The perfect lunch

I love making (and eating) salads; they just look so healthy, colorful and “alive”. I always look for different ways to mix up my salads, I never go by any recipe, just sort of throw together whatever produce I have on hand. That’s what I did last week and created the best salad yet. The avocados give it creaminess, red onion gives it sharp and spicy flavors, green olives add a bit of saltiness while yellow pepper and dried cranberries sweeten it up a bit.

What I used:

1/2 chopped iceberg lettuce
2 handfuls of chopped organic sweet baby lettuce
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 cucumber, diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper sliced thin
2 medium tomatoes, diced
6 large green stuffed olives, halved
1/4 large red onion sliced thin
1/2 avocado, sliced
handful of cranberries

I layer all the ingredients in the same order as I listed them above. I prefer not to mix everything together as some of the ingredients tend to settle on the bottom of the bowl. For the dressing, I like to make my own. Usually I just mix about six tablespoons of water with six tablespoons of olive oil, a splash of vinegar, a teaspoon of mustard and add different herbs and spices like dill, powdered onion and garlic, dried chives, dried parsley, sea salt and pepper, which you can obviously adjust to your liking.

Most of the time I have my salad with a baked sweet potato. I preheat the oven to 425F degrees, cut the potato in half, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle some sea salt and pepper on it and let it bake until it’s cooked through. I usually put the potato in the oven right before I make my salad, by the time I’m done preparing the dressing and chopping everything, the potato is ready.

Who else loves salads? I know I can’t be the only one!

Paula xx