Cucumber Tomato Avocado Salad

The week before our Savannah trip, and I am doing what I always do before leaving: organizing. I have left detailed instructions for the children's caretakers, printed the bed and breakfast confirmation, packed three days' worth of books (which Robert says is excessive and which I say is a minimum), and pre-cooked two dinners that David's wife can reheat. The cooking is not necessary — David's wife is a competent cook — but it is necessary for me, because leaving food for my children is how I say "I am still here" when I am not physically here.

Hurricane Matthew passed south of us last week. We didn't evacuate — the track shifted — but the preparation consumed two days: boarding windows, filling bathtubs, moving library materials to higher shelves. The storm eventually made landfall further south and the damage to Charleston was minimal, but the anxiety of waiting — the particular dread of standing in a Lowcountry house knowing that the ocean is right there, always right there — is an experience that reshapes your relationship with weather. After Matthew, the October sunshine feels like grace.

Carrie announced this week that she has chosen her freshman research project topic: the history of Japanese-American relations since World War II. Her teacher approved it. I approved it internally with the additional note that my daughter is fourteen years old and already constructing a narrative that will take her across the Pacific.

At the library, I finalized the cookbook exchange collection. We printed 200 copies — a small, spiral-bound book titled "Charleston Cooks: Community Recipes and the Stories Behind Them." My name is on the cover as editor. It is the first time my name has appeared on a published document that is not a library report, and the sight of it — Naomi Blackwood, Editor — produced a feeling I can only describe as recognition, as if the book knew me before I knew it.

I made shrimp and sausage over rice this week — a weeknight simplification of Mama's shrimp bog that uses fewer steps and less time but preserves the essential truth, which is that shrimp and smoked sausage and rice belong together the way certain words belong in a sentence: inevitably, naturally, as if they had always been waiting to meet. I served it with a salad and cornbread, and the meal was not remarkable in any way except that we ate it together, the four of us, and the unremarkableness was itself the point.

That night the salad was almost an afterthought—something cool and bright to set against the smoky warmth of the shrimp and sausage—but it earned its place on the table the way the simplest things do, by being exactly what was needed. If you’re building that same kind of meal, something grounding and whole before the week carries you somewhere new, this cucumber tomato avocado salad is the one I reach for: no cooking required, nothing to fuss over, just clean flavors that give the main dish room to be itself.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 large English cucumber, diced
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
2 ripe avocados, diced
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 1 large lemon)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh parsley or cilantro, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Prep the vegetables. Dice the cucumber into bite-sized pieces and halve the cherry tomatoes. Thinly slice the red onion. Dice the avocados just before assembling to minimize browning.
Combine. Add the cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, and avocado to a large mixing bowl. Handle gently so the avocado holds its shape.
Dress. Drizzle the lemon juice and olive oil over the salad. Season with salt and pepper and toss carefully to coat everything evenly.
Finish and serve. Scatter the fresh parsley or cilantro over the top. Taste and adjust salt or lemon as needed. Serve immediately—this salad is best fresh, within 30 minutes of dressing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cucumber Tomato Avocado Salad — The Simple Side That Finished a Lowcountry Table