Tropical Salads

Here are the recipes for two simple and beautiful salads. Winter has been challenging, to say the least, with never ending cold and waaaaay too much snow, and we longed for a salad, hinting at the warm Spring and Summer weather to come. Blood oranges and mangoes came to mind – we love both of these and they just happened to be available in the store.

Since mangoes fall into our most favorite fruit group, lets start off with that. The wonderfully sweet champagne mangoes lend themselves so beautifully and simply to this salad, with their great taste and creamy texture.

For the Mango Salad recipe we used

1-1/2 small heads of red and green oak leaf lettuce
2 champagne mangoes

For the dressing you will need:

puree of 1/2 mango
1 Tbsp. Balsamic vinegar
1-1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. coconut sugar
pinch of Himalaya salt and pepper

Wash the lettuce and break into small pieces. Wash and peel both mangoes, cutting the flesh away from the seed. Cut one half of the mango fruit into small cubes and place the remaining half into a food processor, or blender, together with the remaining dressing ingredients.

Place the prepared lettuce and the cubed mango into a salad bowl and top with a couple of tablespoons of the mango dressing. Store the remaining dressing in a sealed container in the refrigerator. This will keep for a couple of days.

This is a wonderfully refreshing salad and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we did!!

For our second creation, Oak Leaf/Blood Orange salad, you will need:

1-1/2 heads of red and green oak leaf lettuce
2 medium-sized blood oranges

For the dressing you will need:

1-1/2 Tbsp. Balsamic vinegar
1-1.2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/8 tsp. Himalaya salt
1/8 tsp. No salt seasoning
1/2 tsp. coconut sugar

Wash, and prepare the lettuce and place in a salad bowl. Peel and thinly slice the blood oranges and place on top of the lettuce. Toss with the prepared vinaigrette.