Sometimes recipes come from weird places. I had some leftover baby spinach to use up, which is kind of normal, but how many of you happen to have chopped strawberries waiting for a home? If you overestimated when you made strawberry pancakes for breakfast, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The flavors of all the ingredients in my salad were so lovely and distinctive that I didn’t want to overdress, so I chose to lightly sprinkle only three ingredients on my salad to finish it off.

Easy Spinach and Strawberry Salad

Ingredients:

• baby spinach
• chopped strawberries
• slivered almonds
• hearts of palm, sliced
• feta cheese (or goat cheese if it doesn’t cause your five-year-old to break out in hives)
• finely chopped shallots
• rice vinegar
• raspberry vinegar
• lemon juice

Toss all ingredients together in the ratio you prefer and serve. It really is that simple. I probably used about three times as much rice vinegar as I did raspberry vinegar and lemon juice, and of those two I used equal amounts. You might like a different ratio. There’s really no right or wrong here, and there’s really no recipe at all — just some distinctive flavors that come together to please your taste buds.

You could easily make this a dinner salad by tossing in some grilled chicken  or salmon. We served it alongside grilled game hens and some sweet potato / potato hash with shallots and thyme. The only thing we wished was that we had more baby spinach to use!