Do you ever feel like making a salad sounds like a pretty good idea, but you don't know what kind of salad to make? We struggle with that all. the. time. And then we usually revert to making this same salad over and over again. But not complaining, because this salad is really refreshing and it never gets old!
It makes all our grocery trips so much easier, too. We just keep on buying cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and sweet onion, because those are the primary vegetables needed for this recipe. This recipe is actually a modification from a similar salad I used to eat with my family when I was growing up. I remember I would see this typical type of salad on the table at almost every lunch or dinner, whether it be at home or at my grandparents' house or some other relative. I just assumed this was another one of those Russian salads and it was my family's way of making me eat more vegetables.
I usually make this in about 10 minutes and eat it for dinner on most nights. And lately I've been making it to get Ryan to eat more vegetables as well. But it's okay because he actually really enjoys this salad too. And that's saying something since he hasn't always been a fan of eating just salad for dinner.
This version of the recipe packs in a little more flavor than my family's version. The original recipe does not use avocados or cheese and the dressing is made from a lot of sunflower oil and only a little salt and rice vinegar. And sometimes there's a little dillweed in there too. So I definitely had to upgrade this salad just a little bit!
The only part of this salad that makes it slightly different, is that there is non-refined sunflower oil in the dressing. Non-refined sunflower oil is actually pretty difficult to find in a grocery store like Safeway or Trader Joe's. My parents and grandmother would buy this oil from a nearby Russian store.
My family and I just love our sunflower oil and use it on pretty much everything: potatoes, halva (a dense sweet made from a type of pressed nut or seed), and salted herring. We've tried substituting sunflower oil with olive oil and it's still very good, but you don't get that distinct taste I remember so well from my childhood.
