My favorite salad ever: Avocado & Orange Salad

When I made my favorite salad the other night for the 1,000th time it dawned on me that I have never put this recipe on the blog! I kind of couldn't believe it because I've shared over 300 recipes yet this is one of my most favorite things to eat of all time. The recipe is my Mom's and she made it all the time when I was growing up. I really can't get enough of this salad, with big chunks of creamy avocado, the pop of citrus from the Mandarin oranges, and the crunch of baked almonds and fresh green onions. A basic vinaigrette finishes off this salad. Make this for yourself and the people you love immediately. You will be so happy you did!

Avocado & Orange Salad
From My Momma
Printable Version
Ingredients
1 head of lettuce
1 sliced avocado
1 small can of mandarin oranges, drained
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 small package of slivered almonds, baked at 400 degrees for 6 minutes
For the dressing:
1/4 cup oil (olive or vegetable)
3 tablespoons vinegar
1/8 teaspoon salt
Dash of fresh ground pepper
2 tablespoons sugar


Directions
Whisk ingredients for dressing and toss with all other ingredients just before serving. Use dressing sparingly!

BBQ Chicken Salad with Avocado and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

Want to try a salad that is bursting with flavors and textures and is over the top delicious? then you have to try this BBQ Chicken Salad from Two Peas and their Pod. It involves creating a lot of different things: two homemade vinaigrettes, crispy cooked potatoes and grilled BBQ chicken, but every step is so worth it and so delicious. The salad alone is super yummy: tomatoes, corn, red onions, and black beans atop fresh greens.  I still cannot decide which of the dressings I liked better, the avocado or the blue cheese. Both are incredibly savory, tangy, creamy, and thick. They kept for several days so I dipped crackers and pretzels into after the salad fixins' were gone! 


The next time you are craving a salad, you gotta try this one! It's a salad that is m-e-a-l! You will not be disappointed!

BBQ Chicken Salad with Avocado and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette
From Two Peas and Their Pod
Serves 4
Printable Version

Ingredients
For the Avocado Vinaigrette:
2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1 medium shallot, chopped
3 tablespoons peach jam (I used rhubarb because I had it, and only used 1 tablespoon)
1 medium ripe avocado
Salt and pepper to taste

For the Blue Cheese Vinaigrette:
2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1 medium shallot, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, dry pan roasted and chopped (I browned these in a skillet for a few minutes)
2 tablespoons peach jam (again I used my rhubarb and only 1 tablespoon)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup blue cheese or Gorgonzola
Salt and pepper to taste


For the potatoes:
1 pound red or small white potatoes, scrubbed and sliced
1 medium shallot, minced
1 small bunch parsley, finely chopped


For the chicken:
4 chicken breasts
3/4 cup BBQ sauce - use your favorite brand

For the salad:
Mixed greens
Tomatoes, chopped (I used cherry tomatoes)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup corn
French Fried onions for garnish

Directions
Make avocado vinaigrette by combining all ingredients in a blender or food processor and mix until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve salad.

For the blue cheese vinaigrette combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and mix until smooth. If the dressing is too thick add a drizzle of olive oil and mix again. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve salad.

To make potatoes, slice thinly and saute in a large skillet with olive oil and shallots until browned and crispy. Stir in parsley. Set aside and keep warm until serving.

Grill the chicken and brush each piece liberally with BBQ sauce. Cut into strips and set aside.

To plate the salads layer first with mixed greens. Lay the sliced chicken on top of the greens. Top with tomatoes, black beans, corn, and tomatoes. Place potatoes on top. Garnish with french fried onions. Drizzle entire salad with the avocado and blue cheese vinaigrettes. 

Gram's Homemade French Dressing

Everything tasted better at my Gram's house. She used real butter, Vitamin D milk, real salad dressing, real mayonnaise, real everything! I use the term "real" because my Dad is a Diabetic, so at my house there was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," skim milk, and fat free dressing, low fat mayo...you get the idea! My Grandma's food was from scratch and full of flavor. No low fat, low calorie anything. Even simple green salads at her house tasted amazing. Grandma's salads weren't complicated. They usually consisted of iceberg lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and onion. But she always had delicious dressings - Vidalia Onion, Poppy Seed, or her homemade French dressing. 

Gram's french dressing is sweet, rich, and so much better than store bought. I had never made it before, but have eaten it lots of times. The recipe only called for "oil" and my gut told me that Gram didn't use olive oil, but I tried making the dressing with it anyway. Whoops. The olive oil flavor was too overpowering, so I know now that Grandma must have used vegetable or Canola oil. Next time, my friends, I will get it right!

My Grandma is 15 in this picture and it was 1946. She was a Majorette for her high school and helped to lead the band.  As a little girl I looked at this picture and wanted to be beautiful and glamorous like my Gram, so in first grade I signed up for baton lessons. I learned a few moves, enough for show and tell at school and to show my Gram. Grandma kept one of her old batons in the basement, so the two of us practiced our baton twirling together in her living room.  40 years after this picture was taken, Gram still had her baton skills. This picture and my baton memories make me smile, and goes to show how much I admired and looked up to my Grandma, even from an early age. PS Please notice that she autographed this picture. :)

Gram's Homemade French Dressing
Printable Version

Ingredients
1/2 cup of sugar 
1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, minced

Directions
Blend all ingredients together. Refrigerate. Shake well before serving.

Asian Noodle Salad

This is Pioneer Woman's "Most Favorite Salad Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever!" Just the pictures of this amazingly beautiful and incredibly colorful salad had me hooked - there are so many veggies in it that I cannot remember them all unless I look at the ingredient list. I love the addition of the cold noodles, it makes the salad more hearty. My favorite part was probably the toasted cashews. I played hunt for the cashews with every bite I took.

I wasn't sure my meat loving husband would be a fan of this uber healthy, chocked full of veggies salad, but he was! The dressing was his favorite part, he kept asking for just a little bit more. It is an extremely wonderful dressing - soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil, etc. YUM YUM YUM! This salad is so big I couldn't fit it all in my lovely red salad/pasta bowl. There are so many servings in this you will be eating it for days, so make it when you are either trying to fill you veggie quota for several days or for a healthy addition to a potluck or luncheon.

Pioneer Woman's Asian Noodle Salad

From PW

Printable Version

Ingredients
(get ready, it's loooong)

For the salad:
1 package of linguine noodles, cooked, rinsed, and cooled
1/2 head sliced Napa Cabbage, or more to taste
1/2 head sliced purple cabbage, or more to taste
1/2 bag baby spinach, or more to taste (I used an entire package)
1 red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
1 orange bell pepper, sliced thin (didn't use this - that's a LOT of bell peppers!!)
1 bag bean sprouts (also called Mung Bean Sprouts)
Chopped Cilantro, up to 1 bunch, or to taste
3 green onions, sliced
3 cucumbers, peeled and sliced (only used 2)
1 can (10 ounces) of cashews, lightly toasted in a skillet (watch these, you gotta keep them moving!)

For the dressing:
1 whole lime, juiced
8 tablespoons of olive oil
8 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons (up to 3) of sesame oil
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 whole hot peppers or jalapenos, chopped (I omitted, scared of these!)
Chopped cilantro

Directions
Mix salad ingredients together. Whisk dressing ingredients together and pour over salad. Mix with tongs or hands and serve on a platter. Note: Dressing keeps for up to three days.

Low Fat Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing

Just a few days after I made Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing I saw this recipe for Lowfat Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing on Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes. I am 100 percent hooked on homemade dressing! Store bought dressing just does not measure up.

I used the Blue Cheese Dressing to cool off Buffalo Chicken that I served with cruidtes. The dressing was excellent and you would never know it's low fat - actually mine not be since I used full fat mayo. Oops! :) I doubled this recipe so we would have extra for dipping veggies into later on. After it sat for a day or two it was even better, too!

Lowfat Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing

From Gina's Weight Watcher Recipes

Ingredients

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese

6 ounces fat free yogurt

1 tablespoon light mayonnaise

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (I just used regular vinegar)

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions

In a small bowl mash blue cheese and yogurt together with a fork. Stir in mayo, lemon juice, vinegar, and garlic powder until well blended. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes 1 cup. 

Homemade Ranch Dressing & A Very Delish Salad

With the exception of eggs, I prefer to eat salads above almost any other  food. I love huge salads with tons of veggies and often order them when I go out to eat. I consider myself a salad aficionado. One of the absolute best salads I've ever eaten is from one of our favorite local restaurants, No Frill Grill. It's called The Spotswood Salad (since the restaurant is located on Spotswood Avenue, pretty clever) and is loaded with so much vegetable goodness: baby spinach, mushrooms, radishes, sprouts, tomatoes, red peppers, cucumbers, and onions. Then they take the salad to a new level and top it with crumbled bleu cheese, raisins, and candied pecans. It's heaven on a plate for salad lovers like me. 


I decided to model my own salad after this incredibly delicious salad and then came across this recipe for homemade buttermilk ranch dressing on Pioneer Woman's  Tasty Kitchen site. The results are the best salad ever! :) Okay, maybe not the best salad ever, but a very very delish salad. If you have never made ranch dressing, you just have to! My husband and I wanted to eat every little drop up and we did in about 24 hours! It's inspired me to try making my own dressings because store bought doesn't even compare!


Let's start with the Ranch Dressing, because you'll want to make it first and let the ingredients marry overnight. The key is to use fresh herbs!


Homemade Ranch Dressing
From The Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic
Salt to taste
1/4 cups fresh parsley
2 tablespoons fresh chives
1 cup real mayonnaise
1/2 cups sour cream (I didn't have any on hand so used plain yogurt)
Buttermilk  (as needed to desired consistency) *I used about 1 tablespoon
White vinegar (to taste) *Again, I used about 1 tablespoon
Worcestershire sauce (optional, to taste) *I used about 1/2 tablespoon
Cayenne Pepper (optional, to taste - I omitted)
Fresh dill (to taste) *I used a couple teaspoons since we love fresh dill
Paprika (optional, to taste) *I used a couple shakes
Fresh oregano (to taste) *I didn't have any fresh on hand so omitted
Tabasco (optional, to taste) *I used just a couple dashes


Directions:
Mince the garlic with a knife and then sprinkle about 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of salt on it. Mash it into a paste with fork. Chop the parsley, chives, and any of the optional herbs very finely and add to the garlic.

In a bowl combine all ingredients, adding other optional ingredients as you wish, tasting frequently and adjusting seasonings as needed. Chill for a couple of hours before serving, then thin with the buttermilk if desired.

Ashley's Delish Salad

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, marinated in garlic and teriyaki sauce for several hours
Spinach
Clover sprouts
Cucumber, peeled and sliced
Baby carrots, sliced
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped
4 hard boiled eggs, sliced 
Green onions, chopped with only white and light green pieces
1 Avocado, sliced
1/2 cup pecans, toasted in 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes (keep an eye on them!)
Crumbled bleu cheese

Directions:

Grill the chicken and slice into long strips. Combine all salad ingredients together. Place chicken on top of veggies. Top with pecans and bleu cheese. Drizzle the homemade ranch dressing on top. Chow down on this extremely lovely salad.