Bacon-Swiss Tossed Salad

You will love this light, fresh, tasty summer salad.  I love bacon and the dressing is a little on the sweet side.  It tastes so good with the swiss cheese and croutons.  I’m perfectly content with it as my dinner, but I did make it as a side salad with some halibut.  It tasted delicious.

Ingredients:
Romaine lettuce, torn
shredded swiss cheese
bacon, crumbled
Croutons
Cashews

Dressing:
3 TBSP. brown sugar
2 TBSP. water
2 TBSP. red wine vinegar
2 TBSP olive oil
1/4 tsp. dried minced onion
1/4 tsp. poppy seeds
1/4 tsp. ground mustard
dash salt

Mix up dressing and toss to coat the salad right before serving.

Raspberry Bars

Delicious raspberry bars.  Not so good to have laying around though, because if you are like me, you keep picking at them until they are gone!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cup flour

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cubes butter

1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup pecans, chopped fine (optional)

3/4 cup raspberry jam

3/4 cup fresh raspberries

1 TBSP. lemon juice

Directions:  Preheat oven to bake 350.  Prepare crust by mixing together butter, salt, sugar and flour.  Reserve 1 1/4 cups of mixture.  Press remaining mixture on the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.  Take the remaining 1 1/4 cups of flour mixture.  Add the oats and pecans.  Set aside.  

In a mixing bowl, mix together raspberry jam, fresh raspberries and lemon juice.  Immediately upon removing crust from the oven, spread raspberry mixture over crust and sprinkle oatmeal crumb topping on the top.  Return to the oven and bake for an additional 22 minutes.  Allow to cool.