Frilly Little Details: Recipe Monday: Triple Orange and Avocado Salad

While the rest of the world was devouring delicious treats and enjoying Super Bowl commercials, I was curled up on the couch with a killer headache... not my idea of fun... probably not Brandon's either, but he sweetly let me whine, moan and complain without exiling me to the bedroom so that he could watch his game in peace. He's a pretty good husband. So around halftime, I decided since he was being so sweet, he deserved to be fed. I had planned on fixing some super delicious chicken enchiladas and I got everything out and ready to go when I realized that instead of whipping cream, I had purchased whipped cream. I even remember thinking at the grocery store, "Whipped cream?! That'll be interesting!" Sometimes, I'm a genius... and this was not one of those times.

So, onto Plan B. Instead of the artery clogging enchiladas, I decided to try a recipe I found a few weeks ago on one of my all-time favorite cooking blogs, Iowa Girl Eats. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to:

TRIPLE ORANGE AND AVOCADO SALAD

What you need:

SALAD:

12 Jumbo Shrimp

Weber Boston Bay Seafood Seasoning*

1 Avocado

1 Cara Cara Orange

1 Blood Orange

1 Naval Orange

Spinach Salad Mix

Pomegranate Seeds**

*I couldn't find the Weber Seasoning so I used ol' faithful, Tony Cachere's Creole... delicious as always!

**You can't buy a pomegranate in the middle of January, therefore you can't have fresh seeds... so we substituted Pomegranate Craisins! Not as pretty as the bright pink fresh seeds, but still yummy!

LEMON POPPY SEED DRESSING:

2T Fresh Lemon Juice

4T Red Wine Vinegar

4T Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 tsp Poppy Seeds

1 tsp Powdered Stevia

What you do:

(1) Shake up the dressing! For the lemon poppy seed dressing, just combine all the ingredients into a jar or tupperware with a lid and shake the dickens out of it. Make sure it's thoroughly combined and then let chill in the refrigerator until time to serve.

(2) Next prep your spinach leaves. In my case, this meant "open bag, pour onto plate."

(3) Start with your fruits! I just started by cutting the peels off of each orange and then slicing them up. It probably would've been easier just to peel them, but I really wanted the juices to cover the salad... plus they are much prettier when they don't have that little liner covering up their beautiful color!

Each type of orange had a unique color and flavor. The top left is your regular ol' naval orange - always delicious. The bottom left is the bright orange Cara Cara - I thought these were a quite a bit sweeter than the naval, so good! The far right is the blood orange - it wasn't as dark as the ruby reds that I have seen in pictures, but it was so yummy! It fell somewhere between the other two in level of sweetness, but the different shades of color definitely sent it home with the grand prize for prettiest!

(4) Next tackle the avocado. Being that I did not eat most foods that fell into the "green" category before Brandon came along, I didn't really know how to get the avocado... well... out of the avocado! I could get it out, but not in pretty slices! Enter husband to the rescue!! He fixed it in about 2 seconds! *Please ignore our slightly browning avocado, we had a newer one but this one was going to go to waste if we didn't use it and so I sacrificed the prettiness (Word or no? Don't hold that against me) of my pictures for less waste. Sorry folks.

Slice the avocado in half. Remove giant seed.

Then make slices inside the avocado.

Carefully, use a spoon to scoop out the slices,

while peeling away the hard outer shell.

(4) Saute the shrimp! You could do this the healthy way and just cook using a non-stick light oil or you could do it the yummy way, butter! I figured, I was being healthy making a salad so I splurged for yummy buttery sauted shrimp. Don't judge. Just let them sit on each side for about 3 minutes... until they are nice and curly and pink! Then shake on your seasoning.

(6) Now that you've combined all of these pretty and delicious and healthy things into one big, super yummy salad... Reshake your salad dressing and pour all over your pretty salad and don't forget to sprinkle on your pomegranate seeds!

(7)ENJOY eating this little punch of colorful goodness!