Avocado Salad Fit For Fitbloggin!

I am so excited to be heading to Fitbloggin again this year. Fitbloggin is the class reunion/family reunion full of all of your favorite people. Some of whom you've actually met in person. One of the amazing sponsors this year is the California Avocado Commission. They are holding the California Avocado Cutting-Edge Culinary Recipe Contest for people attending Fitbloggin this year, and I couldn't be any more excited. If you've read my blog, you know that I love to cook with fresh ingredients, and you can't get much fresher than California avocados.

Since it's rapidly approaching meltdown stage in Texas, I wanted to make something fresh and cool, yet full of flavor. Summer on a plate.

Avocado and Mango Salad with Chicken and Grilled Pineapple (serves 2)

Main Ingredients:
1/2 pineapple
1 mango
1 California avocado
2 cooked chicken breasts

Dressing:
1/4 red onion, finely diced
2 T light olive oil
1 T white wine vinegar
1 t honey
1/4 t cayenne
1 T lime juice
2 T cilantro, finely chopped (you can use basil or Thai basil if you don't care for cilantro)

Garnish:
sliced salad topper almonds
cilantro
red onion

To Do:

Peel and core your pineapple. Cut in to wedges approximately 1/2 thick. Heat up a grill pan over medium high heat and grill the wedges for 5 minutes on each side. Set aside to cool while you finish putting the salad together. (If you're like me and already have the bbq grill up and running, grilling the pineapple outside would be awesome!)

While the pineapple is cooling, peel and core your mango and cut in to bite sized pieces.  Next, take your cooked chicken breasts and cut in to half inch cubes.  Lastly, halve your avocado, remove the pit, and slice in to cubes. The easiest way to do this is to cut in half, lengthwise and split apart. Take the side that has the pit and tap the pit with the blade of your knife. Slowly twist and pull out the pit. Next, you take a small knife and cut the meat of the avocado in a grid pattern all the way to the skin, without cutting through. Then you simply use a spoon to remove the cubes. (Here's a hint: You can do something similar to the mango by slicing the mango "cheeks" off of the sides of the mango, and score in the same manner, using a knife to remove the mango cubes.)

For the dressing, finely chop both your red onion and the cilantro. Reserve a little of each to garnish the salad. Place the red onion and cilantro in a medium sized bowl, big enough to mix the salad. Add the olive oil, white wine vinegar, honey, cayenne and lime juice. Mix well with a fork to combine.

Now that your pineapple is cooled, cut the fruit into 1/2 inch chunks. Add the chicken, mango, and pineapple to the dressing in the bowl and gently mix to coat.

Spoon your salad in to a nice serving bowl or on to a bed of lettuce leaves. Garnish with sliced almonds, cilantro and red onion.

Enjoy!

Update: Today I added diced cucumber to the leftovers. I loved the crunch it added.

Come Play In May - Tell Me A Story

"Oh, come off it," She said. "You didn't seriously think I was going leave it alone, did you?"

The kitchen was silent except for the rhythmic sound of her chopping vegetables. One of the dogs hovered nearby, hoping for something to fall on the floor.

"I mean, when, have you ever known me to leave well enough alone? It's against my nature not to mess with things. I'm not saying that you weren't good, but you just weren't right for me, so I had to do something."

She continued to chop the vegetables, pausing only to scoop them in to the bowl. They looked pretty, she thought, jumbled together, with bits of the red pepper peeking through the various shades of green.

"I hope you aren't offended. I didn't mean to insult you."

She opened the jar of mayonnaise and spooned it in to the vegetables. Tasting it, she decided that it needed something else, something to brighten it up. Turning around, she reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of rice wine vinegar. Spying the Togarashi spice and wasabi powder she pulled them out, too. She splashed a liberal amount of the rice wine vinegar to the mixture and a spoonful of each the Togarashi and wasabi, and stirred.

"Can you at least try to see where I'm coming from just this once?"

That works, she thought, and spooned some in to a bowl. She garnished it with a sprinkling of chopped peanuts, and stuck a fork in it.

"Well, if you aren't going to say anything, then that's it. I'm done explaining myself to you."

She picked up the bowl and walked towards her office, raising the fork to her mouth as she went.

Crunchy Pea Salad (adapted from Shrinking Kitchen's recipe)

1 bag of frozen green peas

1 can of sliced water chestnuts, chopped

2 scallions, thinly sliced

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

2 ribs of celery, diced 

1 small bag of snow peas, thinly sliced

1/2 cup light mayonnaise 

2 T rice wine vinegar

1 t Togarashi spice

1 t wasabi powder (or to taste)

1/2 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts

Mix the vegetables together with the spices, mayo and vinegar. Chill for at least a couple of hours. Serve with chopped peanuts on top.

My Favorite Summer Salad

Mmmmm. Crunch, crunch, crunch. You'll have to excuse me, I'm crunching away on this salad as I am typing. I have been making an effort to include more vegetable dishes in my meal plans. At the risk of making the baked eggs in swiss chard for the third time in a week, I decided to switch things up and make my cauliflower and broccoli salad. It's a salad that eats like a meal, and I can eat bowlfuls of this salad. The addition of the cauliflower gives it a wonderful crunch.

Cauliflower and Broccoli Summer Salad

1 head of broccoli
1 head cauliflower
1 c coleslaw dressing
1/4 red onion, diced
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 T apple cider vinegar or herb vinegar
1 T lemon or lime juice (or sprinkle in about 1 t of True Lemon)
1/2 c bacon bits
1/2 c Craisins
1/2 c toasted pumpkin seeds

Trim and cut the broccoli and cauliflower into bite sized pieces. Wash and drain the broccoli and cauliflower and place in a large bowl. Mix in the coleslaw dressing, making sure to coat the vegetables well. Cover and chill for at least two hours so that the flavors mix.

Stir the broccoli and cauliflower mixture. Add in the diced red onion, vinegar, lemon juice, shredded cheese, chopped eggs, bacon bits, Craisins, and pumpkin seeds. Mix well and enjoy!

Perfect summer salad - too bad it's winter...

I keep making these salads that would be perfect in warm weather. Granted, it was 75 here last weekend, so I guess that would qualify as warm for January. Recently I heard about mini-cucumbers, or Persian cucumbers. I hadn't noticed them in my local grocery store, but I found them, not with the regular cucumbers, but in the "fancy packaged vegetables" section. You know, the neighborhood where the baby carrots and skinny green beans in their steam-in bags live. So I picked up a package. It totally is not salad weather today (I have a pot of soup on) - we have gotten 7 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, and it was thundering and lightning all night. So what do I make? A salad. Very tasty, too.

Asian Mini-Cucumber Salad

4 mini cucumbers, sliced
1 t sesame oil
1 t rice vinegar
1 T lime ponzu
1/2 t Togarashi seasoning

Mix together the oil, vinegar and ponzu. Dress the sliced cucumber and sprinkle the Togarashi on top.