I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d discovered this wonderful avocado salad at a sushi place my husband and I went to and that Ms. Nancy and I had attempted to recreate it. My Facebook friends instantly asked for a recipe which made me chuckle a little because seriously, it was just cutting up avocado, adding it on top of lettuce and then using a store-bought asian sesame dressing.
But all of this was new to me because I had never actually cut up an avocado before, and when Ms. Nancy had said she was running to the store to look for some ripe avocados, I literally jumped up and asked if I could go. Because I’ve never bought avocados either.
First, did you know the avocado is a fruit? I didn’t.
Nor did I know that really ripe avocados need to be almost black. Which totally explains why all the green avocados I’ve ever tried to pick up in the store felt so hard and unappealing.
So when my MIL was out of the house last week, I decided to attempt the avocado salad again. I had bought a couple of more avocados a few days earlier (couldn’t find any already ripe so had to wait for those to turn black themselves). Cliff wanted at least one of them for guacamole so I was going to use the other one for a salad.
First thing I did was use the nifty lettuce knife Ms. Nancy bought a couple of months ago to chop off some lettuce off a chunk of heart of romaine. And to think, for so long, I thought lettuce only came in a bag. This is a much nicer, less wasteful approach.
Then it was time to slice the avocado in half. Ms. Nancy had explained to me during our little teaching session the week before that the way to do it is take your knife and slowly cut through the avocado and basically around the big seed in the middle.
“OK, go ahead and turn the avocado,” she’d told me. And yes, in a very Amelia Bedelia-like moment… I turned the avocado over.
“Um, no, I meant twist it, like this,” she said. So taking my hands, I twisted the two halves together around the seed in the middle, which separated them nice and easy.
So the other day when I was attempting this on my own, Cliff joined me in the kitchen. My husband LOVES to cook and he loves to help which makes it a challenge sometimes for me to learn to do things for myself. And as you’ll read in the book, I found out during my Proverbs 31 wife experiment that part of the reason he knows so much in the kitchen is because he was a member of Future Homemakers of America in high school. Yeah. So not fair.
As I was about to take my knife and cut around the seed to get it out, Cliff got all excited and stopped me. “Wait, you gotta see this, it’s my little trick somebody showed me.” Taking his knife, he gave the seed a little whack, and pulled it out in one nice easy motion.
I have to say, I was impressed. Now if I ever need to take out a little aggression, I know I just need to go find an avocado seed to stab. The next step was to get rid of the peeling. Running my knife around the very ripe avocados, this was pretty easy.
After slicing the avocados up, my salad was ready to serve.
The only thing that was really missing was a great dressing. I mentioned earlier my MIL and I had found a store-bought dressing, which was ok, but the color was brown and the taste was just alright.
CONTEST ALERT
So, I thought you, my readers, might help me out with a great dressing. Comment below with your best homemade salad dressing recipe that would work for this salad. My family will pick the three that sound the most interesting, make them, try them out and pick a winner who will receive a copy of My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife. I’ll try to announce the winner by this Friday.
Happy recipe posting!
