Greet the warmer weather with this healthy, refreshing, mixed berry walnut spinach salad with a maple vinaigrette. This salad hits a variety of flavors and textures, offering sweet and acidic notes from the berries and dressing and crunchiness from the red onion, pistachios, and sunflower seeds. It’s as if the warmer weather beckons you to make fresh, colorful dishes. While not scientifically proven to take you to your happy place, we bet that this salad may do just that.

To start you off on the right foot, you need to select plump blueberries and raspberries. If you can snag some from your local’s farmer’s market, we promise that they are worth the price tag. You have to use those berries quickly, so this salad is a great way to enjoy them all before they go bad. Plus, the fresh, sweet berries are a pleasant relief to the intense raw onion flavor. If you prefer shallots to raw red onion in your salad, you can thinly slice one shallot in place of the red onion. Thinly slicing the red onion or shallot will help mellow the intensity.

One thing that a salad desperately needs, besides greens of course, is varying textures. This salad delivers in that regard, especially with the crunch from the raw sunflower seeds and pistachios. Not only do nuts and seeds offer texture to this salad, but they also offer healthy fats and protein. Those two macronutrients are essential for anyone in need of filling up on a raw vegan diet. Lastly, the maple vinaigrette offers a sweet yet tangy flavor that pairs beautifully with the ingredients in this salad. Drop a comment below to let us know if you like it, or what you did to tweak this recipe to your liking.