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!

Cucumber Noodles with a Raw Pumpkin Seed Pesto Sauce (dairy-free, nut-free, grain-free)

If you are looking for more ways to use up the last of the lovely basil growing in your garden this season, then try making a pesto sauce! It can be frozen and then thawed in the wintertime for a taste of summer. We've been using this sauce tossed with raw cucumber noodles, cooked quinoa noodles, or to top baked wild salmon!

To make cucumber noodles, you will need a spiralizer. This handy kitchen tool makes noodles out of vegetables....zucchini, carrots, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes, beets, cucumbers! You can watch this short video I posted to Instagram a few weeks ago of me making noodles from yellow summer squash. You can order one here. If you don't have a spiralizer, then just enjoy this sauce tossed with cooked noodles, drizzled over baked chicken or cooked winter squash...or? Leave a comment below with more ways you are using it!

Egg-Free Mayonnaise Recipe (soy-free, vegan)

I love the thick and creamy richness of mayonnaise, especially tossed with steamed potatoes and chopped pickles, or thinly sliced cabbage for a summer picnic salad. Although we eat eggs, I prefer the flavor of egg-free mayo better. This recipe uses soaked cashews along with a few other ingredients. It has such an amazing consistency and flavor. I think it will remind you of traditional mayonnaise! I've been making a lot of cabbage and veggie slaws with it lately. You can also use it to make chicken salad or spread it onto gluten-free bread for a sandwich.

Cashews are a fabulous source of antioxidants and monounsaturated fats! I think they might be my favorite nut. I find them easier to digest compared to other nuts. Cashews are also a good source of magnesium, a mineral that easily gets depleted when we are under stress....and who isn't experiencing some level of stress these days!

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!

Green Cleansing Juice

Happy New Year! Cheers! This is our favorite green juice recipe, in fact, our children think it's the bomb! They love it. Serve it in a pretty glass with a stainless steel or glass straw. I think you'll find that this green juice is very mild tasting and quite enjoyable to drink. This recipe is part of our new Elimination Diet Program and Book! We've been receiving so many emails asking about the Elimination Diet and where to find it. Our Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook (where the old program was) is out of print now. We spent our summer completely updating the book with 100 new recipes and plenty of new up-to-date science! It will be available this spring, published through Grand Central Life & Style. We also removed the elimination diet from the book because it deserved its own book. We have a brand-spanking new elimination diet program coming for you soon online. We can't wait to share this powerful healing tool with you, complete with new recipes, menu plans, and more!

If you are setting new year's intentions that revolve around eating well (I like intentions far better than resolutions) then this juice recipe is a great one to add to your repertoire! Through our research we've found that it's quite important for all of us, children included, to add some sort of raw cruciferous vegetable to our daily diets. You can make raw salads, green smoothies, or fresh juices. Cruciferous vegetables include kale, collard greens, mustard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, arugula, bok choy, daikon radish, horseradish, radish, turnips, rutabaga, watercress, and bittercress (a common weed).

Raw Thai Wraps with Cilantro-Pumpkin Seed Pâté

We have a garden full of tender fresh collard greens right now which is what inspired me to create these nourishing raw wraps! My children even love them. Well, my 8-year old thinks they are just okay, and the littlest one can only really eat the pâté and cucumber strips, but the rest of the gang enjoys them!

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I have a one-year old now who is into everything.....and four other children. Need I say more? However, we do have a new website in the works which I'm excited to share with you, so stay tuned! If you want to keep up with what I'm cooking and creating in my kitchen please follow me on Instagram. In the meantime....please enjoy this raw collard wrap recipe!

Raw Berry Tart with a Coconut Pastry Cream (vegan, gluten-free)

I have something for you, just in time for 4th of July celebrations.....and no cooking required! I used to think that making tarts was a complicated process, but it is really quite simple. You will need a 9 or 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, which can be found on amazon.com or your local kitchen store. For this recipe I use my standard nut-date crust which is pressed into the pan. Then the filling is added and topped with whatever berries or fresh fruit you have on hand. Raw tarts come together so quickly!

For the pastry cream, I use coconut butter, which is made from both the oil and the meat. We like the brand Artisana, but you can use others. Sometimes it is labeled with different names such as coconut mana or coconut cream concentrate, but it is all the same thing.

Dairy-Free Ranch Dressing Recipe

We've been enjoying our time this week at camp GG's, a name we coined for Grandma and Grandpa's house on the lake in the Midwest. The kids get to spend these endless summer days biking, swimming, water skiing, kayaking, and chasing fireflies at dusk.

I have had a number of requests for a dairy-free ranch dressing recipe. So here it is. I was planning on posting this last Thursday evening, but my lovely sister-in-law went into labor that evening with her third baby. She was helping me with the photos you see here while she was having a few mild contractions. After all of the kids were asleep things picked up quickly and we barely made it to the hospital before she pushed a healthy baby girl out in less than two minutes! Amazing!

I used a buttermilk ranch spice blend from Penzeys Spices in this recipe. You can order it online here. If you want to try and recreate this blend on your own then here are the ingredients: salt, bell peppers, garlic, onion, sugar, black pepper, parsley, thyme, and basil.

This dressing is so tasty that this batch has nearly disappeared in two days! Even the die-hard ranch dressing lovers here have been enjoying it.

Dairy-Free "Buttermilk" Ranch Dressing

This dressing is better after the flavors have had time to meld. Give it about a day and the tartness from the lemon juice will lessen. Use this as a salad dressing over crispy greens topped with summer vegetables or use it as a dip for carrot and celery sticks. Store in the fridge for up to 10 days.

1 cup raw cashews

1 cup water

2 to 4 cloves garlic

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 to 2 teaspoons honey or agave nectar

1 teaspoon Herbamare

1 tablespoon Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch Dressing blend

1 teaspoon dried dill

cracked black pepper, to taste

Place the cashews, water, and garlic into a blender fitted with a sharp blade or a vita-mix. Blend until very smooth and creamy. Then add in all of the remaining ingredients and blend again until just combined.

Pour into a glass jar and refrigerate overnight. Shake and pour over your favorite salad. Enjoy! :) 

Note: If you don't have the spice mix you can easily add the individual dried herbs to your blender and make an equally delicious dressing (I've done this several times)! Add some garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, dried parsley, dried thyme, and dried basil to your blender with the other ingredients. You can taste and add more of a certain herb if needed. You may need a little extra sea salt too (the spice mix contains salt).

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