doubled it because my family loves pecans)
• 4 oz blue cheese
• 1/4 cup dried cherries
• 3 firm pears
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 8 oz butter lettuce (but we just used bagged salad mix)

Preheat the oven to 375. Mix 3/4 cup of the salad dressing with the sugar over low heat until the sugar has dissolved and set aside. Toast the pecans in a skillet over low heat (making sure they don't burn), then add the cherries and blue cheese. 

THEN cut the pears in half and scoop out the middle a little bit. Also, cut a slice down the back so the pears will lie flat on a baking dish. Sprinkle lemon juice over the pears to keep them from getting brown. Fill the pears with the pecan-cheese-cherry mix and then pour the sugared salad dressing over the pears. Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes and baste the pears a few times. (I had to look up what "basting" means since I don't usually cook things that require basting... just scoop the salad dressing off the bottom of the pan and pour it back over the pears I guess!)

Meanwhile put the lettuce on salad plates and then when the pears are done put one on top of each pile of lettuce, and drizzle the rest of the balsamic vinagrette over them.

That is a fancy salad, son!