Southwest Salad {Choose Your Own Grain}

I love this Southwest Salad. I’m not sure about you, but sometimes I need a good salad – a bowl full of fresh colorful veggies, something totally healthy that tastes great. This is one of those salads. I love it’s versatility, you can use brown rice, white rice, or even quinoa, depending on your taste preference or what you have on hand. The veggies in it are some of my very favorites {avocados} and the dressing is flavorful but light enough that the flavors of the veggies aren’t totally lost. The other thing that I totally dig about this salad is that my 8 year old son loves it which is pretty much a miracle because once food touches or mixes with other food it magically turns into something disgusting that he won’t eat anymore. But there is something special about this salad because he doesn’t care that the tomatoes totally mingle with the avocados, corn, and rice (and I’m just not going to talk about the green onions or the jalapeno because there isn’t any sense in ruining a good thing when you’ve got one going). I’m just going to chalk it up as something healthy he likes to eat. And that’s a very good thing. Don’t you think? 

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Southwest Salad (Choose your own grain)

Author: Jasey's Crazy Daisy

Ingredients

• 1 cup prepared brown rice white rice or quinoa - choose your preference of grain
• 2 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• juice of 1 lime
• zest of 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1 cup frozen corn thawed.
• 10 oz. grape tomatoes halved
• 1 jalapeno diced (seeded if you want to cut out the heat)
• 1 bunch of green onions chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 avocado diced
• Pepper

Instructions

1. Prepare your grain. Let cool. Stir together olive oil through cumin in a small bowl. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a medium bowl and pour dressing over salad, stir gently until mixed well. Season to taste with pepper.
2. I like to stir everything except the avocado in and put it in the fridge for an hour or so to let the flavors blend and add the avocado in just before serving. Sometimes I even put everything but the avocado together in the morning, and just before dinner add the avocado in. Yum! Don't worry though, the leftovers, if there are any will still be ok the next day. The lime juice does it's magic and the avocado seems to keep pretty well. Enjoy!

Recipe Notes

Adapted from Our Best Bites