simple summer green salad with avocado and fresh dill

 

Ahhh, summer. I may moan about the heat and humidity, but I love love love the sunny days here! I'm leaving for a week to the land of rain, so I'm trying to soak up all the sun I can... by reclining on the couch to write this post, doing laundry, washing dishes, packing.... oh well. The blinds are open and I'm getting as much as humanly possible (given all the last minute chores) before my Vitamin D levels plummet on the west coast.

I'm not sure what will happen on this blog next week. Perhaps I'll engage in some cooking project with my dad and stepmom (they did mention we would make breakfast tomorrow - eating at their house is always exciting!), perhaps I'll cook something enormous for everyone on my mom's end. Maybe, just maybe... I'm hoping the lovely Foodess will want to use our date to have a baking day? Double blog post? Jenn? Wanna wanna??  I'll definitely be hitting up my favourite restaurants while I'm there too, so I may do a couple of restaurant reviews. None of them will be objective, because I only plan on visiting long-standing favourites that I yearn for while away from home.

Now, to salad. This is another non-recipe. I don't really feel like you can write a recipe for salads. Salads are relaxed by nature, much like nachos. People make salads just the way they like them, and that's good enough for me. Sometimes I do look to salad recipes for ideas though - for combinations that I may not have thought of before, or for new dressing recipes. 

As you may have noticed, I like food with simple, flavourful ingredients and I feel the same way about salads. This is a simple green salad with a few well-chosen, complimentary flavours. It's definitely a side salad and wouldn't function as an entire meal, but if you're serving it alongside something else, it's perfect. It's simple enough, but it just may steal the show!

simple summer green salad with avocado and fresh dill 

mixed greens

green onions, chopped

ripe avocado, diced

fresh dill, chopped (I used approximately 1/4 cup for a large salad feeding 8 people)

dressing
makes more than enough for a large salad feeding 8 people

6 tbsp vegetable oil (I use Becel oil as I find it has no oily flavour)
1 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (No realemon! Really! Banish it from your kitchen!)
1 tsp dijon mustard
salt & pepper to taste

Assemble salad (you're all smart cookies here!). Wait until just before serving to cut your avocado though - if you notice there's no avocado in the picture, it's because I was bringing this salad to a barbecue! Your avocado will turn brown if you do it too early.

Combine all salad dressing ingredients and stir well. Before serving, dice avocado and add to salad. Dress salad to taste. Eat.