Easiest Summer Salad Ever.

When I was pregnant with my youngest, I went to a Latin bistro in my neighborhood called Conga. They had an amazing menu but I happened to order their Avocado and Mango salad. It was served on a bed of iceberg lettuce which I was unimpressed with but the rest of the salad was so good I started asking Lars to make it for me.

"Is there anything I need to know about cutting a mango?" he asked me.

"No, I don't think so," I said.

He came back 20 minutes later with the salad and said "You told me there was nothing to know about cutting up a mango. That was the worst fruit-cutting experience of my life.

Oops!

If you've never cut a mango before I would recommend looking it up on youTube. Your first time, you will fail. The second time the salad might be ugly but tasty and you'll waste about a dollar's worth of mango. But I DID call this the world's easiest summer salad so you might want to cheat and buy it precut at a grocery. I promise, once you cut everything up, you're golden.

I had two mangoes that I got from a friend a week ago. They we're getting soft and I knew I had to eat them right away. I cubed it and then cut up an avocado (um, also hard to cut if you've never done it... Maybe this isn't the easiest salad ever after all... Oops again).

The salad has everything you could ever want- its fresh, tropical, sweet, savory, a little sour, a little salty and if you're feeling adventurous, a little spicy too.

Mango-Avocado Salad

2 mangoes
1 avocado
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon like juice
Sprinkle of sea salt
Sprinkle of cayenne pepper (optional)

In a medium-sized bowl, mix olive oil and lime juice. Cube mango and avocado and carefully combine in the bowl, coating the fruits with the olive oil-lime mixture. Sprinkle with sea salt. Sprinkle with cayenne. Almost instant deliciousness.

I served mine in this attractive purple monster bowl to entice the children. I had a bit left over (without cayenne pepper added) so I blended it up in my bullet smoothie maker with a tiny bit of water (just enough to make it move in the blade) and mixed it in a bowl with a multigrain baby cereal. The baby LOVED this. We introduced him to avocado a couple weeks ago (after doing some research- we think of avocados as nuts because of their taste but they're actually a fruit, they're fine to feed to babies and make a great first food because they're loaded with good fats). He can't get enough of them now.