So I am back from Costa Rica! It was a wonderful vacation and yes, I feasted on tropical fruit the whole time I was there. I also took many pictures of the food we ate — but sadly on the way home I left my phone on the airplane and with it all of my food pictures. I filed a lost item report so I am hoping that I get it back, but it the meantime I thought I would recreate one of my favorite things we had there — Mango Avocado Salad.

The name is basically the recipe, but it is a combination you might not otherwise think of, and pretty much every restaurant we went to served this same combination. In Costa Rica they served it with “tropical dressing” which was a fruit-based (probably pineapple) vinaigrette. I dressed mine with just lime juice and some black pepper. The avocado gives plenty of creaminess on its own.

Quick tip: always keep limes on hand for dressing salads. A) Unlike lemons no seeds to worry about B) the juice from one lime seems just about right for one large salad, while with a lemon I feel like you only need half, and then you wonder what to do with the other half  C) if you normally use vinegar, lime juice has more nutrition, and if you put some of the zest in you get even more nutrition and D) they are cheap. My local store usually has them ten for dollar. So I always keep a few in the crisper drawer in the fridge.

Costa Rican Mango Avocado Salad

Ingredients 

1 head butter lettuce or other lettuce of your choice
1 avocado, cubed
1 mango, cubed
1 slice of red onion, chopped (about 1 to 2 tablespoons)
Juice of one lime
fresh ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Put all ingredients in a large bowl, toss and eat.

While we are eating our salads, lets consider some mango nutrition facts:

1 cup of mango provides 25% of your DV (daily value) of vitamin A, 76% of vitamin C, and 9 to 11% of vitamins E, K, and B6. It provides 7% of your DV of potassium, 6% of folate, as well as 61 mg of Omega 3 fatty acids (200 to 2000 mg per day is recommended).

For more see: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1952/2

For your viewing pleasure here is a picture of the lush, green Costa Rican rain forest with the Arenal Volcano in the background, its top shrouded by clouds, as it is most of the time.