Lime Poppy Seed Dressing -- #recipe by @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  While Mr. Right and I eat a lot of fresh vegetables, neither of us eats a lot of fresh fruit. We do love – and grow – berries, and we drink juice and love baked fruit desserts. But we’re not likely to eat an apple for an afternoon snack, and a fair percentage of our bananas end up in banana bread.

But we do love the local cherries, and when Dixon melons – cantaloupe grown in a sunny corner of the valley just south of us – appear, we always indulge. (Here's the Cantaloupe Cucumber Salad we made with an earlier Dixon melon.)

This Lime Poppy Seed Dressing is perfect on a fruit salad. Use your favorite combo; I used half a cantaloupe, one nectarine, a small bunch of green grapes, a banana, and a handful of Rainier and Lambert (dark red) cherries, and about half the dressing. The rest went on a spinach and strawberry salad topped with honey roasted pecans. Mmm!

The inspiration recipe called for more citrus; I always start with half and adust, as I did here. You might want to add a little more to suit your own taste and the fruit or salad you’re dressing. An immersion or stick blender is the perfect tool, but a small food processor or your blender will work nicely, too. 

What's your favorite way to eat fruit? And yes, wine is a fruit!

Lime Poppy Seed Dressing

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (5 tablespoons) lime juice

1/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon white onion, chopped

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Add all the ingredients except the poppy seeds to a small bowl that fits with your immersion blender. Alternatively, use a blender or a small food processor. Pulse until well mixed and the oil emulsifies. Add the poppy seeds and pulse a few times to break the seeds down a bit, to the consistency of coarsely ground black pepper. 

Dress your salad just before serving. 

Store any remaining dressing in a tightly sealed jar in the refrigerator for up to a week. The dressing may separate a bit; shake before using to recombine. 

Enjoy!

From the cover of BITTERROOT LAKE, written as Alicia Beckman (Crooked Lane Books; available in hardcover, ebook, and audio): 

When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman's suspense debut.

Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah's guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.

Now that she's a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she's greeted by an old friend--and by news of a murder that's clearly tied to that tragic day she'll never forget.

And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries, and the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories. Death al Dente, the first Food Lovers' Village Mystery, won Best First Novel in 2013, following her 2011 win in Best Nonfiction. Her first historical short story, "All God's Sparrows," won the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story. Watch for her first standalone suspense novel, Bitterroot Lake (written as Alicia Beckman) in April 2021 from Crooked Lane Books.

A past president of Sisters in Crime and a current board member of Mystery Writers of America, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by her website and subscribe to her seasonal newsletter, for a chat about the writing life, what she's working on, and  what she's reading -- and a free short story. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.