Mulberry, Sausage and Couscous Salad

I am sooooo excited! It’s mulberry season! I have this beautiful beautiful mulberry tree in my back yard … well, really, there are several in my yard, but the one that grows over my pond is the most prolific. I was worried she wouldn’t make any berries this year because it was a very unusually warm spring, followed by a hard frost. The mulberries usually wait to come out till later, but this spring it was so hot that she had started making berries when the big frost came. All the berries were dead. I thought for sure I would get no berries this year.

My little tree was not going to give up, though … she came back and made more berries. TONS more berries. Oh how I love my mulberry tree.

So this year I want to try some new ways of using these beautiful little purple berries. I was craving something substantial today,  thinking salad, but for some reason I wanted sausage … I went digging through my freezer and found some “mystery” sausage. The package was opened, but unlabeled. I cooked one up and discovered, much to my delight, that it is some sort of sundried tomato and cheese sausage. Yes, that fit right in with my diabolical plan. And then I found a bit of couscous in the cupboard. Just enough for a salad. This turned out to be an insanely simple, yet delicious salad. The sweet-tart-juicy berries mixed just right with the smoky sausage, sharp cheese and crunchy onions. The vinaigrette smoothed it all out. It was just exactly what I wanted.

Mulberry, Sausage and Couscous Salad

For each meal-sized salad, you will need:

• 1/3 cup of uncooked couscous (I measured it before I cooked it … it’s better if it’s whole wheat … or you could use quinoa!)
• 1 cooked sausage, chopped (I used a sundried tomato and cheese one, but other flavors would work too)
• A few tablespoons of chopped sweet onion (like Vidalia)
• About 1 oz. of Dubliner or other sharp cheese (like Parmesan or Romano), sliced, then chopped into small squares
• About 1 cup of fresh mulberries (or other berries … raspberries or blackberries or even blueberries would be good)
• 2 Tablespoons of Tequila Lime Vinaigrette salad dressing (recipe is at the end of this post … I am sure other vinaigrettes would work fine with this salad)
• Snipped chives

Cook the couscous according to the directions on the package. I let my couscous cool to room temperature before making my salad. You could set it in the fridge or freezer to cool faster.

Cook the sausage. I put mine in the toaster oven at 400 on bake for about 10  minutes and that did the trick (and it started out frozen!). Once your sausage is done, chop up the sausage into whatever sized bits you like.

Mix the couscous, sausage, onion, cheese, mulberries, and vinaigrette in a bowl. Top with snipped chives and a few fresh berries and serve.

This recipe was shared at Fit & Fabulous Fridays, Scrumptious Sundays, Recipe of the Week and Summer Salad Sundays.