I found this recipe for Garlic Dill Twists—breadsticks, essentially—a while back and have been dying to try it.  I finally had (almost) all of the right ingredients; step two was trying to figure out how to justify making breadsticks for dinner.  I decided if I paired them with a big green salad and a healthy fruit smoothie, it would work.  I ended up trying three new recipes tonight, making up the salad and smoothie recipes as I went along.

I won’t rehash the recipe for the Garlic Dill Twists, but I followed it almost exactly…the only real difference is that I used dried dill and powdered garlic.  They were fairly easy to make, and now that I have a bunch of dried dill on hand the only ingredient I’ll really need to shop for to make them again is the sour cream (ssshhhh…don’t tell Tom it’s in there…he hates sour cream!)  All of the other ingredients are ones that I usually have around!

 Although they took a while because you have to let them rise for an hour, the Garlic Dill Twists were definitely worth the wait!

As the breadsticks were baking, I decided to start on a salad.  I had a few factors going into the type of salad I wanted to make.  Firstly, I had some fresh picked spinach from my garden that I wanted to use for the greens.  Secondly, I had some other produce that I wanted to use up before we leave Thursday for a long weekend up north.  This included primarily avocados and asparagus.  I had heard of asparagus in salad, but hadn’t tried it.  I like avocado in salad, but wasn’t sure how it paired with asparagus.  So, what did I do?  I turned to my good friend, AllRecipes.com and did an ingredient search to see who else was mixing these.  I found a recipe that was somewhat similar to what I had in mind that rated well and decided that was proof enough that the flavors would mesh all right.  I decided on a cilantro-lime dressing to round out the salad (with fresh picked cilantro that so kindly reseeded itself in my garden this year).  So, here’s what I ended up with:

2 cups fresh spinach, chopped

1 small avocado, peeled, pitted and diced

10 “stalks” of asparagus, cut into 1 ½ inch pieces

4 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro, chopped

1 Tbsp. fresh squeezed lime juice

1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 tsp. honey

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder

Cumin

Place the asparagus in a bowl and add water until almost covered. Microwave for 3 minutes until slightly tender.  Drain asparagus and let cool.  Toss with spinach and avocado.  For the dressing, simply whisk all ingredients together (add seasonings to taste), then pour over the salad.

This really turned out better than I expected.  The dressing needed the honey, because it had a little bite to it otherwise.  The flavors actually did pair quite well together, and it does make for a very GREEN salad, as Tom commented several times!  That must mean it’s healthy, though, right?!

After I put the breadsticks in the oven, I started on a new smoothie recipe.  I actually kept this one pretty simple, and it was quite delicious!

1 package frozen mango pieces

Juice of 2 small limes

Dump the frozen mango pieces in the blender.  Add enough juice to almost reach the top of the fruit.  Add lime juice.  Blend on high until thoroughly mixed.  **Note, this recipe is best served in some sort of fun glassware.

So, that’s what we had for dinner tonight.  And it was all derived from a craving for breadsticks and a desire to use up certain ingredients I had lying around!