Monday, February 11, 2013

Simple Avocado Dressing & Weekly Meals

When I was little, my mom used to make salad dressing with fresh squeezed lemon juice. I was not a fan as the lemon was too bold for my taste buds at the time. I kept thinking, “Why can’t we have the cool bottled dressings my friends get to use.?” But there was no convincing my mom to buy those “chemicals.”

While I didn’t understand my mom then, I have come pretty much full circle and now make as much as I can from scratch, especially something as simple as salad dressing.

The other day I quickly mixed together the following and everyone loved it.



Simple Avocado Dressing

Ingredients
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 Tbsps olive oil
  • 2 tsps Dijon mustard
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 1/2 - 1 stevia packet
  • 1/2 small avocado
Instructions
  1. Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper, and stevia together. I like to put them into an old jar and shake the jar vigorously.
  2. Cut the avocado into small pieces and put it in the bottom of a salad bowl and smash it with a fork
  3. Pour the dressing over the avocado and mix well.
  4. Add your greens and dress your salad.
And here is what we are going to eat this week. I did a lot of cooking yesterday (broccoli soup, ribs, black rice, and Brussels sprouts), so many of the meals are already in the fridge ready to assemble:

Meal 1: Broccoli soup with black rice. I sautéed some onions, two carrots, and two celery stalks for a few minutes. Then I added some garlic and the broccoli. Next I added vegetable stock and cooked everything for about 15 minutes. Then I pureed the veggies with my immersion blender. Last, I added salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of unsweetened almond milk.
Meal 2: Braised ribs with roasted Brussels sprouts.
Meal 3: Lemon chicken with a salad. I’ll poach a couple chicken breasts in lemon juice and olive oil and season the chicken with salt and pepper. So simple, but so good as the chicken really gets infused with the lemon juice.
Meal 4: Salmon with a salad.
Meal 5: Leftovers. There should be plenty of leftovers this week.

Questions: What’s on your menu this week? What’s your favorite salad dressing?
 
Be well,
Andrea