Green Salad with Beets, Oranges & Avocado

End of school year. Six years of teaching. Six years of standing at the stove and writing about what happens when a woman refuses to stop cooking. The school year ends and summer begins and the kids scatter — Marcus to debate camp (his fourth and final year at Emory as a senior teaching assistant), Jasmine to Spelman music camp (second year), Isaiah to basketball camp, Zoe to art camp. The house is quiet. The kitchen is mine. The 5 AM writing sessions continue — not the cookbook (it's done, it's with the publisher, the manuscript is becoming a book) but something else. Notes. Thoughts. The ongoing conversation with the Folgers can about what comes next.

What comes next: the cookbook publishes in early 2024. Set the Table expands (Carolyn and I are planning a second location at a community center in East Point — the school where I started as a counselor fifteen years ago, the neighborhood where the townhouse was, the place where my rebuilding began). The children grow. Marcus applies to Morehouse. Jasmine sings. Isaiah plays basketball. Zoe draws the world. Curtis sits in his chair and eats and says "hm" and the "hm" is the steady drumbeat underneath all of it — the rhythm of a man who shows up and eats and stays.

Made a quiet summer dinner: grilled fish with mango salsa, rice, a simple green salad. Light, clean, the kind of meal that doesn't weigh you down or ask anything of you except to taste it. Derek and I ate on the back porch, just the two of us, the kids gone, the house exhaling. He said, "Quiet house." I said, "Temporary." He said, "I know. Enjoy it." I enjoyed it. The fish. The porch. The man. The quiet. The temporary forever of a summer evening when the children are away and the wife and husband sit on the porch and eat grilled fish and say nothing and the nothing says everything.

That grilled fish dinner on the back porch — the one where Derek and I sat in the quiet and said nothing and the nothing said everything — needed a salad exactly like this one. Not heavy, not complicated, nothing that would pull attention away from the evening itself. Beets for color, oranges for brightness, avocado for the kind of richness that still feels light. It’s the salad version of a summer exhale, and it belonged on that table as much as the fish did.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

5 oz mixed greens or arugula
1 can (15 oz) sliced beets, drained, or 2 medium roasted beets, sliced
2 navel oranges, peeled and sliced into rounds or supremed
1 large ripe avocado, sliced
1/4 red onion, very thinly sliced
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese or feta (optional)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Make the dressing. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, and Dijon mustard in a small bowl until emulsified. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
Prep the greens. Arrange the mixed greens or arugula on a large serving platter or in a wide salad bowl, spreading them into an even base.
Layer the toppings. Arrange the beet slices, orange rounds, and avocado slices over the greens. Scatter the thinly sliced red onion evenly across the top.
Add cheese. If using, crumble goat cheese or feta over the salad for a creamy, tangy finish.
Dress and serve. Drizzle the dressing over the salad just before serving. Serve immediately alongside grilled fish or any light summer main.

Nutrition (per serving)

Green Salad with Beets, Oranges & Avocado — The Quiet Porch Dinner We Both Needed