Italian Avocado Salad

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1 Italian Avocado Salad This Italian Avocado Salad is everything avocado dreams are made of! Delicious, fresh ingredients, with a creamy homemade Italian dressing. you really can t go wrong here! Pair it with your favorite protein and you have a delicious meal!

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3 I was at the grocery store today and had in my mind that I d like to make an avocado salad with my Creamy Italian Dressing recipe. I have been trying to find new ways to eat avocados because of all the health benefits. This recipe is an avocado home run! Not only was the recipe delicious, I found the PERFECT bag of avocados. Not too mushy, but not un-ripe. Small seeded so that one side doesn t have to be completely uprooted to remove the seed. The skins peeled right off. I mean, in the avocado world I basically hit the jackpot! I was peeling those babies like YESSS this is avocado life. *Side note: You should start peeling your avocados! A lot of the good nutrients are right under the skin and when we scoop them out instead of peeling we loose important stuff. Peeling also allows you to cut some pretty impressive chunks for this salad. I simply slice the avocado in half, then slice it into chunks when it is still in the peel. If your avocado is perfectly ripe you should be able to start peeling it from one of the edges. If you are finding it hard, slice the little nugget on the end off and you should be able to start peeling.

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5 Keto Diet Update This is the part where I talk about my diet, so if you aren t interested just scroll. I mentioned in my Keto Approved Burger post that I started the Keto diet. I ll be 100% honest here, it hasn t been unicorns and rainbows. I ve had some ups and downs due to breastfeeding and being concerned about the safety during this time. I ve gotten off track quite a few times but somehow I always seem to reset and start again. I m on a roll this time, and hoping to continue!

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7 Storing Your Italian Avocado Salad We all know that avocados can brown very quickly! The dressing in this salad prevents this to a certain degree. I would suggest making the salad at the time you are going to eat it, and finishing it within a day or two. I ve stored mine overnight and had no browning/turning to mush but the second day I finished it. If you are making the salad for a gathering or picnic I would suggest putting it together 1-2 hours before you go. A bit of time in the refrigerator is great because it allows the flavors to come together, but isn t enough time for the avocado to start looking funky. One More Thing My Creamy Italian Dressing recipe yields about 2 cups of dressing, which is a lot more then you will need for this salad. I cut the original recipe in half for this salad and it was plenty. If you d like to have some extra dressing (it is super delicious), then you can double the dressing ingredients. In my original recipe I was using a food processor to make the dressing, however I no longer have that (long story), so I just used a bowl and a whisk. The food processor makes a thicker dressing, but you certainly can get away with just whisking super vigorously and making sure you pour your oil in slowly. I also omitted the red pepper flakes because I just didn t think they would mesh well with the avocado.

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9 Creamy Italian Dressing

10 I m slightly embarrassed to admit how much I ve been using this dressing since I made it last week. I ve been putting it

11 on literally EVERYTHING. Gahhh! Sandwiches, pasta salads, spinach salads you name it! But it makes everything taste that much better, I promise. Truthfully, with summer approaching I was looking for a bomb pasta salad dressing. I love keeping a big bowl of veggie filled pasta salad in the refrigerator all summer long to have something healthy to eat in a pinch. I kept coming back to how much I really enjoyed the dressing at Olive Garden so I started searching for a knock-off, then tweaked it to fit ingredients that I liked (no vegetable oils, Italian seasoning packets, etc.) What I found so crazy about some of the knockoffs is they were suggesting using an Italian Seasoning Packet. Doesn t that kind of defeat the purpose of a homemade dressing? When I checked out the ingredients in Hidden Valley s Farmhouse Original Homestyle Italian packet guess what the FIRST ingredient was? SUGAR! Am I the only one who thinks something just doesn t add up about that?

12 Making your own seasoning is super easy and only requires about 2 minutes. Who knew, seriously!?! A few teaspoons of

13 this and that, whiz it together, and you re done. Simple, easy, and delicious! Not only is this dressing delicious as soon as you make it, it actually gets better and better the longer it sits. 2-3 days later the taste will change ever so slightly each day to give you a robust and classic Italian Dressing taste that you can use in a number of ways (believe me, more recipes to come using this dressing). I also noticed each day the amount of spice from the red pepper flakes died down, so if you aren t a fan of a touch of spice I would suggest making this a few days in advance to let it chill out before using it. Just a note this dressing does include 3 Tablespoons of mayo, which is kind of an issue because most store bought mayo contains a bunch of nasty, unnecessary ingredients. For a really long time I avoided mayo all together because I ve *heard* making your own is kind annoying and the results aren t exactly great. I was never a mayo fanatic, but in a recipe like this it is kind of crucial. Fortunately I found an organic brand that doesn t contain anything weird (no preservatives at all), and uses expeller pressed soybean oil. Being that I don t use mayo that often, I ll take it! If you are looking for a store bought mayo I would suggest looking for one that doesn t contain anything you can t pronounce, and uses and expeller-pressed oils, which aren t as highly refined as their counterparts. I just recently found this product (Wegman s Brand Organic Mayonnaise) and it was the first store bought mayo I have found that I was comfortable with buying. With that being said, Thank You Wegman s for making all my mayo dreams come true!