Apple, Gorgonzola Salad

This is one of my favorite salads. The slightly sour taste of the cheese and cranberries blends wonderfully with the sweet and sour taste of the vinaigrette and apples. It's got a lot of interesting flavors. It is quick to make and extremely delicious. I make it often when entertaining and it's an easy to scale up recipe.

Ingredients
For the salad
1/4 cup blue cheese/gorgonzola, crumbled into small pieces
4 cups mixed greens, chopped
1 cucumber, diced into small pieces
1 apple, diced
1/4 cup cranberries
1/4 cup walnut, chopped (optional)

For the vinaigrette
1 tbsp strawberry jam
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup orange juice
salt to taste
1/8 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Method
Whisk together all the ingredients for the vinaigrette till an emulsion is formed and the oil and other ingredients are mixed together.
Toss together the greens, apples, cucumber, cranberries and walnuts. Drizzle the vinaigrette on the mixture to taste. Then add the blue cheese and lightly toss together.

Tips
You can subsitute the mixed greens with green or red leaf lettuce. Mixed greens are a mixture of different greens and herbs. There are different leaves like lettuce, endive, radicchio and arugula. These greens have different flavors including spicy and bitter flavors. Using mixed greens enhances the overall taste of a salad.