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

Fresh Vegetable Curry

We love curries around here. Our children have had the opportunity to enjoy a variety of curried dishes from a young age. Their taste buds know the flavors well. I made this recipe for dinner tonight and there was very little conversation during mealtime. A sign of a good meal!

I've been very busy lately with my garden projects. I'll post photos to my blog soon! I also recently took a solo trip for six days to Breitenbush Hot Springs and the Oregon Coast. It was so lovely to get away and relax for a while!

When making a stovetop vegetable stew, it is important to cut your vegetables into certain sizes and know how long each takes to cook. It is not very appetizing to have crunchy potatoes and over-cooked cauliflower! For example, potatoes and carrots take quite a while to cook so I always add them in the beginning. Green beans take a moderate amount of time, and cauliflower cooks up quite fast. Think about the size you cut your vegetables. If you dice the potatoes too small they may become very mushy by the time everything else is done. If they are too large, they won't ever cook thoroughly. Cooking is a dance with your ingredients.

A word on spices: make sure yours are fresh! Old spices lack flavor and are often bitter. they can drastically change the outcome of your finished dish. If they are older than 6 months it is best to compost them and start with fresh spices. You'll love the difference.

Quick Hummus Lunch

Today was house-cleaning day. Lily (6-years old) decided to make a chore chart and put our names next to what needed to get done. She put all of our names (including the babies) on clothespins to attach next to each chore. She decided that Ben (10 months old) would be her helper for the family room and toy clean-up. She soon realized that having him in the room was a bit more work than she had intended. Well, you can only imagine what happened.

Eventually the house did get clean and then it was lunchtime. While the girls were finishing up cleaning their room, I began to prepare lunch. It was 12:15 already and we were all hungry.

Since we were out all day yesterday I didn't have a chance to make the hummus. Remember the large pot of garbanzo beans I cooked on Friday?

Hummus is very fast to make and makes a great lunch. I have been making it for a long time now. I never use a recipe, just put everything into the food processor and every time it turns out just right. Everyone always loves my hummus and frequently asks for the recipe. Eventually I began measuring and created this recipe. You can also find it in print in The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook and another Herb & Olive Oil Hummus variation in my Nourishing Meals cookbook. 

You can get pretty creative with hummus. Think Rosemary-Olive Hummus, or Roasted Garlic & Roasted Red Pepper Hummus, or how about adding a little lemon zest and fresh parlsey to the batch. The options are endless.



Hummus

Hummus is a traditional Middle-Eastern dish made from garbanzo beans, also called chickpeas, and tahini. It makes an excellent dip for fresh vegetables or a great spread for sandwiches or wraps.

3 cups cooked garbanzo beans, or 2 cans
½ cup sesame tahini
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons garlic powder or 2 to 3 cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 to 2 teaspoons sea salt or Herbamare, or to taste
¼ cup bean cooking liquid or water to desired consistency

Place all ingredients into a food processor and process until smooth and creamy. You will want to taste the hummus to see if it needs more lemon, tahini, garlic, or salt. Also, add more water for a thinner consistency and process again. Hummus freezes very well. Source: www.NourishingMeals.com.

Also on the lunch menu was leftover quinoa, honeycrisp apple slices, and sliced persimmons. After our light and energizing lunch it was time to get outside.

Ahh, November, with its crisp fresh air and damp, spongy ground. It was a good day for gardening. The girls and I spent the later part of the afternoon preparing our garden beds for winter. Turning big, dry maple leaves into the beds in the front and pulling out old strawberry plants in the large bed in the back. We found ladybugs that had begun to hibernate in the roots of the plants. Worms and beetles were also among us in the damp soil. There is something soul-satisfying about working outside in the rich, wet earth. We all came in rosy-cheeked and covered in soil. Time for hot soup and rice. While we got cleaned up Tom began making a pot of brown jasmine rice and Red Lentil Dal (from our cookbook). I wanted something else to go along with our dal and rice, so I made a pot of curried vegetables. The warming spices felt just right on this chilly November evening.

After the babies and the girls were asleep, I made a batch of divinely delicious gluten-free brownies. That recipe to come in a later post. Goodnight!

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