Creamy Avocado Vinaigrette


Make the most of the final days of summer with this fresh and tangy avocado salad dressing. (I know the calendar says autumn, but here in southern California, the weather doesn’t always listen to the calendar.)

Creamy avocado vinaigrette will go wonderfully with romaine lettuce and the last home-grown tomatoes from your garden. If autumn has already settled in, pair your avocado salad with your favorite soup for the perfect light dinner combination for chilly evenings.

Finding salad dressings on store shelves free of gluten, dairy, egg, soy, and sugar is a losing proposition. Especially when it’s so quick and easy to make your own from scratch. Avocado makes it deliciously creamy and nutritious. You can even use this avocado dressing as a dip for raw veggies or your favorite gluten-free chips.

Creamy Avocado Vinaigrette

Total Time: 5 minutes

Yield: 1-1/2 cups

Ingredients

  • 1 large avocado
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup unfiltered raw apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 cup unfiltered cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Instructions

  1. Peel and seed the avocado, and peel the garlic clove.
  2. Blend the avocado and garlic in a food processor until the avocado is creamy and the garlic is finely chopped.
  3. Add the lemon juice and apple cider vinegar and process until blended.
  4. Add the sea salt, smoked paprika, and pepper, and process until mixed in.
  5. Add the olive oil. You can pour it in slowly while the food processor is going or simply pour it all in at once. Blend until the oil is fully emulsified into the dressing.
  6. Taste, and add more salt, paprika, or pepper, if desired.
  7. Garnish with a sprinkle of smoked paprika, if desired.
  8. Chill to thicken.
http://www.laurawestkong.com/gff/2011/creamy-avocado-vinaigrette/

(This recipe was shared at: Raw Foods Thursday)

Hello Monday!

I got up early to go jogging today. It was still dark, but if I waited till dawn, there wouldn’t be enough time before I had to tend to Monday morning’s duties. It was the first time I felt good since a run-in with oats a week ago, so I didn’t want to miss out.

Stars twinkled as I did my warm up. Stars! You don’t usually even see stars in the sky around here at night. You have to go out to the mountains or desert for that. I’m a little rusty on my astronomy, but I think I saw the Little Dipper.

Especially now, running makes me feel like I’m really alive. Struggling with fatigue day after day, sometimes one starts to wonder. One thing I know for certain, I will never take my health for granted again.

When I finished my run, the sunrise was just getting underway. It wasn’t a vivid, dramatic, picture-postcard sunrise, but to me it was as if it were the first sunrise I’d ever seen.

It’s on days like this that I know that I’m going to be OK. Not every day is going to be easy. I won’t always be able to accomplish everything on my to-do list. There will be bouts with cross-contamination from time to time (hopefully fewer, rather than more times), but the sun will rise again…