As all my allergies progressed, one of the things that most bothered me was a sensitivity to leafy green vegetables. No more salad, what was I going to do! Then I discovered that I could eat red leaf lettuces, what a relief. Now I have a salad almost daily and here’s one of my favorites. I really like various textures in my salads so I add crunchy ingredients as well as softer ones. Green Goddess dressing usually has walnuts in it but since I’m allergic to nuts, I used pumpkin seeds instead. You could substitute sunflower seeds.
You’ll need for the salad (for 2 entries or 4-6 side salads):
- 1 head of red Romaine, cleaned and broken into bite-size pieces
- 1 cucumber sliced
- 2-3 small tomatoes
- 2 wedges of jicama, diced
- 2 stalks of celery, diced
- several scallions or some red onion diced, optional
- 8 ounces of cooked chicken, diced
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup of dried cranberries (I used the kind sweetened with fruit juice and unsulphered)
For the dressing, in a food processor put:
- 1 ripe avocado, skinned and pitted
- 1/4 cup dried parsley, or 1/2 cup fresh parsley (you can add more if you like parsley; not one of my favorite herbs so I didn’t use much)
- 2 tablespoons avocado oil
- 2 tablespoons lime juice (or lemon juice if you prefer)
- 2 tablespoons ground pumpkin seeds
- 2 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Water to get to dressing consistency, 1/4-1 cup (my dressing came out fairly thick and I used 1/2 cup of water)
Blend until creamy and all ingredients are combined. Here, again, I used some roasted whole coriander seeds that I pulsed in my spice grinder so they were not fully ground and the pumpkin seeds were also only partially ground. This added some crunchy texture to the dressing.
cookingwithoutallergens 