Thank you guys for your comments, support and encouragement from my last post. Remember, I said I had a few recipes still to share with you…

This one is yet another recipe I served at the wedding. Not your typical vegetarian dish, huh? But I’ll tell you what, the vegetarians were VERY happy scarfing this salad down! And the meat eaters also inhaled it. Conclusion: make this and EVERYONE will be happy.

Are you SO surprised it’s in a mason jar? You shouldn’t be. I’m thinking about building a house out of mason jars. What do you think?

Here’s what I’ve learned after making this dish: I still don’t care for rice (oh ya, I should of said that earlier, I don’t like rice). At least not your ‘normal’ everyday rice like white rice, brown rice, short grain, long grain, arborio (risotto), jasmine, etc… But wild rice, real WILD RICE, not a blend, but a real wild rice I LOVE. It’s so hearty, and earthy, and chewy. And just delicious. It’s that ‘black rice’ that looks super exotic, and weird, and for sure something you’ve never thought of trying because it just looks too weird.

I’m tellin you, try it!!!!! It is weird, a good weird. I guess it would be good hot, as a side dish, but frankly, after having it in this salad, I don’t know if I even want to have it hot. It’s just so good like this, why change a good thing?

*Confession: the salad pictured does have a little bit of a brown rice ‘blend’ in it. I learned about how terrible the blends are only AFTER making a HUGE batch of it. I wasn’t going to waste it though, so I made extra wild rice and mixed it in with the blend and proceeded to make the salad. The recipe below is the way to make the salad though, it’s perfect!

Wild Rice Salad
Recipe adapted from LA Times
Serves 4-6 as a side dish
Time: 1 hour

Ingredients
1 cup wild rice
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup chopped toasted pecans
1/3 cup chopped toasted unsalted cashews
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
2 tablespoons finely chopped celery
2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion

Dressing
2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp ground pepper

Directions
Combine 4 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the rice. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until the rice is tender, about 45 minutes. Drain well and cool.
*Wild rice takes longer to cook then ‘normal’ rice which is why ‘wild rice blends’ aren’t very good. Each type of rice has a different cooking time, so to combine them all means they won’t all turn out as well as they should.

Drain the rice (if there is water left in the pot) and transfer the rice to a large bowl. While the rice is cooling, mix in the dried cranberries, pecans, cashews, green onion, celery and red onion.

Mix the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, mustard and sugar in a blender. While the blender is running, gradually pour in the olive oil. Pour the dressing over the rice mixture and toss.

The salad can be made up to 3 days ahead of time and just chilled in fridge. I made this on Sunday and was still eating it on a Wednesday and it still tasted GREAT!