Summer Fruit Salad

Poor Connie.  I feed him a lot of fruit.  He's not terribly fond of fruit but most of the time he gamely eats it.  I'm not great at eating just a piece of fruit myself so I make sure to include it in salads on a regular basis.  This salad has been on the menu for a couple of weeks.  First the avocados weren't any good so I had to buy more and wait for them to soften.  Then, this didn't go with any of the meals we were having.  Finally, along came spinach lasagna and I thought we'd have a great match. 

The salad was great.  The spinach lasagna, not so much.  I was testing the recipe for a magazine so I'm not allowed to say much.  But, my comment would be that the texture was like baby food and it tasted just about the same.  The rest is headed for the trash.  Thank goodness the salad was wonderful!

I left the grapes in the fridge at the office so they didn't go in.  I'm not sure I'll add them next time even if they do make their way to the home fridge. 

What did we think?  We would have loved more ginger flavor.  I thought it added a bit of heat to the dressing but not much else.  Connie would've mixed the cilantro into the dressing.  I was ok with it on top of the salad but would've liked it in the dressing also.  Otherwise this was great.  Very refreshing and a unique blend of flavors.

Summer Fruit Salad

Ingredients:

1/2 c bottled poppy seed dressing
2 t freshly grated ginger
2 avocados, thinly sliced
4 c loosely packed arugula
2 c halved seedless green grapes
1 mango, julienned
1 c diced fresh strawberries
1/4 c thinly sliced green onions
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

Mix the poppyseed dressing and the ginger. 

Toss the rest of the ingredients with the dressing.  Serve.  As you can see in the photo, I used the avocado as a "bowl" for the dressing.  Next time I'll try tossing the salad as the instructions said.

adapted from Southern Living