Butternut Squash Pomegranate and Goat Cheese Spinach Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette

If you like Butternut and Goat Cheese you should make this.  I can't say anything about the Pomegranate because our seeds were bad, and we didn't use.  We added chicken.

There was dressing left, so I figured out Smart Points using 3 TBSP of olive oil and 1 1/4 TBSP of honey. It's probably 12 points instead of 13.

Butternut Squash, (and Chicken), Pomegranate and Goat Cheese Spinach Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette

Photo by ALB

Adapted from Cooking Classy

Servings: 3
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients
Salad
1 lb chicken breast, cut into 1 inch pieces, sauteed
5 cups (1 1/2 lbs) cubed butternut squash, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 tsp olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted
10 oz baby spinach (or 15)
1 1/4 cups pomegranate arils (didn't use this time)
3 oz goat cheese or feta, crumbled (used goat)
1 lb chicken breast, cut into 1 inch pieces, sauteed
(DH added red onions to his bowl)

Dressing
1/4 cup olive oil
2 TBSP red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp minced shallot
1 1/4 Tbsp honey
.5 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves (didn't use)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions
Cook chicken if you haven't.

For the butternut squash: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place squash in a mound on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper to taste and toss to evenly coat in oil. Spread into an even layer.

Bake in preheated oven 15 minutes then remove from oven and toss. Return to oven and bake until tender, about 10 minutes longer. Allow to cool several minutes before adding to salad.

For the Salad: In a large salad bowl toss together spinach, squash, 1/2 of the pecans and 1/2 of the pomegranate arils.

Drizzle with desired amount of dressing and gently toss. Sprinkle with remaining pecans, pomegranate arils and goat cheese and serve immediately.

For the dressing: Combine all dressing ingredients in a blender and season with salt and pepper to taste (about 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper). Process until well emulsified.

13 Smart Points (my additions/subtractions at 3 servings)... there will be left over dressing if you use 3 TBSP/salad, so I used 3 TBSP of olive oil in the calculation