This weekend we had to come up with a salad for a party in our neighbourhood.  The theme for the party was seafood, so of course, we had to put together a salad which was to go nicely with the seafood aspect of the main course.   After long deliberations we settled on a recipe which we actually developed over the last couple of years, blending 

• Bulgarian ingredients like – Bulgarian Sheep Milk Feta Cheese 
• Texas flare – roasted with salt and sugar Texas pecans

The ingredients for the salad are relatively simple:

• Organic pre-washed spinach
• Red bell pepper sliced in pieces to your liking
• Tomatoes – we used 3 mid-size tomatoes – preferably organic
• Cucumber – sliced in circles
• Red onion – sliced thinly
• 200-grams of feta (sheep milk preferable) cheese

The roasted pecans are my wife's recipe – she mixes salt and sugar and olive oil and small amount of water

• mix in a baking dish
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 1 lb of pecans
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 tablespoon water

Roast at 375F convection oven or 400F regular oven; Check after 8-minutes and then 5-minutes later and then every 2-minutes — with each time stirring the mixture; Then take them out of the oven and take them out of the baking dish on parchment paper — otherwise they will stick really strongly to the glass of the baking dish

Cool the pecans 

In the mean time crumble the feta cheese in a small bowl; slice the roasted pecans in smaller slivers in another bowl;

When you are ready to serve the salad – mix in a small bowl a tablespoon of salt; 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar; Pour over the salad and toss well;   then add the crumbled feta and the sliced pecans and mix again well

You are ready to serve!  Enjoy!