Salad with Avocado

Five months old, adjusted four months. Nora can sit with support for about thirty seconds before she tips sideways, and she tips sideways with the same expression of mild surprise every time, as if she did not anticipate that gravity would apply to her. Owen is rolling. Not reliably, not consistently, but he has done it three times now with the look of someone who has accidentally discovered a new technology and is not sure yet what to do with it.

I have started planning September in a real way: which days Patty can watch them, whether I need a backup arrangement, how I am going to pump at school, how I am going to get out the door before 7:30 AM with two babies packed and ready and dropped at my parents' house. I am making lists. I am a list-maker by nature and the lists are helping and also they are just lists and September will come with its own specific demands that no list can fully anticipate and I know this and I am making the lists anyway.

The summer heat has changed my cooking entirely. Nothing hot. Nothing that requires the oven for more than twenty minutes. Pasta salads and cold grain bowls and Costco rotisserie chicken eaten directly from the container over the kitchen sink while I think about what I am going to do with the rest of it. The answer is always: rice bowls, tacos, soup when it cools down. The Costco chicken is the most versatile four dollars per pound I have ever spent.

Ryan and I had a date night on Saturday. Patty came at 6 and stayed until 11. We went to a restaurant on 95th Street that has been there since before we were born and had chicken vesuvio and shared a bottle of wine and talked about the babies and then talked about other things and then talked about the babies again. This is what date night is now. It is a lot. It is also more than enough.

The rotisserie chicken has been doing the heavy lifting all summer, but what I keep coming back to alongside it — especially on the nights when Ryan is on baby duty and I have twenty minutes and zero bandwidth — is this avocado salad. It requires no heat, it comes together faster than the babies’ next feeding cycle, and it is bright and filling in a way that makes me feel like I did something right. On a Saturday when date night is dinner on 95th Street and a bottle of wine and talking about the babies and then actually talking, this is what Thursday looks like.

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

Ingredients

2 ripe avocados, pitted and diced
1 English cucumber, diced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1 large lime)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

Prep the vegetables. Dice the avocados and cucumber into roughly 3/4-inch pieces. Halve the cherry tomatoes and thinly slice the red onion. Add everything to a large mixing bowl along with the chopped cilantro.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, salt, pepper, and garlic powder until combined.
Dress and toss. Pour the dressing over the salad and gently toss to coat, taking care not to mash the avocado. Taste and adjust salt or lime juice as needed.
Serve immediately. This salad is best eaten right away while the avocado is fresh. If making ahead, prep all ingredients except the avocado and dress just before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Salad with Avocado — The Kind of Easy That Gets You Through August