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!

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!

Healing Chicken Ginger Soup

I have been making this soup a lot these days. It is spicy, warming, and healing....just perfect to help kick this cold I've had. First I make a simple broth using bone-in chicken breasts, a bunch of chopped fresh ginger, a whole head of garlic, fresh lemongrass, and a few cups of chopped shiitake mushrooms. Once this has simmered for a few hours, I strain it and add fresh vegetables, the cooked chicken, and some Thai rice noodles into the pot. We top each bowl with chopped napa cabbage, basil, and cilantro. And for the grown-ups only, sliced fresh Thai chiles!

Shiitake mushrooms provide polysaccharides that stimulate white blood cell function allowing them to be more efficient at combatting bacteria and viruses. Ginger is healing on many fronts. It is anti-microbial, anti-viral, and a natural antibiotic, killing bacteria and viruses both internally and externally. It can help soothe a sore throat, eliminate congestion, and help combat fevers and chills.

The soup itself is not too spicy and perfect for young children to eat. All of our children love this soup and have fun adding all of the toppings, except for the chiles. The broth is very nourishing and will have you feeling good almost immediately. I've been making double batches lately so I can have leftovers. Hot, clear foods are very beneficial for colds and upper respiratory infections. Try hot tea with ginger and lemon, warm quinoa porridge, or my Healing Quinoa Cabbage Soup. Cold foods can increase congestion so it is best to avoid them until you are feeling better.

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.

Orange-Wasabi Cabbage Salad

I absolutely love raw cabbage. I love the crispy crunch with every bite. I love the way it makes me feel...healthy and alive, my digestion strong. It feels cleansing. Luckily my children like cabbage too, though my girls have decided they like their cabbage plain, no dressing please. I gave this salad to my twin boys who turned two yesterday and one of them loved it while the other one spit it out (photo below).

I have found that the first three years of life is the most important time for introducing foods. Offering toddlers a wide variety of foods is key to their eating habits for the rest of their lives. They will most likely go through phases where they turn their nose up at foods they loved just a month ago. For example, our first daughter, Lily, decided around 3 years old that she didn't like beans. She was almost 4 until she ate them again. I just kept offering and didn't give up. One trick I have found to be helpful is to offer a child a "try-it bite" of a new food or flavor. I tell my girls they can spit it out if they don't like it. Every time we have that food I offer anther "try-it bite" and sometimes, but not always, they decide they like it. The key is to not give up on your children just because they don't like something at first.

So if you have young children, you may want to save some of this salad before dressing it. They can munch on the cabbage and carrots with their meal and then try some with the dressing too.

Fun Food Fact: Did you know that the phytochemicals in cabbage signal our genes to produce enzymes involved in detoxification? In addition, the phtyochemicals in cabbage are cancer-protective. So eat up! :)

Chipotle Black Bean and Yam Stew Recipe

This black bean stew is warming and comforting, just perfect for a blustery fall day. I like to serve it over cooked quinoa topped with a cilantro and cabbage slaw (recipe to follow). It just feels better to eat something raw with a cooked meal. I always feel my meals are better digested this way.

The great thing about this soup is that it is tomato-free. I love tomatoes and put them in nearly all of my soups and stews, though I know some people need to avoid them. With this recipe I use fresh lime juice to provide the acidity.

Tom made a very large pot of this black bean stew last week. I actually wanted to post it then but didn't even have a second to take a photo and get on the computer. Now that I am back from my trip to San Francisco I had a chance to make it again today and now share it with you.

Healing Quinoa Cabbage Soup

This very simple, nourishing soup aids in detoxification, though you'd never guess by the taste. Plus, it only takes a few minutes to prepare....perfect if you feel like you are starving during Phase 2 of the Elimination Diet!

Cabbage is a potent detoxifier. It contains a host of phytochemicals, including, isothiocyanates. This group of compounds is a potent inducer of the liver's Phase II enzymes, which detoxify carcinogens. These compounds also stimulate the destruction of human tumor cells.

And you know, we all need a little help with the detoxification process! Just imagine all of the chemicals our bodies need to process on a daily basis (I won't get into it, it's just too depressing sometimes). Let's look at what we can do.

Cabbage family vegetables, which include Brussels Sprouts, kale, collards, and broccoli, all help with detoxification. That's why we like to eat a lot of them. Green Smoothies are a great way to add in raw cabbage, kale, and collards! Brussels Sprouts are great roasted. Broccoli is good just about any old way. I like to lightly sauté it with lots of garlic and then add a little water to the pan and cover. It quickly cooks by steaming, but is still bright green and crisp-tender.

I like to cut the carrots into matchsticks for this soup. Just make sure they are not too small or they will get overcooked. To create the matchsticks, first cut the carrots into diagonal rounds and then cut them lengthwise into thin strips.

Spring Slaw

What a gorgeous day here in Bellingham! I think it hit 75 degrees, at least on our thermometer. It was a wonderful way to celebrate May Day. Our 4-year old daughter, Gracie, danced around the May Pole at her preschool celebration and made flower garlands. I made 5 dozen Almond Thumbprint Cookies for the celebration, nearly half of which Tom burned because I left him in charge, its all good though, there was still plenty to go around.

Today I wanted to share an easy veggie recipe with you that can last the whole week. It is a recipe that I made in our cooking class last Tuesday night entitled "Eat Your Veggies."

Springtime is a time of detoxification, renewal, and cleansing. Cabbage is one of the best foods for this. It contains sulfur compounds that the liver needs to detoxify harmful substances. These sulfur compounds signal genes to produce more enzymes involved in detoxification and encourage the formation of proteins that assist in the manufacturing and preservation of glutathione, the primary antioxidant found in the human body.

Many of you probably have chives growing somewhere in your yard or garden. Note, if you don't, they are one of the easiest plants to grow. I have a small herb garden right out my front door, a perfect place to quickly gather herbs for cooking. The large amount of chives in this recipe adds a certain pungency to the already potent cabbage. The flavor is rather energizing; perfect for this quick, light energy of spring. And perfect for spring picnics in the park with family and friends.

Here is my trick to making this salad last the whole week. Don't follow the recipe!

OK, I will elaborate. Make a triple batch of the dressing and store it in a tightly sealed glass jar in the fridge. Use a large head of purple and green cabbage and as many carrots and chives as you see fit. Chop almonds and store them in a separate jar. Follow the directions below for processing the cabbage and carrots. Store the salad, undressed, in two large bowls or sealed containers in the fridge. When ready to serve, remove what you will use for that meal and drizzle some dressing over it. Sprinkle with chopped almonds. Serve. Note: the salad is best after about 20 minutes of being dressed.

For more veggie and salad recipes you can view the Salad Category or Vegetable Dishes Category.

Enjoy!