Scrumptious Salad with Avocado and Other Good Things

I know that sometimes even the most passionate cooks sometimes do not want to cook. It happened to me today. I went to the kitchen and loathed the thought of having to cut things and then clean the darn kitchen again. But being in Germany, I can get away with not cooking dinner as the Germans actually have this habit of eating cold dinners of bread, cheese, various cold cuts and perhaps radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes, as my husband is wont to do. They even have a name for this meal - Abendbrot, which means, roughly translated 'evening bread'. Which releases many a frazzled mom from the responsibility of having to cook a warm dinner, as Asian moms are expected to do. So Abendbrot today it is. Except that I will make a salad and pile it with avocado too as lucky me, my kids love avocado! If you have not yet fed this nature's superfood to your kids, you should try it as not only is it chockful of vitamins, minerals and other super good stuff, but when mashed with cream cheese with some salt and pepper, it is actually super yummy on bread and thus can be a short cut lunch on a busy day (ala bruschetta but with avocados instead of tomatoes), or used as a different kind of spread to pep an otherwise boring sandwich. I personally like to cut avocado into half, with the hole in the middle stuffed with minced cooked prawns dressed with olive oil, lemon, honey and coriander or spring onions. Now that is good food, fast. Just like this Scrumptious Salad with Avocado and Other Good Things.

When making salad, I always like to have something crunchy, something soft and something salty on a plate. So this is what went on my plate that day.

The Salad Mix

• 2 handfuls of rocket leaves shredded gleefully by my son's hands
• 2 tomatoes, quartered rather messily
• Some feta cheese, crumbled by Mommy 
• A handful of olives (my kids hunt for them and eat them whole!)
• An avocado or 2. Scoop the flesh out with a teaspoon and plonk them on the leafy greens on the plate
• A few chopped walnuts for extra crunch
• A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
• A splash of balsamic vinegar
• A few shavings of parmesan (using the vegetable peeler). If you want you can also just grate it. But having the parmesan in pieces seem to make it taste nuttier and more awesome.

I just piled these on a plate and served it with bread, cheese and heated up some leftover potato soup from the day before. Hmm come to think of it, I should also post that Creamy Leeky Potato Soup recipe since my husband said, "Mmm, this tastes like the real thing!". The real thing? What, I pray, does a fake potato soup tastes like? But I digress. Back to this Abendbrot meal. The kids ate mostly bread, cheese, avocado and olives (and the potato soup) but hey that seems to satisfy the carbo-protein-vitamins good food pyramid requirement, so not too bad for mommy's lazy dinner efforts. Work smart, not hard I say!

Mission accomplished.