Gravocado

I am obsessed with grapefruit. Be it in a scented lotion, in juice form, or all by its delicious self. Grapefruit are really cheap at the store right now; I got 10 lbs of grapefruit for a dollar a couple of weeks ago! When my mom and I were driving back up to college after Christmas, she was telling me a notable grapefruit experience of her's. When she was in high school, her boyfriend's mom made her a grapefruit and avocado salad with Catalina dressing on top. She said that it was one of the best things she has ever eaten.

Grapefruit and avocado together? Does it work?  Well fast-forward a few weeks later and I realize I happen to have the two ingredients on hand. I decide to  recreate the salad. It turns out these two are a marriage made in heaven.

I started out by segmenting out the grapefruit so that it was in big pieces. 

 (If you're not familiar with how to do this, this is helpful:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rg3kUk4pyo  )

I then sliced up the avocado by halving it, slicing the the fruit vertically, and then popping the segments out of the skin. The grapefruit and avocado segments were about comparable in size

I put these over a bed of spinich (lettuce would also work), put a small amount of salt on it, and added the dressing. I did not have any Catalina on hand, and being a college student, I was not about to go buy a bottle of dressing that I'm not a big fan of anyway for one little food experiment. I knew that the dressing had to have a nice acidic quality to it, or else the creaminess of the avocado and the dressing would drown out the grapefruit. So I decided to use caesar dressing. Any acidic dressing could work for this salad. A vinigarette would give this salad a bit more punch, and a poppyseed dressing would bring out the sweetness in the fruit. It all depends on your taste.

And voilà, the finished product.

This is a simple, summery salad. I had never read a recipe for this before. I just had an idea of three ingredients to put together. Even though this was easy, putting flavors together that I had not tried before was exciting.  If you are a strict recipe follower, this is a great place to start trying new things. Salads are easy to change around and experiment with because there is no cooking involved. Don't be afraid to do something that has never been done before!