Avocado and Black Bean Salad

Planning for a weeknight dinner after a long hectic day at work and everything else, is when you need to get your creativity to kick up a notch and work full force. And every time I want to be creative, I think of salads. There's something about throwing in multiple ingredients and bringing them together in a bowl and serving it up with style. Makes you feel like Superwoman. 

And this time it was a mexican style salad. Simple ingredients that come together beautifully. No jazzy special stuff required. Takes about 20 mins to put together the entire satisfying meal including the rice and vegetables. 

Chop and dice the avocado and cucumbers into small bits. I used the small tender Persian cucumbers and just diced them with the skin on.

Arrange on a platter or you can just add to a big mixing bowl if you're not taking pictures for a blog!

Roast some corn with a little salt to taste and also a pinch of paprika or red chilli powder. I use the frozen corn and feel that it definitely taste a hundred times better when you slightly roast the kernels.

Add the corn to the platter.

Chop up a couple of roma tomatoes and about half an onion into small bits and add to the bowl or platter.

Chop up some fresh lettuce into small strips.

Add to the platter.

Next comes the protein. I used the canned black beans - but you can soak and cook regular black beans or even the Indian rajma beans. Wash the beans once to remove the slimy brown liquid and all the unnecessary preservatives.

 Add the beans to the bowl and also add a whole bunch of cilantro chopped finely.

I can just stare at this all evening!

Add all of these below to the veggies and beans -

Salt - to taste
Red Chilli powder or Paprika - 1 tsp
Olive Oil - 1 -2 tsp
Juice of half a lime - squeezed out fresh.

Using a couple of forks, just mix up all the ingredients.

And there people, is the salad of the day!

Fresh. Crisp. Tasty. Fulfilling.

And this is how I multi task and catch up on all shows from back home. Listening to Jesudas singing while making a salad - perfect! Music and Food. My two best friends.

I also made some lemon flavored rice (Chipotle style) and sauteed onions and bell peppers along with the salad. And served them all with some tacos. You could get some tortillas too and roll up some burritos with all these fillings. TH missed his burritos very much!

Fill up some tacos with all the goodness and drizzle on some hot taco sauce on top for a wonderful dinner.

For the cheese lovers in the family, make them happy too!

“To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad.” - George Ellwanger (1848-1906) ‘Pleasures of the Table’ (1902)

Enjoy. Peace Out!