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. :)

Cherry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream (dairy-free, paleo)

It's summer! Time to break out the ice cream maker and whip up some dairy-free ice cream. Plus it's cherry season right now. This coconut milk-based ice cream is a perfect way to indulge in both antioxidant-rich cherries and dark chocolate. Serve it as a sweet treat after dinner, or a healthy mid-afternoon snack for your kids. This cherry chocolate chunk ice cream comes from my Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook.

Be sure to use full fat coconut milk in this recipe. The hemp seeds give it some extra creaminess, healthy fats, and amino acids. You can easily omit the chocolate if you are on Phase 2 of the Elimination Diet. You can also replace the cherries with blueberries, strawberries, or diced mango. All variations are delicious!

Garlic-Herb Turkey Burgers

This recipe is great for those of you who are on an Elimination Diet as it is very easy to make, and when paired with plenty of vegetables, it becomes a very nourishing, anti-inflammatory meal. We like to use lettuce leaves or napa cabbage leaves as our "buns" for burgers, though sometimes my children like the extra carbohydrates of a gluten-free bun (they are so active and hungry all the time)!

Look for organic ground turkey at your local food co-op or health food store. Sometimes it is in the freezer section. I make turkey burgers about once a week (especially now with the warmer weather). Sometimes I omit the chopped fresh herbs and add a tablespoon or two of a good quality Thai curry paste. I also replace the parsley with cilantro. My children really love this Thai-flavored version too!

Serve burgers with baked sweet potato fries if you are on the Elimination Diet. If not, try some potato fries. My kids love homemade baked oven fries using russet potatoes that are seasoned with smoked paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, sea salt, and avocado oil. In the summertime I also like to grill summer squash from my garden using my cast iron grill pan on the stove to serve with these burgers. Serve burgers with a garden salad and a homemade dressing for a balanced, nourishing meal!

Nightshade-Free Chicken Taco Recipe (corn-free, gluten-free, dairy-free)

I've got an easy, nourishing main dish recipe for you today! These Nightshade-Free Chicken Tacos are super easy to prepare and perfect if you are following our Elimination Diet or another special diet such as an autoimmune diet or a diet specific for arthritis. My children also love this recipe! The chicken taco filling is cooked in a Crockpot making the prep time less than 10 minutes. I like to serve the taco filling with my Plantain Tortillas (pictured here) or my gluten-free brown rice flour tortillas. The filling is also wonderful served inside of a baked half of a kabocha or delicata squash, topped with greens and sprouts of course!

Need a little more assistance in the kitchen creating this meal? Then check out the elimination diet video cooking series I created on how to make plantain tortillas and this chicken taco filling, plus a few more easy and delicious elimination diet recipes. You can sign up here to watch the videos.

Use this recipe for Phase 2 of our Elimination Diet program. Not quite sure what an elimination diet is? An elimination diet is a powerful tool to get to the root of most diseases and disorders. Why? Because most disease begins in the gut. The gut has the highest concentration of immune cells, and the most common thing that the immune cells will react to is food.

When you are constantly in pain, moody, and fatigued, your body is inflamed. In other words, your immune cells are being irritated by something in your environment. What is the most likely suspect that is irritating you? Surprisingly, it’s your food.

Odds are that foods you are eating every day are leaving you sick and tired. How do you find out which ones? The Elimination Diet. This foundational tool of Functional Medicine has been used for centuries to discover which foods are making you ill and which ones can make you feel incredible.

The Elimination Diet is a simple process of removing all potentially problematic foods from your diet until your symptoms subside—usually a few weeks. Then you slowly reintroduce foods back into your diet, one by one, to see which ones bring your symptoms back. By finding the foods that are behind your suffering, you can completely turn your health around and elevate your quality of life. 

If you are curious about trying an elimination diet and not sure where to begin then check out our online Elimination Diet Support Program and Elimination Diet book, both of which provide excellent tools that walk you through each step of the elimination diet.

What if these new tools helped you to become a better you? A lighter, more energetic, happier you! That's what doing an elimination diet is all about.

While on an elimination diet, you'll find that many of the foods you are accustomed to eating every day are off limits. You'll get to experience new flavors and new foods that promote healing at the cellular level. And you can start right now with these nightshade-free chicken tacos.

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!

Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

It's tomato season and I bet many of you are searching for more ways to preserve the tomato harvest! Last year I had a bumper crop of roma tomatoes so I created this really easy fire-roasted tomato salsa recipe as a way to preserve the harvest. I had my freezer stocked full of salsa in various sized jars that we enjoyed through the winter months. I'm really happy to finally be sharing my recipe with you. It's a mix of roasted tomatoes and other raw ingredients, creating a nutrient-packed condiment!

Roasting tomatoes under the broiler brings out a stunning, sweet caramelized flavor, which adds depth and complexity to your salsa. It also releases some of the liquid in the tomatoes so your salsa does't end up too watery.

If you are looking for other ways to preserve your tomato harvest then you might want to try my Homemade Tomato Basil Marinara Sauce recipe, or simply freeze your tomatoes whole (stems removed). I like to take whole frozen roma tomatoes and soak them in hot water for a few minutes. This allows their skins to slip right off. Then I chop them up and add them to soups and stews in the wintertime.

Enjoy this flavorful salsa recipe with homemade gluten-free Brown Rice Flour Tortillas, cooked beans or meat, guacamole, and thinly sliced fresh greens.

Homemade Sriracha Hot Sauce Recipe (sugar-free)

After a long blogging break, I'm back with an amazing hot sauce recipe for you to make and enjoy for many months. I grew a lot of hot peppers in my garden this year, in fact my garden has been extremely bountiful this year! Up until recently, I've sort of taken my garden for granted. I had no idea how healing gardening could be….until it was all I could do. You see, on June 2nd, just after returning from a functional medicine conference and after two years of non-stop work, I suffered an adrenal crash. Taking care of five young children, updating and publishing a book, developing an online program, co-authoring a new book, and being in charge of the development of a new website and book launch proved to be too much.

Two things that have helped tremendously with the healing process (other than totally slowing down, going to bed early, taking certain supplements, diet, and Epsom salt baths) are gardening and staying off the computer. Being in the fresh air, having the sun beat down on my skin, feeling my bare feet in the soil, and eating nutrient-dense raw vegetables and fruits everyday straight from the garden (your adrenals need a lot of vitamin C to function properly) has been extremely therapeutic for me. In fact, it would be wonderful therapy for anyone suffering from adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout. The little bit of energy I put in, I got back tenfold in edible bounty. Gardening has helped to reset my cortisol rhythm and nourish me, whereas too much computer time (especially at night) along with too many stressors has led to a dysfunctional cortisol-melatonin cycle. To help heal and regain balance, I’ve also spent a lot of time with my children outside all summer …at the lake, river, ocean, and mountain. Nature is powerful medicine. I encourage those of you who are dealing with a chronic illness to get outside for a walk in the woods, spend time at a beach every week, and take some time to be in your garden everyday (you can start a garden this fall if you don’t have one already).

I just love going into my garden and harvesting the abundance of vegetables growing there, and then preserving them so we can enjoy their flavors, colors, and nutrients all winter long. If you have too many hot peppers, then consider making this hot sauce recipe. It's a perfect way to preserve them! If you don't grow your own hot peppers, then check out your local Farmer's Market; they are usually brimming with all kinds of peppers this time of year!

According to this resource, sriracha sauce is named after the coastal city, Si Racha, in eastern Thailand. Sriracha is used as a dipping sauce in Thai cuisine, and is also used frequently in Vietnamese cuisine as a condiment for pho, noodle dishes, and spring rolls. Of course, we use it on everything! Traditional sriracha sauce uses sugar in its ingredients. Instead, I use sweet red peppers to cut the spiciness of the hot peppers. The sweet peppers also add body and flavor to the sauce.

Blueberry Lemon Scones (gluten-free, nut-free, vegan)

I finally have the recipe many of you have been waiting for....the gluten-free, berry scone recipe you've seen me post about on Instagram over the last few weeks. Although I used raspberries once, they are out of season right now and just too darn expensive to keep using. Instead, I've been making these with the frozen blueberries we have in our freezer from last summer's harvest. You could use any berry in this scone recipe. Try blackberry, chopped strawberries, marionberry, or blueberries. I've also tested this recipe using diced (very small) Granny Smith apples with added cinnamon, which were quite delicious as well. Oh...and this recipe is xanthan-gum free of course!

If you haven't seen our brand new Whole Life Nutrition website already then you might want to check it out: www.WholeLifeNutrition.net. We've begun to add articles and videos, and will be adding a lot more content and features in the coming weeks so stay tuned. You can sign up for our newsletter there and get our Free Clean Eating Cookbook and Grocery Shopping Guide if you would like (all new gluten-free, whole foods recipes).

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!

Blackberry-Apricot Cobbler (gluten-free, nut-free, vegan)

I love a good cobbler, especially in the summer when our kitchen is brimming with fresh fruit! I created this gluten-free cobbler recipe after our first blackberry harvest. For those of you not living in the pacific northwest, you should know that blackberries grow everywhere here....a great food to wild harvest and freeze! We recently picked 12 more quarts of berries, made two more cobblers, and froze the rest (and of course enjoyed as many as we could straight from the vines).

This vegan, gluten-free cobbler recipe uses sprouted brown rice flour, which I've used in other recipes, such as my Sprouted Brown Rice Bread and my Brown Rice Flour Tortillas. You can purchase sprouted flour here or here. This satisfying dessert recipe can also be used during our Elimination Diet in phases 2 and 3. Be sure to use my Homemade Corn-Free Baking Powder here to make it Elimination Diet friendly! That recipe can be found in both of my cookbooks and here on Instagram.

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.

Mustard Green-Lime Pesto (dairy-free, vegan)

If you've been shopping at your local Farmer's Market lately you might have noticed some beautiful purplish-green leafy vegetables for sale called mustard greens. My bet is that you've also wondered what you could do with them if you were to purchase them! Mustard greens are spicy and slightly bitter. I like to add them to soups and stir-fries. They are part of the lovely cruciferous vegetable family—the types of vegetables we highly recommend getting into your diet everyday in order to boost your body's own detoxification abilities. Read more about that in this post.

I grow mustard greens in my garden, and this summer I've had more than we can eat! I pondered for a week or so how I could preserve them, other than lacto-fermentation (as in a mustard green kim chi), and came up with this pesto recipe (which can be frozen). While I was figuring out how to preserve them, they began to bolt. This means that they send up flowers so the plant can bear seeds. When a plant bolts, the greens start to become bitter. I did not want to waste them so I used them anyway. I would suggest looking for tender young mustard greens to use in this raw pesto recipe, though it's still delicious if your greens have begun to bolt!

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!

Watermelon-Lime Slushies (sugar-free)

We've had a few hot days here lately in the pacific Northwest! My children and I created this super simple slushie recipe using fresh watermelon the other day. They wanted me to share the recipe with you so you could make it too! Once you make this version I hope you try it with other types of fresh fruit as well....it makes the perfect, refreshing summer afternoon treat.

This recipe would be suitable to enjoy during our Elimination Diet. If you haven't seen our new online program and book.....then hop on over to our website and check it out today. I created plenty of super satisfying, tasty recipes that are gluten, dairy, egg, corn, soy, nut, nightshade, yeast, and citrus-free! Many of the recipes are grain-free, legume-free, and low-FODMAP as well. 

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.

Chocolate Walnut Brownies (Grain-Free, Gluten-Free)

I thought you might like a simple gluten-free brownie recipe to share with friends and family this holiday weekend. This recipe is unique in that it contains NO flour at all. Walnuts and cocoa powder make up the bulk of the recipe! You can find these brownies in my Nourishing Meals cookbook along with many other healthy gluten-free and grain-free recipes.

If you need more visuals other than the photos here, you can check out a recent cooking video we did making these brownies! Just scroll down....it's the last video on the page. There are plenty more recipes and ideas on our new and improved website for living GMO-free and gluten-free. Check it out and let us know what you think. There is also much more to come!

Coconut Banana Ice Cream Bars (dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free)

The other morning I slept in and came downstairs to see my oldest daughter, Lily, put a pan of something into the freezer. I asked her what she made and she responded: "frozen coconut banana cream bars." We all enjoyed them as a treat throughout the day. Then later I saw her on the computer (which rarely ever happens) and asked her what she was doing. "Oh, I'm just typing up a recipe for a blog post" she responded. So what you see written below, including all of the photos, is by my 11-year daughter. She's posted to my blog a few times before with her Seaweed Snack Recipe and Sugar-Free Flavored Lemonade. 

My notes: You can see a photo of what my version of this recipe looks like here on Instagram. It was originally a pie recipe, but Lily has made it into a crust-less bar recipe. If you want a crust you could try the chocolate cookie crust recipe that goes along with this recipe on page 433 of my book or use a 1/2 batch of this grain-free Banana Coconut Cookie recipe....pressed into the bottom of the pan, baked, and then cooled before adding the filling. 

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!