Berry and yogurt salad dressing

Here is a super easy salad dressing that I have been making every day.

Ingredients:

6 oz berries

4 oz homemade soy yogurt

1/2 Tablespoon balsamic or apple cider vinegar (optional)

1 T flax-chia seeds (optional--actually tastes better without)

Blend in a blender.  Pour on your salad.  I make a huge salad for lunch with lettuce, spinach, kale or arugula, maybe a little raw cabbage, mushrooms, onion, red bell pepper, bean sprouts.   that's been my winter salad anyway.   I fill a big bowl and then dump the dressing on.  mmmmm.

Cold Slaw

That's what I thought it was called when I was a kid.

I made a recipe today from the Fuhrman Forums called Super Slaw.  I modified it enough that I hope it's printable here--that's why I'm posting, so I don't forget what I did.  It's not that different from what I've made before here.  I can't find my more recent inventions which are much simpler (cabbage, carrots, orange juice and chia seeds).    I didn't measure anything so these quantities can vary by a factor of 2.  I just went by taste.

Ingredients:
2-3 ripe pears or apples or some of each
3-4 cups shredded carrots
3-4 cups shredded cabbage
1/2-1 cup soy yogurt
1/2 cup currants or raisins
1 Tbsp spicy pecan vinegar
1 Tbsp riesling raisin vinegar
2 medjool dates--soak in the soy yogurt for a while if you think of it and they will soften up
1/4 cup toasted pecans (I cooked them in an initially unheated oven with the temp set at 350 for 10 minutes--half that time they probably weren't even warm).

Shred the apples, carrots and cabbage in a food processor or buy them already shredded.  Add the currants.  Combine the soy yogurt, dates, and vinegar in a blender and blend until smooth.  Take a taste of this--it's yummy.  Combine with the rest of the salad and add the pecans.  Super good.

Minimalist salads

Lately I've been eating lettuce like you'd snack on chips.  I like the taste of romaine lettuce and don't think it needs to be cut up and mixed with a bunch of other stuff--oh yeah, and I'm lazy.  Here's how I've been prepping it--makes it perk up just like it was fresh picked after a soaking rain!  

I cut off the bottom and wash the leaves and put them in a bowl with water on the bottom.



Then just cover with a plastic bag and put it in the fridge.



The leaves soak up the water and become full and crisp!

Black Bean Mango Salad!

mmm, love this:  lettuce, scallions, red bell pepper, any other salad stuff you want to throw in (e.g., endive, radicchio), mango, black beans, cilantro, lime juice, ground cumin, touch of chipotle powder.

oops, forgot the avocado. 

Now it's perfect.   I made bigger batch to take to a potluck.  Tomorrow lunch I'm going to a restaurant, so I'm going to do something similar.  I'll prepare ahead of time a bowl of black beans, mango, lime, cilantro, cumin, and will order a garden salad and dump my mixture on top.  Then I'll probably be out of black beans though I'll still have some mango left.  I wonder what I'll do for dinner.  

good salad and an update

I've been enjoying this salad lately:

It's got lettuce, red bell pepper, sometimes purple cabbage, corn, edamame.  The dressing is canned tomato blended with a little onion, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, cumin (optional), and some ground seeds or nuts if you want.

I had a house guest for a few days this week.  We went out to restaurants a few times.  I have to get better at enjoying restaurants. I don't like being a weirdo but I don't want to eat the tons of salt and oil you get at restaurants.  So I ordered plain salads and topped them with my own contraband.  They were good and I was happy eating my food.  I just wish I didn't feel like a weirdo, wondering if people think I have an eating disorder, etc.   I also ate too much of my food--way too many nuts.  That is partly due to wanting to celebrate with food--I used to enjoy having coffee and wine and good food with this friend.   Why does food have to be so psychological?  I wish I were in a better place with this.

my daily salads (lately)

I've been loving my salads lately so I decided they are post-worthy.   These make up 2 meals of my day on weekdays, sometimes weekends too if I'm gone most of the day.  I prepare them the night before.  I start with kale and cabbage.  I add 1 Tbsp of really good vinegar, such as a good balsamic.   I accidentally found this really good date vinegar at a fancy-pants store next to Penzey's spices (where I went to get some ceylon cinnamon).  They serve it up from the cask in which it was made--or fermented or whatever they do to make vinegar.  It's expensive and unfortunately I really like it.  so I will probably go back for more.  But a good balsamic or one of Dr. Fuhrman's flavored vinegars will do nicely:

I mush up the kale and cabbage (sometimes broccoli too) with the vinegar and add it to the bottom of my bowls.  They will marinate overnight and be more tender when I eat the salads.

Next I add 1/2 cup beans to each bowl (I often forget this until the end so order doesn't matter much after the kale and cabbage).  I also add some cinnamon because it's good for you and I like it.  So I've been adding it to everything.

Add herbs from the garden if you want.  Right now it's cilantro, chives, parsley and dill for me.

Next, a head of romaine lettuce.  We just started getting it locally and boy is it ever good!

Top it with fruit.  We usually have something on special at my co-op.  Lately it's been strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe and watermelon.  And the blackberries have been good too even if not on special.  So I've been mixing up those things lately.  

I wait until my meal the next day to add the "dressings."  At lunch it's usually a serving of soy yogurt.  Yum!  Here's today's lunch.  The fruit is strawberries, blackberries and cantaloupe and it's topped with soy yogurt.

I enjoyed that after a 2-hour mountain bike ride.  I was hungry!

At dinner, my topping is 1 Tbsp flavored vinegar (D'angou pear or spicy pecan are my favorites), and 1 Tbsp of my seed mixture.

news flash: Florida has great produce

Florida is a great place to be a nutritarian!  Okay, that's not a shock.  Here's the real shocker of the day:  Florida has great mountain bike trails!    The great produce is just fabulous.    Yesterday I scored a nice tangerine and grapefruit and a yummy cabbage from a fruit stand, and used that in today's salad.  Today we hit the Whole Foods in Sarasota.  I have some friends who have complaints about Whole Foods, but one thing in its favor is that the CEO is a follower of Drs. Fuhrman, Esselstyn, McDougall, and Campbell.  You can get nutritarian food from the hot food bar as well as salad bar!   Today I scored yummy local food:  salad, kale, strawberries, tomatoes and a few items from far away places.  Here is the salad I put together for tomorrow:

large, fresh, local red lettuce:

Here's the lettuce cut up and put in three bowls (8 cup bowls!).  a giant bunch of kale is next (half for tomorrow, half the next day):

I like to add in my seed mixture to the lettuce and stir it around.  Tomorrow when I add the vinegar, it will get soaked by the seed mixture and won't all sink to the bottom"

okay, now the kale is on top of that:

local tomatoes, yum!

okay, this probably doesn't go at all with tomatoes but I don't care.  I can eat the tomatoes first.  This is fresh local strawberries, plus some blueberries and raspberries from far away.  Most of the blueberries and raspberries are in a separate bowl for travel companion:

add in a can of chickpeas:

tomorrow I'll add vinegar to the salads.

ps.  I'm working on my self-esteem!

Yummy salad, and psychology

I took this picture in my car.  We're on a weekend road trip to go see friends:

I really liked this salad.  It has romaine lettuce, red cabbage, kale, broccolini, cauliflower, red bell pepper, grapefruit chunks, fennel, red onion, seed mixture, and vinegar.  Hard to believe such a healthy salad would taste good but it did.

We're visiting old friends.  The psychology part of the post is that yesterday I bought our favorite ice cream, beer, and bagels to bring to our friends.  I got jealous remembering enjoying these foods with them.  So I overate on fruit.  Could have been worse.  It gives me an appreciation for how hard it can be for people to follow this diet when you have many associations with good times with friends and family and eating.  It's a whole body and mind memory.  I just have to create new memories with these friends.    I'll get practice this weekend. My next moment this weekend was tonight watching them eat their cheesy bread and pizza and wishing I could join them.  Then I said to myself:  you can have it if you want.  then I thought:  oh, I'd feel awful if I ate that.  then the urge went away.  lesson learned:  it's a choice.   I'm sure there will be more moments as the weekend goes on.  They are having home-made belgian waffles for breakfast.  But I will wake up feeling great and hopefully go for a nice jog.  it's just a choice.  we are all happy with our choices and hopefully can live in harmony with each other.  :)

Sunday Salad

On the weekdays, my salads are more of a production because they include fruit and raw veggies.  On Sunday lately, I've been going simple and enjoying this one:

That's just romaine lettuce, 1/2 avocado, red bell pepper, 1 cup of peas (frozen), and sliced red onion.  I add some d'angou pear vinegar when I dish out a serving (too lazy to make a dressing).   I LOVE this salad.

Avocado orange dressing and Sunday salad

I eat a lot of salads during the week for convenience, so don't eat as many on the weekends.  I treat myself to other favorite foods like baked oriental yam, essene buds, Texas Rio Star grapefruit, samples of housemate's smoothies, frozen cherries and mangos.  By Sunday I'm ready for a salad, but I want something different from my weekday salads.  I also have the opportunity to make a real salad dressing which I'm too lazy to do during the week.  I came up with a really easy dressing

Avocado orange dressing
Ingredients:
1 avocado
juice of 1 medium orange or 1/2 large
1-2 Tbsp D'angou pear vinegar

Smash the avocado, add the orange juice and vinegar, mix until mostly smooth.

The salad is just lettuce, cucumber, and red bell pepper.  Add the dressing.  yum.

Bucket o' veggies

Sorry the picture is out of focus.  I made a bunch of cooked veggies for the week.  I filled two large pressure cookers full of veggies.  They cooked down, but this is a large bowl too.  These veggies fit into 6 2-cup containers and went into the freezer.  They taste quite good.  Here's what I put into pot #1:  eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, red bell pepper.  In pot #2 went an onion, a bunch of collard greens, and mushrooms, topped with some dried herbs du province and fines herbs.  After they cooked up, I added 2 16-oz cans of tomatoes.  The tomatoes came from the garden and that contributed a lot to the delicious taste.  The collards were just a bit bitter so I added some lemon juice.  I was surprised how good the final result tastes.  I guessed well what veggies and herbs to use.  The only problem is I tend to overcook veggies in the pressure cooker.  Well, the greens pot was just right.  Next time I will use a lower setting for the veggies pot.   I drank the broth leftover from the tomato jars and steaming to reclaim the vitamins lost in the water.   It was good.  I look at it like drinking a rich cup of tea.

I also prepped beans which I'll cook tomorrow.  I juiced a 5 lb bag of carrots (about 36 oz) and am soaking a lb of beans overnight in this juice (in the refrigerator).  Tomorrow I'll make a pot of collards, onions and mushrooms, and add those to the beans after the beans cook.  I'll divide into bowls to freeze for next week.  Then I just need to make a salad every day.

This is pretty much my standard meal plan.  I'm following an easy guideline, Dr. Fuhrman's GOMBBS acronym:  Greens, Onions, Mushrooms, Beans, and Seeds/nuts (in the salad).   The extra B is for berries which I eat a few times a week.  I add other fruit to my salads this time of year:  apple, orange, pomegranate seeds.  It's the same as the post I wrote here, without the asian pear.  I might have a small bowl of frozen cherries and mangos for dessert when I get home from work.

today's salad, this week's food

Today my salad is so good it boggles my mind, because it is simple.   I just chopped a head of romaine lettuce, a half lb of cabbage, some raw cauliflower, added 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/2 cup frozen edamame, a grapefruit, peeled and chopped (okay, a really good grapefruit from Texas called Rio Star), an ounce of my seed mixture, 2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's D'angou pear vinegar.  Now it's true, the high quality ingredients is what makes this salad delish--the good grapefruit, and the d'angou pear vinegar add a wonderful taste sensation that is not sour.  Wow. This made two giant salads.  I also made a microscopic version for housemate.  I'll have these for dinner?  --in 2 stages for sure.

Next week, first the first 3 days anyway, my micro salads will have lettuce, cabbage, carrots, satsuma (small orange), asian pear (a honey-sweet apple), small pomegranate, flavored vinegar, and seed mixture.  I'm expecting that to be yummy!  My roasted veggies will be broccoli, cauliflower, a little butternut squash, a little beets, onion, with chives, sage and basil ('cause I have some in the freezer from the garden), and I'm still working on the marinate, but probably orange juice and no-salt mustard.  Breakfast will be light before exercise,  a bowl of frozen cherries, blueberries, mangos.  Lunch and dinner will be bean soup, micro-salad, and roasted veggies.  I'll probably eat my lunch bean soup early because I'll be hungry after exercise.  I still have lots of bean soup from two batches in the freezer so don't have to make any this week.  Yum, talk about eating like a king.  I am amazed that I sometimes go off plan to eat junk because I think I'm missing something.  This food is thousands of time better.  I wish I could remember that all the time!

Yummy Salad

I make salad every day and this one was so good I want to remember it.  It includes kale and collards because I'm going on vacation next week and want to trim down the plants in my garden before leaving.  I think what makes the salad good are the combination of pears and mango and the kale and cabbage.  It's a great combo.  Apples would probably work in place of pears.

Ingredients for 3 salads:

cabbage, 277 g or 3 cups chopped

kale, 168 g or 2-3 cups chopped  (or however much you want, this is just how much I picked from the garden)

collards, 41 g, or 2 big leaves (or however much you want)

1 medium cucumber chopped

1 medium yellow summer squash, chopped

1 large pear or 2 small

1 cup chopped mango (I used frozen)

3 Tbsp balsamic or fruit infused vinegar (not sour)

1 oz seed mixture or chopped nuts

How easy is that?  combine everything.  I made this the night before because I don't have time in the mornings.   Well, that's okay for the kale and collards because they marinate overnight and are more tender.  Oh, and an important thing I do with the kale and collards is I mashed them, or massage them, with my hands after chopping them--that helps tenderize them also.  Oh, you de-stem them too before chopping.

today's "salads"

I'm trying a new schedule that allows me to do my food prep in the morning.  I think this will let me be more creative and actually do some real cooking on weekdays.  I just didn't have the energy when I was prepping all my meals at 9 pm the night before.   Today I decided to enjoy my fruit separately from my salads and to cook my veggies.  Here's what I came up with:

Breakfast:  1 lb strawberries.  yum!

Lunch and Dinner:
I cooked up in the pressure cooker:  broccoli, onions, red cabbage, and mushrooms; and 1 tsp each of dried oregano and basil (didn't have any fresh herbs on hand).  Added 2 cans of (homemade) tomatoes, 1 cup of beans, 1 oz of seed mixture, and 3 Tbsp spicy pecan vinegar.   This fit into two 4-cup containers.  Then I filled two 8 cup containers with a chopped head of lettuce and about 4 oz of chopped spinach.  Poured the veggies on top of the greens when I was ready to eat.  Yum!

Dessert:
1 lb of fresh cherries.  fantastic!

Wow.  This food is so much better than anything I ever ate in the "Standard American Diet."

tomorrow's salad

Let's see if I can remember what went into this:

1 head lettuce

1/2 small head cabbage

1 stalk broccoli

1/3 cauliflower

1/2 cucumber

1 celery stalk

some spinach and arugula, maybe 1 cup packed each?

2 apples, cored

cilantro

1 cup frozen corn

juice of 1 small orange and 1 small lime

2 Tbsp seed mixture (soaks up the juice)

Chop everything (except the last 3) in food processor and combine in a big bowl. Add the last three ingredients. The lime adds a nice zing. I wonder if cumin would be good in this. Or cinnamon...or pumpkin pie spice. It seemed good as it was so I didn't want to mess with it. Update: I did try pumpkin pie spice the next day and didn't like it so much--doesn't go well with the lime. Fortunately it didn't ruin it, but I don't recommend it.

confetti salads

This is my new name for my "microprocessor" salads, which can be misconstrued with electronic devices. Carol has a beautiful presentation of her confetti salad on her website. This is a much better name for it. I think she was also inspired by Carrots' thread on the Fuhrman forums.

microsalads

Today's microsalad was sooooo good. I was thinking it's as good as any Thanksgiving treat. It's pretty much what I posted a week or two ago, so I just updated the post a bit and added a few pictures. Maybe I'm just insane to think this is so good, but hey, as long as I'm happy with it.

Fall microsalads

Here's what my microsalads have been like lately.

Chop in a food processor and stir into a big bowl:

1 head romaine lettuce (about 1/2-1 lb total)

1/4-1/2 lb broccoli

1/4 - 1/2 lb cauliflower

1/4 - 1/2 lb purple cabbage

1/4 lb bok choy or baby bok choy

puree in a food processor and add to the bowl:

1-2 oranges (2 if small), peeled, remove seeds

1 banana peeled

1 apple and/or 1 pear (or 2 small apples)

Then stir into the bowl:

1 oz ground seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, hemp) and pignolias

pomegranate seeds from 1 pomegranate

optional

add 1/2 cup edamame

This fits into three 3-cup tupperware bowls. Total calories (without edamame) is about 1000 so it's substantial! This tastes like dessert to me. It's crisp, fresh, inviting, zingy (from the pomegranate), and sweet (banana, orange and apple!). It's real yummy! This post describes how to "peel" a pomegranate and extract the seeds.

Here's the fruit I used one day. At left is a persimmons--I left that off the ingredients list because I use it rarely but it's a nice treat when you have a ripe one.

Here's the final product. It may not look like much but boy is it tasty:

Daily salad

I've been making great salads for my weekday meals. As I've posted before, on weekdays, I live on my bean soup from the freezer (made on the weekend) and salads. When I get tired of it, I'll do something else but for now I'm loving this. I make a big ole' salad every night and split it into three meals for the next day. Here's a post that describes this. The picture above shows one of the salads from last week. Here are typical ingredients used throughout the week this time of year (depends on what's fresh--right now, it's apples, pears, cruciferous veggies, greens, and pomegranates).

1 head romaine lettuce

3-6 oz cauliflower

3-6 oz broccoli

red bell pepper (optional)

1 cup frozen sweet corn (optional; note: organic snow pac is the sweetest I've found)

1 pint cherry tomatoes (if they are local and fresh and ripe)

a few oz kale and/or purple cabbage

1 small-medium apple

1 small-medium pear (our local pears are very small but delicious)

1 kiwi

seeds from a whole pomegranate (about 100 g, or 3.5 oz)

once a week, a grapefruit peeled and cutup instead of the some of the other fruit

juice from an orange

juice from a lime

1-2 oz seed mixture

I chop the cruciferous veggies first (kale, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage) and mix with the juice and seed mixture, to marinate a bit. Then chop up the lettuce and fruit, mix it all up together, and put it in my bowls for tomorrow's meals. For the lunch meal, I usually add 1/2 cup edamame. I eat the salads with sliced carrots and kohlrabi.

"Greek" chickpea salad

I made a salad for a party and it was really good. I was going to use a recipe from the Fuhrman forums recipe site, but it called for spicy pecan vinegar and I didn't have any. Plus I thought of more things I wanted to add and just ended up changing the recipe. So it's different enough I can post it. But it was inspired by the Greek chickpea salad recipe, for those who have access and want to see it.

Here are the ingredients for a big batch that I split into a bowl for the party and a bowl for home. Halve the recipe if you want a smaller batch. Also, please note that these are somewhat random things I had in the kitchen. You don't have to follow this exactly! The main ingredients are chickpeas, romaine lettuce, some fruit, cucumber, nuts, pine nuts smashed in fresh-squeezed orange&lime juice, a little raw onion, and a little cilantro. The fruit can be whatever you want! I prefer the romaine lettuce over others because it holds up better in a dressing. You could try adding kale too.

2 cans unsalted cooked chickpeas, or 1 lb cooked dry chickpeas (soak overnight before cooking).

1/4-1/2 lb cherry tomatoes (optional--I only add fresh tomatoes if they are from my garden or one nearby)

1 small apple, peeled, cored, chopped

1 small pear, peeled, cored, chopped

1 kiwi, peeled, chopped

1/2 lb grapes, cut in half

1 cucumber, peeled, chopped

1 avocado, peeled, chopped

1 large head romaine or 2 small

1/2 fresh, mild onion

2-5 oz purple cabbage (as desired)

juice of 1 orange

juice of 1 lime

1 oz pine nuts, crushed, smashed or ground

1/4 - 1/2 cup brazil nuts, chopped

few Tbsps chopped cilantro

Mix the smashed pine nuts in the juice, or blend in a blender ( just smash and mix). Combine everything except the lettuce in a big bowl. Stir. Add the lettuce. Stir again. It's yummy.

I forgot to snap a picture. The guests loved it, so I'll be making it again and will snap a picture then.