Great salad

Last night I decided to make a spinach salad that turned out pretty delicious. Almost all the ingredients were ones purchased from Aldi. The only thing not from Aldi was the fresh parmesan, but it's possible you can buy that there, as well.

I got the kids involved making this. They were able to help with washing and drying the spinach, adding the toppings, grating the cheese, measuring ingredients, and shaking the vinaigrette. Older kids can help (with supervision!) with some of the actual "cooking", freeing us up for working on the main course. They can be really great at tasks like "stirring constantly" - which seem exciting and grown-up to them, but tedious to us!

I started out with about half a bag of spinach greens.
Then I took probably 1/2 cup of sliced almonds and caramelized them (heat the almonds in a pan until nicely toasty brown and then add sugar, stirring constantly, until the nuts are covered with the melted sugar)
I put a layer of greens down in a big bowl and added half the caramelized almonds, a big handful of dried cranberries, croutons, and then grated 1 or 2 T. of fresh parmesan cheese. Then I added the rest of the greens and repeated the toppings.

Berry Vinaigrette:
In a Tupperware shaker, I combined:
2 oz. olive oil
1 oz. garlic red wine vinegar
2 or 3 T. jam (I used Fit and Active Reduced Sugar Fruits of the Forest Spread from Aldi)
Adjust the amounts to suit your taste - our kids like this vinaigrette a little sweeter.
Shake well.