Bacon, apple, and avocado with lemon-ginger dressing: a salad that builds the habit

Salads made without cheese, croutons, or grain get written off as a side dish before they even land on the table. This one is built to prove that assumption wrong: bacon and avocado give it enough substance to be dinner outright, and the green apple keeps every forkful from tasting heavy.

Avocado is doing the real work of staying power here, monounsaturated fat and fiber that make this filling rather than just crunchy. The bacon adds protein and a little salt that a bowl of greens alone never could, and the lemon in the dressing cuts through all that richness so nothing on the plate tastes heavy by the last bite.

Choosing where your bacon comes from is part of building this habit, not a separate errand from it: a pig that lived decently makes a better plate in more ways than one. Build the bowl before you toss it, green apple against dark greens against the pale gold of avocado, and let yourself actually want it. A meal built this well should be something you look forward to, not something you push through.

Ingredients

Salad:

• 4 cups mixed greens
• 1 cup diced green apple (skin on)
• 1 cup chopped avocado
• 2 strips cooked bacon, crumbled (clean, sugar-free, additive-free cure)
• 2 tbsp sliced green onion

Dressing:

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1 garlic clove, minced

Method

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crisp, then drain it on a paper-lined plate, cool, and crumble.

Put the mixed greens, diced apple, chopped avocado, crumbled bacon, and sliced green onion in a large bowl and toss together.

In a separate small bowl, whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, ground ginger, sea salt, and minced garlic until smooth. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving and toss to coat. To make it a main, swap the bacon for chopped cooked chicken.

Air fryer variation

You can crisp the bacon in the air fryer rather than the skillet. Lay the strips in a single layer in the basket and cook at 350 F for about 8 to 10 minutes, checking near the end since thickness changes the timing. Drain, cool, and crumble as above. Treat that time as a starting range and watch the first batch.

A word on what you are doing here

A salad you genuinely look forward to is one of the real pleasures of this way of eating. Let the richness of the avocado and the brightness of the apple make the bowl something you want, not something you manage. These are the plates that make a wide variety of vegetables a daily delight.

*Adapted from acleanplate.com*