New kitchens call for new salads

It's interesting being in somebody else's kitchen. In my house, salad is a component of every dinner. It's always the same salad-- mixed greens, arugula, spinach, cucumber, tomato, jicama, red cabbage, radishes (eew), carrots, red/yellow/green peppers, and occasionally strawberries, pine nuts, or rasins, all topped with a simple balsamic viniagrette. But when I open the fridge where I'm living now, I find few of these ingredients. I have been taught that salad is a staple, and as a result of this have grown to expect that certain vegetables will be around the house. Not so. And so here is my new salad creation. You can, of course, spice it up with whatever else you have on hand (I added blueberries once, and I suspect that cucumber or jicama would do well) but the basics listed below have done me right for a night or two. I'm learning that salad is not about the quantity and variety of vegetables, but how well they go together. Case in point, basil and lime. I'm sure somebody else figured this out before me, but they taste great together!

(note: in the above picture, I used spinach, not romaine)

SIMPLE SALAD FOR ONE

• One small tomato
• Half a green pepper
• 1/8 of a large Florida avocado*
• 3 to 5 long leaves of Romaine lettuce
• 3 to 5 leaves of fresh basil, minced
• 1/2 lime
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Chop tomato, pepper, avocado, and lettuce into similar sized pieces. I prefer for my pepper pieces to be about 1 square inch, and avocados about 1/2 cubic inch.
2. Toss all vegetables into a bowl, top it with the minced basil
3. Halve a lime, squeeze the juice from one half onto your salad. Toss and season with salt and pepper.

*Florida avocados are different than California avocados, as I recently learned. Compared to California's they are HUGE and less flavorful. If you substitute a California avocado, use 1/4 of the avocado instead, and enjoy the richer flavor