Pear and Gorgonzola Salad

Clearly I'm not good at sticking to this whole recipe a week routine.  I blame it on the frequent urge to order out, usually spurred by excessive studying.  With finals only a month away, I expect this to happen a lot.  I resorted to some pretty extreme methods of finding food during last semester's finals period, including eating a decorative gingerbread house for dinner one night and an entire bag of frozen edamame another.  It wasn't pretty.

Anyway, earlier this week Jack wasn't feeling well so I decided to be nice and grab him some soup on the way home.  I got carried away in the grocery store and ended up buying a ton of produce, including the stuff to make this salad.  It's one of Jack's favorites and perfect for warm weather.  Not that the weather was warm this week, but a girl can dream.  Here's the super easy recipe.

Pear and Gorgonzola Salad
Any measurements I give (and there are hardly any) are for two big serving sizes, so adjust accordingly depending on how many people you're serving.

 Salad Ingredients
-Arugula
-Crumbled gorgonzola cheese
-A pear
-Chopped walnuts

Dressing Ingredients
-Extra virgin olive oil
-White wine vinegar
-Dijon mustard (I love Grey Poupon or any kind that has that seedy texture)
-Brown sugar (you can also use maple syrup or honey, but I didn't have either)
-Salt and pepper

1) Make the dressing first.  One of the things I love about cooking is messing around with things and seeing how they taste, so I rarely measure.  I'll try to estimate how much of each I used, but always taste it and play around with adding more of one ingredient depending on what you like.

Add about one and a half tablespoons olive oil, one tablespoon white wine vinegar, one tablespoon Dijon mustard, and a few spoonfuls of brown sugar to a small bowl and whisk together.  Add salt and pepper (using grinders like I have, about 12-15 twists of salt and 8-10 twists of pepper).  TASTE FIRST and add more of any ingredients as you like.

2) Wash the arugula and put into bowls (or one big bowl if you're being fancy)

3) Peel the pear and slice in thin pieces. You can cut the slices in halves or quarters depending on how big you want the pieces in the salad.

4) Mix the pear pieces, gorgonzola crumbles, and walnuts into the arugula.

5) Add the dressing and toss together.

Super easy and super good.  It's especially good with big pieces of crusty Italian bread with butter.