Avocado orange dressing and Sunday salad

I eat a lot of salads during the week for convenience, so don't eat as many on the weekends.  I treat myself to other favorite foods like baked oriental yam, essene buds, Texas Rio Star grapefruit, samples of housemate's smoothies, frozen cherries and mangos.  By Sunday I'm ready for a salad, but I want something different from my weekday salads.  I also have the opportunity to make a real salad dressing which I'm too lazy to do during the week.  I came up with a really easy dressing

Avocado orange dressing
Ingredients:
1 avocado
juice of 1 medium orange or 1/2 large
1-2 Tbsp D'angou pear vinegar

Smash the avocado, add the orange juice and vinegar, mix until mostly smooth.

The salad is just lettuce, cucumber, and red bell pepper.  Add the dressing.  yum.

The Big List of No Oil Salad Dressings

This is a great resource from Healthy Girl's Kitchen:  Her big list of no oil salad dressings includes recipes for all of them!

yummy berry dressing

This is like pouring a milkshake over your salad, which would not be appealing over tomatoes and onions but over lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and bok choy, it is yummy.

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen sweet cherries

1 cup frozen blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries, or mixture

1-2 Tbsp hemp seeds or raw cashews

2/3 cup soy milk or hemp or almond milk or water

1-2 Tbsp blueberry vinegar

Blend in a blender until smooth. It if is thicker than you'd like, add some water. I eat the whole thing on my dinner salad.

sweet pea salad dressing

Ingredients for 1 large serving (full meal) or two small:

1 cup frozen sweet peas

0.5-1 oz raw pecans and/or seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, flax, hemp)

1 Tbsp D'Angou Pear vinegar or other favorite flavored vinegar

juice of 1 small lime or 1/2 large (or 1 whole one, if you like them)

2 oranges, peeled, remove seeds, or 2/3 cup orange juice

Thaw the peas a bit in the microwave (30 sec) if you want. Blend everything in a blender. This is really easy to make and I think it tastes great. I eat the whole recipe if the salad is the main course. Use as few or many nuts as your diet allows (e.g., 1/2 oz if trying to lose weight).

Variations:

Dec. 2, 2009: I used fresh pomegranate juice instead of orange juice, and more seeds (flax and hemp) and fewer pecans. It was great.

Dec. 3, 2009: I added a small mango and small pear in place of the juice (but added 2 oz of orange juice to thin it out). yummy!

Dec. 17, 2009: I used half an avocado instead of the nuts & seeds. and mandarin oranges instead of juice. here's a picture of this super easy variation before blending (peas, oranges avocado and a little flavored vinegar):

mango dressing #4

I didn't realize I have 3 other mango dressings already until now. This is similar. I got this one from Darryl, and modified slightly. Scale ingredients according to how much mango you have.

Ingredients:

1/2 avocado or 1 oz cashews

1 oz pecans

1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice (vary to desired consistency)

1 bag frozen mangos (or 2 cups fresh)

1-2 Tbsp Riesling raisin vinegar (Darryl uses 3 Tbsp on a smaller batch!)

blend it all up in the blender. the vinegar and pecans are a nice touch. yummmmmmmm!

mango-cashew dressing

I learned this at the Health Getaway. They were demo-ing cashew-orange dressing but didn't have oranges so they used a mango and the started improvising. Here's my version which is sort of a hybrid:

Ingredients:

1 ripe mango

1 orange, peeled, remove seeds (optional)

1/4 cup cashews

1 Tbsp blood orange vinegar

lime zest

lime juice to taste (try 1/2 tsp to start) (optional)

a bit of cilantro or dill or chives if you have some (optional)

tomato-walnut dressing

Ingredients:

1 large tomato or 2 medium

a handful walnuts (0.5-1 oz depending on how much you want to consume)

some green onion or chopped onion or leek or onion powder. small amount. I prefer the mild taste of green onions

herbs of your choice (optional but may include chives or cilantro or basil etc)

blend everything in the blender until smooth.

berry-sesame-sunflower dressing

Ingredients:

1 bag frozen blueberries or mixed berries, or raspberries, or strawberries, or cherries (or fresh if you have it)

1 Tbsp raw sunflower seeds or flaxseeds (or sesame seeds)

1 Tbsp raw sesame seeds, rinsed

1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice or pomegranate juice or water

1 Tbsp blueberry vinegar or other mild flavored vinegar or maybe some lemon juice

Blend the seeds and juice and vinegar in the blender until smooth. If you need more volume to blend, thaw some of the blueberries in the microwave for 30 seconds and throw them in and blend until the seeds are nicely ground up. Then add the rest of the blueberries and blend some more. Then pour over your salad. yummmmmmmm.

mango dressing

easy and good:

1 large ripe mango or 2 small (or a bag of frozen I think)

1 oz walnuts (or 1/2 oz, if you prefer)

1/3 cup soy milk (guessing, I didn't measure)

1 Tbsp orange vinegar

peel the mango, cut off everything but the seed and put in blender with everything else.  blend until smooth.  It's a bit bland without the vinegar, but then the vinegar makes it taste very good.  If you don't have vinegar, maybe substitute pomegranate juice for the soy milk.

mango-beet dressing

Oh my gosh, this is the best dressing I've ever made.  

Ingredients for 1 large serving to smother all over your salad or steamed veggies:

1-2 medium baked beets (or steamed)

1 small mango, peeled and cut enough to remove seed (I use the smaller yellow Mexican ones because I haven't had good luck getting the big multicolored ones to ripen).  oh, I bet frozen mango would work just fine.  1/2-1 cup? 

0.5 oz  walnuts

1 Tbsp blueberry vinegar (optional)

1/4 cup pomegranate juice and/or soy milk  (actually I didn't measure, just enough to get the blending to go)

Blend everything in a blender.  soooooo gooooood.

new cashew-orange dressing

This is more weird than my standard cashew-orange dressing but I think this is better!  

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup cashews

1/2 small zucchini, peeled

3 figs, soaked in the OJ if you think of it (15 minutes or so)

1 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's blood orange vinegar

Blend it all up in a powerful blender.  The zucchini thickens it up a bit.   Believe it or not, this is really good.

another baked beet dressing

I'm continuing my experiment with baked beet dressings.   

Ingredients:

4 small baked beets (throw in the oven as is at 350 F for 1.5 hours)

1/2 cup soy milk

2 dried apricots (optional)

1 Tbsp flavored vinegar (I tried black fig today)

I added the apricots for no good reason, just thought it might add something.  But the beets are so good, I think I should have left off the apricots to see if it needed something else.   But it was still good with the apricots.  Anyway, I soaked the apricots in the soy milk for a few hours.  You could probably just microwave it for 30 seconds and soak for 5 minutes.  or not even bother soaking.   After the beets cool, peel the skins and eat them, as they are good for you.  Then blend everything in the blender.  I ate this over lettuce, arugula and chopped red pepper.   It was great.  Oh, and you don't have to be stingy with this dressing.  Think of it as a big plate of beet dressing with some salad in it.  Okay, I actually had a huge plate of salad too, but I ate all the dressing.   

russian fig dressing

I got the idea for this dressing from Dr. Fuhrman's recipe site but my version is pretty different and I want to remember it so I'm writing it down here.  The reason I changed it is that I use canned tomatoes from our garden in place of all other tomato concoctions (e.g., tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato juice); and I use nuts instead of nut butter.  The original recipe is here if you prefer that.  And there's a similar one here.  Oh, I didn't think to use veggiezest.  I'll try that next time.

Ingredients:

1 16 oz can tomatoes (mine are from the garden--if you don't have canned tomatoes you can use tomato sauce if you want).

1 garlic clove

a little bit of onion (1/8 cup?)

1/3 cup raw almonds

1-2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's black fig vinegar (or other mild flavored vinegar)

1 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's veggiezest or other powdered veggie broth (optional)

Optional:  Pour the canned tomatoes and almonds in a bowl and let the almonds soak up the juice for several hours.  Throw everything in a blender and blend until nice and smooth.  This has a peppery taste from the raw garlic and onion.  If it's a little strong, just microwave it for a few minutes to cook the onion and garlic a bit.  Then refrigerate if you are going to have it over salad.   

Baked beet dressing

My friend Mary said baked beets are good on salad.  I had some beets and I baked them, and they were outstanding.  I think they are even better blended up into a dressing.  

Ingredients:

1 medium to large baked beet, or steamed if you are in a hurry (cut into pieces before steaming)

0.5 oz raw walnuts (or other nut or seed)

1/2 cup pomegranate juice

1-2 tsp Dr. Fuhrman's wild blueberry vinegar or some other mild vinegar (optional)

Blend it up in the blender.  Makes 1 serving for a large salad (or two if you aren't as hungry as me).

Total calories:  274, protein 9 g (11%), carbs 43 g (33%), fat 9 g (29%)

cashew-orange dressing

Ingredients:

1/3 cup cashews or some cashew butter (or walnuts or hemp seeds)

2 medium oranges: peel, cut into quarters and de-seed

1 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's blood orange vinegar

some grapes or pineapple or figs if you have them (optional) (figs are best!)

Put everything in a blender and blend until smooth. I've modified this recipe several times and it evolved into something that was different from the original recipe from the Fuhrman site, and now it's evolved back into the Fuhrman recipe, so I probably shouldn't post it here. But that is my excuse for why it's here, because at one time it was different. Note: you can substitute for the orange or part of them a variety of things like grapes, pineapple, mango, and/or figs. This keeps for a few days in the fridge or you can freeze smaller portions of it.