Wild Rice Salad

Hello everyone,
My daughter Olivia and her boyfriend David made this wonderful salad at a party they hosted for friends and family at my school the day before Thanksgiving (its handy having a cooking school in the family!). It was wonderful and would be great to serve for family and guests this holiday season or anytime for that matter. It is a beautiful dish as well.
I have the recipe posted on the web site. Be sure to try it. Let me give you one tip about cooking wild rice, which by the way is not a rice at all, but is a grass. I wash the wild rice and place it in a pot and add quite a bit of water. I let it come to a boil and then simmer for any where from 40-50 minutes. I taste it at about 35 minutes to see if its how I like it and when its done, I drain out the excess water. Piece of cake. Now, you can't do this will "real" rice, but this process is fine for wild rice. There is one other thing, being her mother's daughter Olivia naturally changed the recipe. She found it in an old Gourmet magazine article and left out the carrots as she thought they would add a sweetness she didn't want. She left out the yellow bell pepper as she couldn't find it, left out the tomatoes as they aren't in season, replaced the raisins with dried cranberries, and replaced the vegetable oil with olive oil, naturally. Whew! If you like you can go to Epicurious and look up the original recipe, but the one in my recipe section has Olivia and David's changes. By the way David and Olivia cook well together. They both have a natural ease in the kitchen (David's Mom is baker) and they are intuitive cooks.
Bon apetite!
Patty