Healthy Rainbow Vegetable Salad with Turmeric Roasted Chickpeas

If you have children and are in need of some inspiration on getting them to love their veggies, then this kid-friendly recipe is for you. I'm visiting my family in Wisconsin now. My children love to play with my brother's four children who are all about the same ages as mine. Now, my children love their vegetables, but my brother's children are not the same. They are a little more hesitant to have a gigantic pile of raw vegetables fill their plates. My oldest niece is the most adventuresome when it comes to new vegetables. She always asks what I'm eating and wants to try it. The other day she tasted purple daikon radish for the first time and loved it, as well as sliced raw kohlrabi. So when I introduced her to this salad, she literally could not stop eating it. Even before dinner was served she was stealing the lettuce and vegetables off the platter!

Beautiful, bright colors excite children. Why do you think candy is dyed with the most brilliant colors? A platter of fruits and vegetables arranged in a beautiful way is pleasing to the eyes, and even before we eat, our eyes send messages to our brain to begin producing digestive juices in preparation for what is before us. If you make the vegetable presentation appetizing to your children, you might be more likely to naturally gain their acceptance in eating a plate of fresh vegetables. The key to children trying something new, and enjoying it, is patience and persistence (keep offering it)!

Choose their favorite rainbow-colored fruits and vegetables for the salad! For the red color, try diced red bell pepper, halved cherry tomatoes, chopped red radishes, or diced red apple. For the orange color, try chopped orange carrots, diced orange bell peppers, cubed roasted sweet potatoes, or cubed roasted winter squash. For yellow try, Turmeric-Roasted Chickpeas (recipe below), raw corn from the cob, yellow bell peppers, yellow carrots, sliced yellow zucchini, or grated yellow beets. For the green color there are so many options! Try chopped cucumber, blanched green beans, diced avocado, chopped celery, chopped raw broccoli, blanched frozen peas, diced green bell peppers, or thinly sliced green kale. For the blue/purple color try diced red onion, grated raw beets, fresh blueberries, diced purple bell peppers, or roasted purple potatoes. Let me know in the comment section below which vegetable combination you used and how your children liked it. :)

Autumn Detox Salad with Creamy Ginger-Cilantro Dressing (vegan)

Sometimes when the weather cools it is easy to get into the habit of eating more dense, cooked foods. For some people this is just what they need. But for others, a balance between raw and cooked (or even predominantly raw) is best. We each are unique, and so should be our diets. This colorful and nutrient-dense salad provides some key ingredients to support healthy detoxification. The dressing is delicious and can be used as a dip for raw veggies or used to top your favorite salads! I've even used it to top steamed vegetables! 

What is detoxification? In functional medicine, detoxification is often considered "biotransformation" because our bodies will transform harmful substances into less harmful substance and then excrete them from the body. This process can vary in effectiveness in different people depending on the nutrients we ingest, our genetics, and what types of toxins we are exposed to. For example, if we are exposed to persistent organic pollutants, which are so complex that they recirculate over and over in our body's detoxification process, they can slow everything down, not allowing a person to properly detox the everyday exposures like mercury from dental fillings or alcohol. Persistent organic pollutants include things like dioxins, DDT, and PCBs. DDT is an insecticide that was banned from the US in 1972. My mom has told me many stories of how she and her friends and siblings used to run behind the trucks that were spraying DDT when she was growing up in the 60's because they all liked the smell of it! Unfortunately they just had no idea back then how toxic it was. DDT has a half life of 50 years, which means that she passed down this stuff to me in utero and through breastfeeding. As a result of this (and other factors), I always need to take extra care in supporting my detoxification pathways.

Toxins come in through our air, food, water, and skin. Once they are in our bodies we need to change their shape to make them less toxic and get them safely out of our systems. Toxins go though two phases of detox: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 adds a chemical handle onto the toxin (usually a hydroxyl group). Phase 2 then grabs the handle and pulls the toxin out of the body (commonly this is glutathione that attaches to the hydroxyl group). Now the toxin needs to safely exit out of the body. This happens through the sweat, urine, and feces. However, if you are consuming a diet low in plant foods, while consuming a diet high in salt and acidifying foods like processed foods, meats, and dairy, then you will not be able to excrete the glutathione-bound toxins in the urine and therefore they will get reabsorbed back into the body! Same with the gut. Without enough soluble fiber from plant foods, the toxins will stick around and get reabsorbed back into the system. This is another reason why a plant-rich diet is so important.

Detox Benefits of this Salad

Raw Thai Kale Slaw with a Creamy Ginger-Almond Butter Dressing

You are going to love this nutritious raw kale slaw. It's full of detoxification and antioxidant compounds, and just bursting with the fresh, bright flavors of basil, mint, and cilantro. All tossed in a slightly spicy and gingery, creamy almond butter dressing. What I love about this salad is that it lasts up to 5 days in the refrigerator! Once it's made, you can take out portions as needed to easily fulfill part of your daily raw veggie needs.

I've been serving a large plateful of this Thai-style kale slaw with fried eggs for breakfast, or tossed with leftover rice and garbanzo beans for lunch. It's also delicious served with a thai-style main dish for dinner, such as Thai Coconut Fish Sticks, Thai Fish Curry with Garden Vegetables, or this Vegan Thai Green Curry.

And not to forget the oh-so-important nutrition information! As you might guess, this salad is rich in detoxifying compounds. Kale and cabbage both come from the cruciferous vegetable family, a family of vegetables known for their detoxification powers. Did you know that there is research showing that autistic children who consume sulforophane (one of the active compounds in cruciferous vegetables) show positive behavioral changes as a result of this nutritional superstar? Sulforophane is most concentrated in broccoli sprouts, but can also be found in raw (or lightly steamed) kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, radishes, watercress, and arugula!

Cruciferous vegetables are also very beneficial in calming down autoimmunity. Once consumed, sulforophane travels to our cells and changes how our genes are read. It literally allows us to read hundreds of beneficial antioxidant and detoxification genes. The result is a cell that has less toxins, and less inflammation. Can you function in a messy, dirty house? I know I can't! The cell is the same. It can't function very well if it has lots of toxins and debris lying around. Detoxification is, in essence, cleaning up the house of the cell. Antioxidants, then we could say, are the repair crew. When your cells are "clean" you might notice increased energy, clearer thinking, and less pain!

Winter Salad with Fennel and a Blood Orange Vinaigrette

Even though it may be winter, you can still eat the colors of the rainbow and give yourself a hearty dose of powerful phytochemicals! Consuming the deep reds, magentas, and oranges you see in this salad means that you are flooding your body with plant chemicals that prevent DNA damage, stimulate the immune system, reduce inflammation, block substances we ingest from becoming carcinogens, and of course mop up free radicals. In fact, I should rename this salad to The Anti-Cancer Salad! My children even love this salad (minus the red onions). I came downstairs yesterday morning to find that they had all packed a container of it their school lunches (along with chicken-vegetable soup or turkey black bean chili)!

If you haven't worked with fennel before then you are in for a treat. This delicious vegetable adds complex flavors to this salad. I love eating it raw but it's also delicious braised or roasted! We like to added it to fresh juices, in fact, since this recipe only uses the bulb, you can save the stalks to make green juice (combine green apple, parsley, kale, lemons, and fennel stalks for a delicious elixir). If you need some visual assistance in cutting up fennel then check out the tutorial I prepared for you at the bottom of this post.

One more note on the ingredients here….this recipe calls for either chopped or segmented blood oranges. To chop them you just peel, slice, and then chop into pieces. To segment, you need to peel them and then cut into wedges around the membranes. I like to use a small serrate knife to do this. It's really very easy but if you've never done it before it can seem daunting. Food52 has a great, short video on doing this that I suggest watching for guidance if you need it. You can view it here.

Post-Holiday Detox Salad (vegan)

Indulge a little too much during the holidays? Feeling the need to cleanse and reset? Drinking too much alcohol, eating a lot of sugary foods, and just eating too much food in general can tax your detoxification pathways. If you are not detoxing properly, you can end up with lowered energy, increased pain in the body, poor circulation, and sluggish digestion.

By consuming this salad, which is rich in plant-based chemicals that promote detoxification, you can relieve some of the unwanted symptoms of a holiday hangover and begin to regain balance. In fact, if you include raw plant foods such as kale, cabbage, arugula, broccoli, collards, ginger, pomegranates, lemons and limes, blueberries, cranberries, black currants, and raspberries in your daily diet (try green smoothies, fresh juices, and big salads), you will find that indulging in (healthy) holiday treats once in a while will be easier for your body to handle. Hint, hint….try serving this salad at your next holiday gathering!

Zippy Kale Salad with Fennel, Sweet Onion, and Goji Berries

My garden is going nuts this year. I've never had so much kale! Everything is so lush and beautiful. I planted rows of sweet onions amongst the kale and other vegetables. Little did I know last spring, but allium vegetables are great at deterring aphids. Almost all of my kale this year is aphid-free. We've been making kale sautés, kale and egg frittatas, creamed kale, kale in soup, kale salads…..kale everything!

This raw kale salad has a zippy grapefruit dressing that counteracts the bitter of the kale. Although the amount of chopped kale called for in this recipe seems like a lot, keep in mind that after it's massaged with the dressing it looks like a small salad for about 6 people! I've been using siberian kale from my garden in my kale salads because it is so tender and mild, however any variety of kale will work. 

Kale is a vegetable powerhouse! It's high in sulforaphane, a compound that stimulates your body's own production of powerful antioxidant and detoxification proteins, which help to safely remove environmental toxins from your body and protect your cells. If you want to learn more about detoxification and how you can protect yourself from environmental toxins….as they relate to blood sugar dysregulation, diabetes, obesity, infertility, and just about every chronic disease……you can register for the FREE online Detox Summit going on now through August 11th. Each day's talks will only be available for 24 hours so be sure to register today. I listened to them yesterday on my iPhone plugged into some speakers while pitting 20 pounds of organic cherries!

Nasturtium and Kohlrabi Salad with Creamy Lemon-Dill Dressing

I love making big salads in the summertime with the abundance of fresh, organic vegetables we have growing in our garden. Each day it's a different salad. Sometimes I get on a kick and will use the same vegetables and dressing for days in a row. Lately I've been making this amazing Creamy Lemon-Dill Dressing. It's so good, I usually double the recipe below so I can have leftovers for the next day!

I've been posting photographs and the occasional recipe (or at least the ingredients) to my Instagram account. So be sure to go there to get the scoop on how I live this organic, gluten-free, whole foods lifestyle daily with five children.

If you are not familiar with nasturtium or kohlrabi….let me explain. First off, it's great for our bodies and our taste buds to experience new flavors and new plant chemicals. Remember, your genetics have less to do with your health than the environment that they are exposed to. Research has discovered over tens of thousands of miraculous plant chemicals in the last few decades, and it appears that each plant has it's own powerful array of these compounds.

The nasturtium plant is an annual that produces beautiful bright orange edible flowers and tender green leaves, both of which have a delicate peppery flavor. They are great companion plants for your garden, attracting beneficial predatory insects.  Kohlrabi is a cruciferous vegetable, sometimes known as a German turnip, that is delicious either raw or cooked. I prefer eating it raw in salads, or as an alternative to chips for homemade dips. We use the tender, mild tasting greens as wraps in place of tortillas.

Simple Strawberry Vinaigrette Recipe

We've been picking strawberries lately. A lot of strawberries. Organic of course. Perfectly sweet, juicy, and ripe. So naturally, we've been eating a lot of strawberries, the way fresh strawberries ought to be eaten….not shipped halfway across the country in little plastic cartons grown in massive mono-cropped fields. These berries were grown in nutrient-rich soil from a small organic farm not too far from our house. Our children count the days till strawberry picking time each year. It's one of their favorite activities. Undoubtedly, they are picking more per minute now than I do. Yes! We have a dream team of 5 little berry pickers (okay maybe just 4 as our toddler really likes to just graze instead of fill her bucket). I tell them if they want to eat frozen fruit and make smoothies, then they need to help in the harvesting. It's fun! They love it.

At home, seeing all of these boxes filled with fresh berries, my mind begins to spin into recipe creation mode. Raw strawberry pie, strawberry-cream popsicles, strawberry salsa, strawberry salmon, strawberry vinaigrette! Since our garden is brimming with fresh organic lettuce, arugula, and mustard greens right now I decided that the strawberry vinaigrette recipe would be a good place to start. We'll see how many more recipe ideas I can get to while the berry season lasts! I think you're really going to enjoy this simple, healthy salad dressing recipe! 

In other news....have you listened to Tom's interview on The Health Bridge Show yet? He talks about protecting your microbiome! Fascinating information on childbirth, breastfeeding, digestive issues, and more! You can download it for free on iTunes and listen to it (released 6/12/14). It's also available on YouTube!

Smoked Salmon and Yam Salad with Creamy Chipotle-Lime Dressing

Today I'm going to share with you a recipe from my brand new cookbook! This creamy "potato" salad is so full of flavor and packed with protein (from the salmon) and complex carbohydrates (from the yams) to keep you fueled throughout the day. I like to serve it over salad greens for an easy lunch. For those of you who don't eat fish, I also have a vegan variation using black beans which is equally as good.

The new Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook releases on April 29th! I'm so excited for you all to get a copy of this gorgeous book! I decided to do something fun…..I'm going to be giving away a copy of our book, along with products we recommend, on Facebook everyday during the week before the release date (from the 23rd through the 29th)! Be sure to head over there and like, comment, and share the giveaway photos to enter. Facebook does not show most of my posts in your newsfeed anymore so you will have to actually go to our page and look for my giveaways.

Christmas Kale Salad

I wanted to share this scrumptious holiday kale salad with you. It makes the perfect potluck dish to share with friends and family this season. I know I've been quite absent on my blog for the past 6 months or so. The reason for this is that we got a book deal with a publisher last spring thanks to our wonderful agent, Celeste Fine! (I'll explain more about our new books soon.) We've had numerous deadlines to meet, and therefore I have not been able to spend much time here. Hopefully, you will see more recipes popping up in your inbox periodically, but in the meantime please enjoy this fresh, flavorful, holiday kale salad!

How to Roast Beets ~ The Easy Way!

Roasting beets softens their earthy flavor and brings out a wonderful sweetness. This way of preparing beets is so simple that you'll probably never go back to steaming, pressure cooking, or roasting in foil. All you need is a baking dish with a lid.

What can you do with roasted beets? The sweet-earthy flavor of beets is tempered by pairing them with acidic and pungent foods like orange, lemon, balsamic vinegar, feta cheese, shallots, and red onions. Adding fresh herbs like savory, thyme, and parsley can brighten the flavors even more.

After the beets have cooked and cooled, you can peel off the skins and cut them up for a marinated beet salad (like the Roasted Beet Salad with Orange Vinaigrette on page 230 in my new cookbook). You can also thinly slice them and top with goat cheese, fresh thyme leaves, freshly ground black pepper, and a lemon-olive oil dressing. Puree a whole roasted beet (remove the skins first) with the wet ingredients for a chocolate cake. Have any more ideas for using cooked beets? Please share in the comments section below!

Chicken Fajita Salad with Spicy Avocado Dressing

When summer's produce is in abundance we like to create meals that revolve around it, like this one. If you are vegan or vegetarian you can substitute cooked blacked beans or sautéed tempeh for the chicken. I think you'll find the Spicy Avocado Dressing rather addicting! Tom and I like to make a batch of this dressing with the whole jalapeño—seeds and all, but for the children we make it without the seeds.

Did you know that eating a small avocado with a meal containing carotenoids (found in the tomatoes, peppers, and salad greens) helps to absorb these beneficial compounds? Carotenoids, like beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, gamma-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-cryptoxanthin all need to be consumed with fat to optimize absorption in the intestines. One also needs to have a functioning small intestine for this to occur (gluten, antibiotics, yeast overgrowth, and environmental toxins can damage the gut and impede absorption of fats and fat-soluble nutrients). Once in the body these carotenoids act as powerful antioxidants mopping up free radicals. Some of these carotenoids can also be converted into vitamin A (all-trans-retinol). We need vitamin A to assist with gene transcription, proper development of an embryo, various reproductive processes, night and color vision, skin health (acne), cellular communication, and proper immune function. Vitamin A is found in liver, meat, and dairy products. In order to convert carotenoids from plants into vitamin A we need to have adequate zinc and proper thyroid function as the T3 thyroid hormone helps in the conversion process. When pregnant and lactating the need for preformed vitamin A increases quite a bit so be sure to consume enough carotenoids from plants and vitamin A from animal sources, or if you are vegan, be sure to consume enough iodine, zinc, and selenium-rich foods for proper thyroid function so you can properly convert carotenoids from plants into Vitamin A.

Strawberry Salad with Candied Pumpkin Seeds

We just got back from visiting family in the midwest. This recipe is one my mom likes to make often, though I have put my own twist to it. She asked me to make it one evening for dinner, but we were out of sliced almonds, which she toasts on the stove with a little bit of honey and sprinkles over the salad. I found raw pumpkin seeds in her freezer and devised my own version of candied seeds. I made this salad again and again during our trip and everyone enjoyed it!

Since we've been back home, our children have been picking all of the juicy, ripe strawberries growing in a special 3-tiered strawberry bed we built a few years ago for our backyard. I am not sure there will ever be enough for a salad! If you don't have strawberries available, try fresh blueberries, blackberries, or raspberries instead.

Creamy Herbed Sunflower Seed Dressing or Dip (dairy-free, paleo)

I receive quite a few comments and requests about nut-free recipes. Indeed, we do eat a lot of nuts, but we enjoy seeds quite often as well. This creamy ranch-style dressing is perfect to top any type of green salad, be it a crispy romaine salad or a picnic potato salad. If you use less water the dressing is a creamy dip for carrot and celery sticks. I also love that this dressing is raw, made from soaked raw sunflower seeds. Before you go to bed at night just place the seeds in a bowl and cover with filtered water. If I am making this dressing for dinner then I would begin soaking the seeds around lunchtime.

I use lemon juice and garlic in this dressing, which for some breastfeeding moms might be problematic (if your baby is very young). Our baby just turned 3 months and can tolerate just about anything I eat now. Early on I could not eat lemon juice or raw garlic. So if you are making this recipe for a new mom or are breastfeeding yourself (or cannot tolerate citrus), I would replace the lemon with about 3 tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar or coconut vinegar and omit the garlic.

Raw Kale Avocado Salad

The Farmer's Market was bursting with luscious dark leafy greens on Saturday. I couldn't help but buy at least one bunch of every variety of kale! I made this raw kale salad tonight and my children devoured it. They are accustomed to eating many different types of greens, but for a child who isn't, below are a few tips.

Tips for adding more variety, vegetables, and greens to your child's diet:

• Make sure your children are hungry and have not been snacking all afternoon or evening; hungry children are more likely to try and eat new foods.
• Serve the new vegetable or salad first. This is especially true for a young child between 2 and 4 years of age.
• Sit down as a family and talk about everything but the meal. Focusing on the food can lead to food battles. 
• Suggest a "try-it-bite" for a child who seems really uncomfortable about trying something new. They may spit it out and that is okay. Sometimes it can take 10 "try-it-bites" over a series of weeks for a child to accept a new food. 
• Start early! As soon as you have introduced citrus to your toddler's diet offer them a plate of this salad. A one year old won't digest much of it but will gain so much in the way of programming his or her taste buds to accept these types of foods. We put salad greens on our twin's plates by the time they were twelve months old and now they beg for salads at three years old! 
• Young children learn how to eat and what to eat by watching the adults and caregivers around them. This starts from infancy on. 

My new cookbook as a large chapter devoted to raising healthy eaters, beginning from conception on. These are just a few of the tips on mealtimes with children. I know many of you keep asking when the new book will be available for pre-order. I expected that it would have been ready by now but it is not. I don't have the long focused hours now like I had with my first cookbook. Being pregnant and having four children makes it a little more challenging. It will be done when it is done, that is all I can say. It is close, the recipes are done, but I am still finishing up the content in the beginning. I am confident that you will love it though!

Grapefruit, Radish, Cabbage Salad

For the past few months, citrus and cabbage have become some of my favorite two foods! This scrumptious salad combines them both. I use napa cabbage which is a very mild, tender cabbage. It is also a favorite vegetable of our children. My oldest daughter likes to pack napa cabbage in her lunch! All four of our children devour this salad in no time!

Tom and I also have some more news......we are having another baby! This explains the cravings. All I have wanted to eat is cabbage, raw or cooked, and also raw sauerkraut. Also any kind of citrus works really well. The all day nauseousness finally subsided last week and now I am feeling great! Baby number five is due at the end of the summer. I've also been working on finishing the next cookbook. Can't wait to tell you more about it!

Blanched Kale Salad with Pomegranate and Green Apple Dressing

Are you in the mood for something a little cleansing after the holidays? Me too. This blanched kale salad is uber nutritious and easy on the digestive system. Pomegranates are almost out of season so eat 'em up while you still can. Our children go through one to two every morning this time of year.

This salad can also be used as part of Phase 2 on our Elimination Diet. It makes a great quick, healthy lunch. Blanch the kale ahead of time and keep it in a container in your fridge. Use leftover salmon or none at all. I toss all ingredients for the dressing into my Vitamix without ever measuring and blend it up in a snap. Toast some sunflower seeds and season them with coconut aminos or use raw seeds. It's a basic salad with great flavors and textures, plus it will keep you energized all afternoon!

Asian Chicken Salad with a Soy-Free Dressing

With school starting and all of the after-school activities that go with it, our schedules have been very full lately. Posting to my blog seems to be on the back burner for now. Though I recently created this very easy salad recipe that I wanted to share with you. The soy-free dressing is scrumptious and the salad can be prepared in a snap. It actually stores well in the fridge in separate containers ready to go for a quick lunch!

I make often make my Asian dressings and marinades using Coconut Aminos since we have one family member who cannot tolerate soy at all. It is dark and rich and very similar to tamari though with a hint of sweetness. I also used coconut vinegar in this recipe though you could substitute brown rice vinegar if need be.

All of the greens in these photos are from our garden except the cabbage. I ran out of space this year and didn't plant any cabbage! Our garden has been thriving this year and we now have a forest of tender kales, collards, bok choy, chard, and lettuces. It is so much fun to walk out the back door and harvest your lunch!

For info on how to cook chicken so it is tender and shreds easily, please visit my Chicken & Wild Rice Salad post. You can use a whole chicken or chicken parts (thighs, breast, wings). I used about eight chicken thighs with the bone and skin today and now have a few quarts of rich chicken stock. I freeze the stock in quart jars to use in soups later on.

Reminder: If you would like to participate in this month's Go Ahead Honey it's Gluten Free roundup on Packing a School Lunch then email me your recipe link and attached photo by September 27th, 2010. I have received some great entries so far! At the end of this month I will put all of your photos and recipe links into a blog post to share.

Lemon-Walnut Green Bean Salad

Today was the first really warm day we have had this year! Beautiful and sunny. A perfect day for a light vegetable salad. Blanched green beans, lemon zest, a dash of olive oil, and roasted walnuts create this refreshing summer salad, perfect for picnics in the park or summer barbecues.

My good friend Pavlina Ortiz stopped over today with her two boys. She is an amazing photographer specializing in babies, children, and families. I've been working with her to improve my photography. Plus, she is letting me try out some of her lenses! Today's photos were shot with her 50mm f/1.4D lens. Such fun! And still so much more to learn.

This green bean salad would pair well with barbecued chicken made with my Homemade Chipotle Barbecue Sauce, a Cold Spaghetti Salad, a fresh, baby green salad dressed with my Pepper-Mint Dressing, and quite possibly Watermelon Sorbet for dessert!

Beet, Pear, and Almond Salad

Beets, beets, I know, either you love them or have awful memories of eating canned or pickled beets as a child. Luckily I didn't have any memories of eating beets as a child so when I first tried them I fell in love. I began making fresh beet juice in my juicer, using them in cultured vegetables, roasting them with salt, pepper and olive oil, or using raw grated beets in salads.

Beets are an excellent cleansing food, being particularly useful during the Elimination Diet. The beautiful purple hue indicates that they are full of powerful antioxidants. Research indicates that beets may increase liver enzyme detoxification function, decrease the risk for colon cancer, and help to effectively lower cholesterol.

There are many ways to prepare beets. If you own a pressure cooker you can cook the whole beet, peel and all, for about 25 minutes, then cool (the peel slips right off) and cut into cubes for this salad. This is probably the easiest way and the best way to preserve nutrients. Steaming is another option but you will need to trim the ends off of the beet first, then peel, then cut into cubes for steaming. This is the next best option of you do not own a pressure cooker. You can also roast beets in the oven after partially steaming. Mmm, this is delicious! Sometimes I thinly slice raw beets and roast them in olive oil and balsamic vinegar (that recipe is in my cookbook).