Fun and Colorful Summer Salad with Avocado dressing

          Some of my best recipe inspirations come from Pinterest. The following recipes are some of those ideas that start from Pinterest, but have been adapted or changed by yours truly. If you know anything about how I tend to cook, you would know that I rarely stick to an actual recipe. At times, that makes this whole "recipe writing" difficult. I enjoy changing and trying different things in recipes. You most definitely live and learn by changing things up in a recipe. Sometimes, it's the best idea and makes everything better, and sometimes, you wish you would have actually stuck to the recipe. All that being said, I hope you enjoy these two recipes. The salad is super easy to just throw together. However, the dicing of the vegetables can be just a little time consuming... It's so worth it though. The dressing is so super easy! Plus, they're delicious!!

Here's the recipes:

Colorful Summer Salad

Serving size: 8-10

Prep time: 20 min

Ingredients:

-1 large romaine lettuce, chopped into bite sized pieces, rinsed and drained (you could save some time and buy a bag of  your favorite lettuce.)

-1 orange or red bell pepper, small diced (orange recommended for color purposes)

-1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or quartered (depending on size)

-1/2-3/4 bag of frozen corn, defrosted

{Tip: if you put the corn in a strainer and run warm water over it for 2-3 minutes, it will defrost it enough for the salad.}

-1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

-2 chopped green onions (optional)

Directions: In a large serving bowl add all ingredients. You can arrange it like I did in the picture for show. (It will impress guests.) Just before serving, toss all ingredients together. Serve and enjoy.

Avocado Ranch Dressing

-1 small container or 1 cup of plain Greek yogurt 

-1 ripe avocado

-2 whole cloves of garlic 

-1/2 lime juiced or 1-2 tablespoons of lime juice

-2 tablespoons of fresh parsley (1 T dried)

-2 tablespoons  of fresh dill (1 T dried)

-2 tablespoons of fresh chopped chives (1 T dried)

-Up to 1/4 cup of milk (depends on the thickness you prefer)

-Salt and Pepper to taste

{Tip: switch out parsley for cilantro and add the other 1/2 of the lime juiced to make a "Southwestern" spin to the dressing}

Directions: Add all ingredients (except milk) to a food processor or blender.  Pulse about about 1 minute. Then, slowly add the milk 1 tablespoons at a time,  until desired thickness is reached. In this particular recipe I used the cilantro version of the dressing. {Word to the wise: a little cilantro dressing goes A LONG WAY.}