Fall Salad with Figs and Bacon

I’m doing everything I can to savor these last few days of Fall, before Old Man Winter officially settles in on the 21st.  This salad celebrates Fall with seasonal favorites such as ripe, juicy apples and plump, sweet figs and grapes. The symphony of fruit is wonderfully complemented by the salty, crunchy bacon, the toasted nuts and the aggressively strong cheese, gorgonzola.

My sister made this salad for her birthday party, and I loved everything about it. Figs are the most temperamental ingredient, so I plan on making this salad anytime I have access to fresh figs. I have fond memories of my grandmother’s fig tree in Prarieville, Louisiana, and I’m sure that the figs it produced would have taken this salad to the next level. The sweet nectar of those figs had a unique burst-in-your-mouth flavor. Fortunately, the other ingredients in this salad work so well together that any supermarket variety of figs will do the trick of uniting the Fall-inspired components of this dish.