When researching walnuts I found myself feeling healthier for simply reading about them theyre that marvellous. Pages and pages litter the internet giving endless information about their virtues. From helping protect the heart against disease to the newly found naturally occurring melatonin. Melatonin is essential in the regulation of our sleeping and waking cycles, amongst many other processes. And walnuts are one of the few foods that contain melatonin. They also contain omega-3 fats (over 100% of our RDA can be found in just 30g), copper, manganese, molybdenum and biotin. Biotin, one of the B vitamins (B7) is essential for healthy hair and nails which seems a good a reason amongst the many to make a salad with them.

In this salad I had rocket, baby spinach leaves, celery leaves and chopped celery tossed in a bowl. I chopped the walnuts and broke up some pieces of stilton cheese and sprinkled these onto the salad. Tossed all these in olive oil with a dash of balsamic vinegar sweetened with honey. (The honey helps takes the edge of the sometimes overly powerful tang of the stilton cheese.)

Ingredients

(Serves 1)
100ml fresh rocket
100ml baby spinach leaves
100ml chopped celery
50ml celery leaves
50ml stilton cheese grated, broken or chopped. (You can also use a Danish Blue or a goats cheese).
Small handful of chopped walnuts.

Dressing
25ml olive oil
10ml balsamic vinegar
10ml raw honey
salt and pepper to taste