Mandarin Salad w/ Sweet-Sour Dressing

Since it was Sunday, we went over to the Taylor's for dinner--my favorite dinner of the week (always delicious, and I didn't have to make it)! My mom made chili and corn bread which is one of the girls' most favorite dinners, except they know Grandma puts tomatoes in her chili, which is why I put tomatoes in my chili--because we Taylors love tomatoes. They just need to accept and embrace the fact that as long as Taylors are involved, dinner will probably contain some sort of tomato. I asked my mom if I could bring a salad because we needed to use up our lettuce before it went bad. I love buying those big containers of Spring Greens from Costco, but we can never use it all unless we have a big dinner. I also needed to use up some celery so I found this salad recipe in the Betty Crocker Sunday Dinner Cookbook (appropriately titled, I thought).

Mandarin Salad and Sweet-Sour Dressing
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/2 small head lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1/2 bunch romaine, torn into bite-size pieces (I just used the spring greens for all the lettuce)
2 medium stalks celery, chopped (1 cup)
2 medium green onions, thinly sliced
1 can (11 oz) mandarin orange segments, drained

Sweet-Sour Dressing:
1/4 olive oil
2 Tblsp sugar
2 Tblsp white or cider vinegar
1 Tblsp chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper
dash of red pepper sauce (I didn't use this, but it would be good I think)

Lightly toast almonds in saute pan. Cool.
Toss almonds, dressing and remaining ingredients.

It was a nice refreshing salad with a bit of tang. It probably had a bit more sugar with the dressing and mandarin oranges than a true heart-healthy salad should, but what kid doesn't like mandarin oranges? So we all liked it.