Avocado-Melon Salsa

I've been craving avocado's like nobodies business lately.  One of my favorite ways to get my avocado fix is to make a fruity salsa.  Today I made what might very well be my favorite salsa to date!  It's a combination of avocado and melon, which might sound strange, but trust me when I say that this is totally delish!

Another reason I love salsa is because it is so versatile.  There's really no way to screw it up.  Just chop up a bunch of stuff and toss it together.  Wabash, you have salsa!  I think I will increase the amount of jalapenos next time, though.  I really like a lot of zing.  As it is right now, the jalapenos just sorta balance everything out without adding much heat at all.

Avocado-Melon Salsa

1 avocado, chopped into small chunks

Melon, chopped, equal parts as avocado

1 handful of chopped red onion 

1 tsp minced garlic

6 jalapeno rings, diced

juice of 1/2 lime

Combine all chopped ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Serve over jerk chicken or fish, or eat with tortilla chips.  Personally, I take the chip route.

I have no idea how long this will keep.  Fresh salsa doesn't usually last more than a day or two in my fridge!

Fresh sqeezed orange juice, where have you been all of my life?

Oh. My. God.  Fresh squeezed orange juice.  Can anyone say best thing I've ever tasted in my life?  Seriously.  I don't know what the hell those damn frauds at the orange juice companies have been selling us all these years, because what comes in those bottles at the grocery store labeled as Orange Juice sure as hell tastes nothing like what just came out of my oranges!  Well, technically they are tangerines, but whatever.  Fresh squeezed orange juice is one of the best things I've discovered this year, I do think.  

Due to the whole raw-transition thing, I've been trying to diversify my nutrient sources as much as possible.  I've been reading Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets, which goes into a lot of great detail about nutrition and some of the issues raw vegans have in obtaining some of these nutrients.  It explains how some nutrients work together to create other nutrients, and how being deficient in even one vitamin can, at times, be enough to halt the entire process of conversion.

Now, I'm sure we all know how important Vitamin-C is to our health, but I was shocked by some of what I learned in this book.  I was inspired to start consuming more citrus.  Only one problem.  I hate eating citrus.  I hate everything about it.  Either you peel it and eat the wedges, which is gross in so many ways.  I don't know how anyone eats those gross little peely things.  Blech.  Then there's cutting the fruit in half and spooning out the meat.  My grandfather used to eat his grapefruit like this, and I don't know how he did it, to be honest!  I can't manage it without squirting the whole house with juices!  And apparently they make "no-squirt" grapefruit knives, but do these things really work??  Even if they do, I don't really have time to do that every morning!  Not to mention, you can't prepare citrus ahead of time because of all that darn oxidation.  Damn you nature!

I decided the only way I could get my raw citrus vitamins was through juicing.  So I clicked on over to Amazon and ordered myself a handy dandy little juicer.  I got the Chef'n Juicester Citrus Juicer and Reamer for less than $15!  

The clear reamer piece is detachable so you can juice lemons and limes, too.  The carafe holds just about enough for one serving.  Since this thing arrived, I just can't get enough of fresh juice!  My favorite so far has been combining the juices each of one grapefruit and one tangerine.  So delish!