Southwest Salad

This is a lovely salad for a hot summer’s day. We’ve taken all of our favorite flavors from Southwestern cuisine and put them into a salad bowl. We opted not to use meat, but feel free to do so… grill up some chicken or beef and top the salad with that little extra bit of protein!

The only measuring we’re giving you is for the avocado dressing, we’re going to leave it up to you to figure out how much of the rest of the ingredients you want (are we tricky like that, or just lazy… you decide!!)

Avocado Dressing (this is enough for 4-6 salads)-

1 very ripe avocado
½ cup citrus juice (we used a combination of lemon and lime)
¼ cup sour cream
2 Tbsp. fresh cilantro (more or less depending on how you feel about cilantro)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1-2 tsp sugar
garlic powder to taste
onion powder to taste
cumin powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

In a food processor or blender, combine all ingredients except for avocado. Blend until creamy. Add avocado and pulse quickly (you want some avocado chunks in there). The dressing may be a little thick, you can thin it out with some more juice, or some vinegar. Put in the fridge until you’re ready to combine the salad.

Corn Tortilla crisps

3 small corn tortillas sliced into ½ inch strips

Heat a small pan with enough oil to cover tortilla strips. Fry strips until brown.

Place strips on a paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and chili powder. Let cool

Salad

Mixed salad greens (we used iceberg mix, the iceberg gives enough weight to the salad, but then lets all the other flavors carry the salad).
Avocado Dressing
Roasted corn (throw an ear of corn on the grill, and use that. Or you can do like us and throw some canned
corn into the oven until it’s roasted).
Roasted red pepper
Black Beans (we seasoned ours with cayenne pepper, cumin, salt and pepper)
Pepper Jack cheese
Avocado chunks
Tortilla Strips


Toss salad greens with avocado dressing (we like doing this to get the lettuce completely coated).

Top salad with the rest of the ingredients. Again, use your taste buds, let them tell you how much of each item you want.

If you want some extra salad dressing, add it to the top.


Enjoy!! (p.s. sorry about the lack of pictures ... our camera battery was nearing it's end).