Mexican Fiesta Salad – Big Bowl of Healthy Goodness

With all these great restaurants and food options around it’s possible to control our eating habits nowadays. I mean fried chicken vs. baked chicken can sometimes be a really tough decision since fried is crispy and crunchy and baked is…. well, it’s baked! Lol!

But there are many ways to incorporate a healthy meal into your regular diet and at the same time making your taste buds happy.

I was home one day after coming back from my regular grocery shopping date, and needed to start working on a dinner plan for my darling husband and me.

And you know the feeling when you buy a new utensil and you just want to use it for whatever it may be. I had recently bought a really nice wooden salad bowl from good old IKEA (love IKEA) and wanted to toss up a salad.

So I came up with this awesome salad mix, which tasted so good since the ingredients go really well together. I even did my own dressing and threw in some fresh homemade croutons (super crispy).

Hope you like it!

Ingredients for Salad:

• Half a can of corn niblets -170 gr
• Can of kidney beans – half or full up to you I usually eyeball it
• Red peppers – ½ cup medium diced
• Green Peppers - ½ cup medium diced
• Yellow Peppers - ½ cup medium diced
• 2 small cucumbers - ½ cup medium diced
• 1 ripe Avocado – usually the ones from Uganda are really nice – medium diced
• 1 ripe Mango – Alphonso or any nice sweet and chunky type – medium diced
• 1 whole pomegranate – seeds should be nice and red, Indian pomegranates are the ones I use
• 100 g Feta Cheese - Medium sized cubed (low sodium) - optional ingredient 
• Pumpkin seeds – ¼ cup
• Sunflower seeds – peeled - ¼ cup
• Dry Cranberries – ¼ cup

Ingredients for Dressing:

• Pomegranate juice - 6 tbsp (fresh or bottled your choice, I use bottled usually)
• Apple cider vinegar – ½ tbsp
• Balsamic vinegar – ½ tbsp
• Lemon juice - ½ tbsp
• Extra Virgin Olive oil - 4 tbsp (the best quality possible)
• White vinegar - ½ tbsp
• Honey -1 tbsp
• Sugar – 1tsp
• Salt and pepper – to taste

All the ingredients can be mixed together in any order. Add as much dressing as you prefer. Keep some of your avocado, mango and the pomegranate seeds for a beautiful garnish on top!

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