I'm not a big fan of sweets other than fruit, and I'm also not a huge blue cheese fan. But, the combination of sugar-coated almonds and blue cheese in this salad elevates both ingredients. It's ridiculously good.

Ridiculously. Good.

I've been trying to really get into blue cheese for over a decade. Sometimes I enjoy it in a dish, and other times its power overwhelms the things it should compliment.

Jedd on the other hand is simply squeamish about the idea of eating moldy cheese, which isn't unreasonable. When the subject comes up he's been known to turn indignant. “It's moldy cheese! Why would you eat something like that?” And that always reminds me of our friend Emily and a conversation we had once about meatloaf. “It's a loaf. Of meat. Why would anyone eat a loaf of meat?!?”

So, I understand if you're not a blue cheese fan and the combination doesn't sound fantastic. But it is. Jedd wasn't even indignant, although he was wary. However, the salad won us both over. The cheese and bacon are salty and they play off of the sweetness of the apples while the brown sugar-coated almonds and the tart vinaigrette bind it together perfectly.

Another great thing about this salad is that it's a show stopper without showing off. There's just a few nuts and only about a tablespoon of cheese so the real star is the apples.

First, though, lets make those delectable almonds, which kind of turned me into a candy-snacking fiend.

I'm going to divulge a deep and dirty secret about being a food blogger. We live and die by daylight. Artificial overhead light ruins the look of food and the right light is tricky.

So, when the fall/winter light disappears by 3 p.m. in our north-facing apartment, it's difficult to take photos. Although, I do foolish things to still keep shooting. I've taken photos in the dark with the camera on a tripod - which can help. And I've tripped over our cats to get to the tripod, in the dark because I have to shut off all of the lights in the room to get the last glimpse of sunlight before twilight, without any incandescent light to confuse the camera.

“Ow, ow, ow.” Silly cats and coffee table.

And because I've been picking up a lot of food writing jobs with deadlines that don't necessarily coincide with weather, it's been getting ridiculous to keep up with the daylight.

So, a couple of weeks ago I said to Jedd: “I would love studio lights so that I can take photos past three o'clock in the afternoon.”

The next day he was home from work and watched me frantically cook and photograph a dish for a client before dusk, and then he got...weird.

We are flush with vegetables and gourds from our winter CSA. And one of my favorite things in the world was prevalent this week – tomatillos. So, I whipped us up a batch of tomatillo salsa, and that was dinner one night with nachos.

Then when the winter turned colder almost immediately (Hey, Hurricane Sandy, hey!) and we still - thankfully - had power, I realized that what we needed to fight the chill was a big batch of green chicken chili. And because I already had the fresh salsa on hand, I knew that I could have dinner on the table in less than an hour.

Poor Demeter. Her daughter, Persephone, was taken by Hades and carried away to the underworld. Demeter was the goddess of agriculture and the earth withered as crops dried up because Demeter was only concerned with finding her daughter. The cries of the hungry forced Zeus to get involved, and he ordered Hades to release Persephone from the underworld and return her to her mother.

But, there was one small hitch in the plan.

Hades had tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds. Normally consuming food would destine someone to spend eternity in the underworld, but Zeus managed to convince Hades to release Persephone anyway, with one small caveat.

She had to spend a month back there for every seed consumed.

So when Persephone is imprisoned below earth, Demeter is so saddened that she can't concentrate on tending to crops and that's why we have four months of winter.

Or six, if you live in Vermont.

But, it's easy to empathize with Persephone. It's very difficult to resist the beautiful seeds of a pomegranate. And this salad lets them shine in a bright champagne vinaigrette.