Today is the first day of spring and I am going to kick it off than with a citrus salad! Where I live, it has felt like spring for a few weeks now, so I have been getting excited lately. 

I don’t have a favourite season. I actually look forward to each new season about a month before it starts. For me, every season has something to count on.

Near the end of autumn, I am looking forward to snow and winter. I love the dark and quiet nights of winter. Sometimes it is so quiet, I swear I can hear snowflakes hit the ground. The way the snow looks on the trees, and the sound of the neighbours shovelling all around me, are just some simple things I truly enjoy in winter.

Midsummer, I dream of cooler evenings and the dark mornings of autumn. I love walking during a warm fall evening and you can hear the crunch of the leaves under your feet as you walk and you can almost smell the fallen leaves as they turn into nothing into the ground.

Around May, I am ready for the heat of summer and long nights around a campfire. As much as I enjoy the quiet and dark of winter, I equally enjoy the bright and loud summer. Daylight until 9 or 10 in the evening and the sound of neighbours BBQing or playing ball, makes summer sound alive and exciting.

Then in January, I am ready to retire the winter jacket and take out the hoodie or fleece. The sun is in a different position in the sky so the snow is melting at almost every temperature. Minus 10 feels not too shabby; plus 10 feels amazing! There are puddles everywhere as the winter melts and soon green buds will be popping out of the ground and off the end of trees.

Basically, I am ready for the season’s change a few months before it happens, and I look forward to something in every season. Most of all, each season brings different types of produce and recipe opportunities and this is what this blog is about: food!

This salad highlights the spring flavours that I have been playing around with these past couple of weeks.

Step by Step

Gather your ingredients and feel free to use some substitutions. Use any citrus you like; I used a pink grapefruit, a navel orange and a mandarin orange. Try adding blood orange, pomelo, or maybe a clementine! 

Also, if you don’t have blood orange olive oil or avocado oil, use olive oil. Same for the champagne vinegar; you can use white wine vinegar instead. 

Start by making the dressing. Mix dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk well. Set aside. 

Segment the citrus fruits and cut them into bite-sized chunks. Toss citrus into a bowl. Add in chopped avocado, sliced fennel, minced red onion and chopped mint, and mix well. Add in the dressing, toss and serve!