Break out of your salad rut with some California Endive.  It makes a great base for your favourite salad toppings, like avocado, bacon and chipotle ranch dressing!

I want to be clear that this blog is not truly representative of what I eat, day to day.  If you were to judge my diet simply by the recipes you see here, you would think all I ever ate were muffins, cookies and cake, with the occasional entree, and savoury dish.  Truth be told, I feature baked goods and desserts so prominently mostly because they photograph easily and I can make them in the middle of the day for good lighting.  Main courses are definitely harder, because I want them to be as fresh as possible for my family to eat and I don’t want to hold them up while I scramble for photos.  I am quite certain that doing so would put my very patient and understanding husband right over the edge, because when he’s hungry, he’s hungry!  So if I have a main dish I want to feature, I am usually left trying to warm up with leftovers the next day and  make them look freshly cooked.

And you might think I don’t eat a lot of veggies because there are relatively few salads and side dishes on All Day I Dream About Food.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  Vegetables and I are very good friends and I usually eat many servings per day.  In fact, I often have salad for breakfast.  That’s the straight up truth.  Actually, I usually have it for “second breakfast”, after a run or a workout.  I come home, grab some veggies, chop them, dress them and proceed to stuff my face.  I’ve discovered that salad early on in the day is a great way to feel healthy and full.  A well-dressed, flavourful salad is as filling and satisfying as anything else, and you have the added benefit of feeling virtuous after eating it.

I was once again asked to join the OnDiva campaign, to get the word out there on this versatile, delicious and healthy vegetable.  And I am more than happy to do so, because I love it.  I’ve  decided that I like it best raw, as a scoop for dips and chopped up in salads.  I sometimes use it in addition to regular lettuce and sometimes to replace the lettuce altogether.  I love the crunchy texture and the flavour, and they go with pretty much anything.  For this recipe, it suddenly popped in my head how much I’d love some serious Southwestern flavour.  Some endive, some avocado, some tomatoes, some crumbled bacon and a seriously spicy Chipotle Ranch dressing and I am in salad heaven.  I ate this as a main course the first night and proceeded to make it again for second breakfast the next day (after I got a few photos!).

And when I had a little leftover ranch dressing, I proceeded to use endive leaves to scoop it up as a snack.  Honestly, you can’t let these goodies go to waste!

This post is sponsored by Discover Endive.  All opinions are my own.