Guest Post Friday – Western Mexi-Salad

My friend, Roz, sent me this delicious-sounding recipe earlier this week.  I asked if she’d like to do a guest post but she’s in the midst of wedding preparations for her son and didn’t have time right now.  She did say I could go ahead and share it myself, however.  Since it’s summer and prime time for salads, I decided to share it now rather than wait a couple of weeks until she had time to write it as a post.  Unfortunately there’s no picture but I’m putting it on my menu next week and will try to remember to take a photo.

Dressing:

3/4 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup ranch dressing
1/2 package taco seasoning
1/2 cup salsa

Salad:

1 pound bag iceberg lettuce (or one head)
10 ounces romaine lettuce
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
one 4-oz. can sliced black olives
one 15-oz. can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
one 15-oz. can black beans
one 15-oz. can corn, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup onion
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1 avocado, sliced
8 oz. Nacho Cheese Doritos, crumbled
Chicken or another meat is optional but the salad is already very filling.

Here are Roz’s notes on her adaptations:

Nancy had mentioned this to me so I asked for the recipe. I had some organic salad mix and a partial bag of baby spinach. I don’t like beans all that much, but I did use a can of black beans. I also had olives from the olive bar at FF (*Forward Foods – a wonderful specialty food store Roz and I adore). I also had leftover ears of corn on the cob that I cut off.

I discovered with the “chili mix” that I have to be really carefully of packaged mixes. These days they seem to be putting cardamom in everything! (*Roz is allergic to cardamom) So I made my own taco seasoning with ancho and New Mexico chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. I agree that the dressing makes this and also the crunch from the tortilla chips, but I don’t think they need to be flavored, so you could fry your own. I also think since I lowered the bean count, it would have benefited from a bit of leftover meat. Had I thought about it, I had some leftover fajita meat from a trip to Mama Rojas that I could have used. This is just so versatile. I thought I would pass it on!

I think this sounds absolutely fabulous.  The funny thing is that just a couple of hours after Roz emailed me the recipe my mom called and asked if I had the recipe for a taco salad we used to make many years ago.  That one was made with Fritos and a bottle of Catalina dressing.  I told her about this one and she decided to make it instead.  She made it yesterday and I haven’t heard what she thought of it but she had already whipped up the dressing and said it was wonderful!

Despite some unseasonably *cool* temperatures here in our part of Oklahoma last week, we are now experiencing hot and humid weather.  Even though our house is well air conditioned, a couple of salad meals per week are quite welcome.  I’m going to make this next week and I’ll let you know what I think of it.  If you have any main dish salad recipes to share, I’d love to hear about them.  And I’m always open to guest post offers. 🙂