Did you do anything crazy and spontaneous for your New Year’s Celebration? Yeah, me neither haha. Well, I didn’t do anything crazy but for once we actually made plans and went somewhere for New Year’s Eve!

Every year since we’ve been married we’ve made a point to go out sometimes in December for our “Fancy” Christmas Date. When we lived in North Carolina, The Little Dipper in Wilmington was always #1 on our list for that special date night but once we moved back to Virginia we couldn’t really hop back down there for dinner so we had to switch things up a bit.

Back here in Virginia, we’ve had our Yearly “Fancy” Christmas Date at Bistro1888, The Yancey House twice (now closed), Jake’s on Main , and Fenders (now closed). This year however, time got away from us and we didn’t get to have our Christmas date BUT we fixed that issue by making reservations for New Year’s Eve!

We barely make it to see the ball drop for New Years as it is, so I  have no idea what I was thinking when I made reservations for 9pm on New Years Eve but we both managed to stay awake during dinner and make it home with 10 minutes to spare before counting down to 2015!

We deiced to try somewhere new this year and settled on Golden Leaf Bistro in Danville down by the river in the historic Tobacco Warehouse District.

I’ve been there once before with Crystal for lunch but hadn’t gotten the change to go there for dinner! There was a set menu for New Year’s Eve and the price was set at $50 a person but it was totally worth it. This post/Recipe was inspired by our dinner there!

Our first course has a few options but Big Bear and I both picked the Walnut, Orange and Cranberry Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette and after the first bite I knew that I needed to try my hand at making my own Homemade Pomegranate Vinaigrette!

It’s amazing to think that such a simple salad could taste so refreshing!

The first of January sounds like the perfect time to start working on some new salad ideas and we all know that bright, colorful salads are so much better than sad lettuce with cheese….right?

Ok, so maybe I’m the only one that grew up eating sad lettuce salads with cheese and tons of Ranch 🙂 haha.

Back to the Walnut, Orange and Cranberry Salad! It’s pretty simple, just toss some clean spinach into a bowl and top it with orange slices, dried cranberries and walnut halves. Drizzle this Homemade Pomegranate Vinaigrette over your salad and you’ve got a perfect lunch or dinner!

Now onto how to make this Homemade Pomegranate Vinaigrette! You can find the recipe and direction below but let me give you a bit of advice first! I’ve used a bowl and whisk to make dressings and I’ve used this fancy dressing making contraption that I got from Pampered Chef and I’ve never really been able to make my vinaigrette as thick as I’ve wanted them in the past! For this vinaigrette, I poured everything into my Ninja Blender and blended it on high for about 30 seconds and it totally mixed everything perfectly!

Now Vinaigrette isn’t going to be a super thick dressing anyways but putting in into the blender gave me the perfect texture!

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