Cilantro Avocado Salad Dressing

For once, I'm just not sure where to start...

The elections are over and I'm in mourning.  Our friend, John McGoff, was defeated in the Congressional primary.  The gal who defeated him is someone I've known for many, many years.  She'll do a fine job.  But, we wanted John to win because we thought he was the best candidate.  I took the 6am-9am shift at our polling place and Connie took the 3p-6pm shift.  We handed out a boatload of literature.  And, saw lots of our neighbors.  And, met some new friends.  Then, that evening after I taught a Social Security class, we went to what we'd hoped would be a victory party.  It was not to be.

Garrison Keillor was here for one evening.  Connie loves to listen to him so I bought tickets.  Very good tickets as it turned out.  We were smack dab in the middle seven rows back.  Turns out our friends Don and Diane were sitting two rows behind us.  It was fun to be able to pick their laughs out of the crowd.  And, I will say two hours of laughter certainly helped lighten my mood.

My mood needed lightening.  A friend's 21 year-old son was killed in a car accident last weekend.  The calling was this week.  Mom and his grandma were pledge sisters.  I've known Trish since we were infants.  She's a sorority sister.  We see each other at Kappa events but don't tend to socialize otherwise.  But, there's a bond there that you just don't have with someone you've known a year or two.  Mom drove part way and I picked her up and we drove to the calling.  It was a tough afternoon.

Now, one of the other things that lightened my mood was running into some folks who looked familiar.  They were also at the Garrison Keillor show.  I asked if they lived in our neighborhood and they said no, they live a couple of streets over but we probably recognized him from running past our home.  Then, the light turned on and he realized we're the ones with the gardens and yes, he'd stopped to talk with us.  At that point, she said she always slows down to take a good look and enjoy the flowers when she goes by.  It felt great to know our hard work is enjoyed by others!

Speaking of hard work, we're getting some new veggies out of the garden.  Radishes have become a regular fixture in our salads.

And, we've just started to get some teeny, tiny pea pods.  I'm looking forward to more goodies as the summer goes along.  For now, we're still ahving to buy zucchini and all of the later summer veggies.  But for the most part the plants are out and a lot of the seeds are planted.

One of the salads we enjoyed very much this week was a BLT Salad with Avocado Cilantro Dressing.  It was totally a desperation move.  We had a huge head of lettuce in a garden walkway.  Either it got picked or mowed.  Bacon needed to be used up.  Avocados were getting mushy.  And some cilantro was going to seed.  Let me say that we put in a little patch of cilantro several years ago.  Last year, we put one packet of additional seeds in the herb garden.  We now have roughly 15 cilantro plants in various and sundry places they're not supposed to be...  Plants in places they're not supposed to be are called weeds, aren't they?  I just can't bear to call any cilantro a weed so keep putting up with it's aggressive ways. 

Since we had seven minutes to eat and dash out the door to head to Civic Theatre and see Guys and Dolls, a photo of the salads was not, umm, in the picture.  Here's what the dressing looks like:


Let me just say this was a fabulous salad.  It's open to interpretation.  Pretty much whatever you've got on hand will work.  We may use the leftovers as a dipping sauce for shrimp...

BLT Salad with Avocado Cilantro Dressing

Ingredients:

for the salad:
lettuce (I used butter lettuce)
avocado (I used 1/2 per person)
bacon (diced and browned)
cheese (I used cheddar)
nuts (I used cashews)
tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes)


for the dressing:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 c lowfat sour cream
1 t red wine vinegar
3 sprigs cilantro
2 cloves garlic
1 avocado