Salad Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Eat Simply, Eat Well

Lettuce & Veggie Wraps w/ Spicy Peanut Sauce

June 24, 2015 by aplough

Last night at Teurastamo, the site of the old butchery in Helsinki, the Hairy Bikers were taping a segment of their upcoming show on Finnish food. They’d gone foraging in the forests earlier in the day with Sami Tallberg, getting an up-close and personal view of the wild food Finland has on offer, and then cooked with Sami at the “Food Bike Carnival with the Hairy Bikers” event. Unfortunately, I was unable to be there for the cooking segment, but enjoyed a brief chat with the honorable gentlemen later in the evening. We talked a bit about their foraging experience, and then I asked them “Why come to Finland for food?”

It all began with the bidding competition to host the 2012 Olympics. Final round, London vs. Paris, Dave told me. Jaques Chirac was overheard saying: “Why would you want to hold the Olympics in the country whose food is the second worst in the Europe, behind only Finland?!?”. The voting was close. Just a few votes separated the winner from the loser, but London emerged victorious. To the Hairy Bikers, Si King and Dave Myers, there was one, clear, logical reason for this: Finland must have voted for London. Si and Dave had observed over the years how British food had emerged to become exciting and innovative; a leader in taste and flavor; and were suspicious that perhaps, like the UK, Finland’s much maligned food culture was misunderstood. They did their research, planned their trip, and here they are on a 5-day mission to unmask the truth behind the fallacy: Finnish food can be pretty darn tasty and the ingredients unusual and amazing. So far so good. They’ve “tried some unusual ingredients in interesting combinations” and have thoroughly enjoyed every bite. Details? Stay tuned for that! These boys are certain to get to the heart of the matter when the show airs.

What I loved about my conversation with Si and Dave was the open-hearted nature in which they embraced food and new/different food cultures. Food unites people within and across borders, and the work these guys do to break down barriers and misperceptions related to food is admirable. So too is the role they’ve had in helping their followers get healthy.

Though we didn’t discuss it yesterday, in 2013, the Hairy Bikers made a major change in taking back control of their health. They realized that their love of food had lead them to a place where they were overweight and less healthy than the wanted to be. Being foodies, they also realized that a diet of deprivation and of eating foods that didn’t actually appeal to them wasn’t the answer: things had to look good and taste good, while being good for them. They changed their diet, worked on updating much-loved recipes to keep them tasting good while reducing the calories, fat and sugar, and dropped three stone (42 pounds) each along the way. In September 2014, Si suffered a brain aneurysm that put him in the hospital for several weeks and served as another wake-call to the importance of good health – one beyond just diet and including a balanced lifestyle where stress was under control as well. Says Si “If I hadn’t lost all that weight (before the aneurysm), I might not be here right now. ” They’ve now published three cookbooks, have started “The Hairy Bikers’ Diet Club” and have done a series with BBC about reinventing the food they love into a healthier iteration that everyone can love – and feel good about. What’s not to love? Take a look at them in action here:

https://youtu.be/JU-GwC1pBZc

In my studies to become a certified health coach, as I learn more and more about nutrition, habits and the way we live – I look at the world around me and see so many people struggling with the same challenges that the Hairy Bikers faced: busy, stressful, demanding lives; a love of good food; food being part of celebrations; food used for comfort; traditional, much-loved recipes with more calories than we could ever guess. Obesity is a world epidemic, and a problem that is widely acknowledged to be an economic challenge as much as it is a health challenge. People who are overweight or obese tend to have more health problems over their lifetime. They tend to have more sick days and to be less productive while at work. Often, they note that their quality of life is less than they would like it to be as they find their weight, size and fitness levels restrict them from or do not support the type of life they want to live. Further, the obesity problem costs the world a jaw-dropping $2 trillion dollars per year, coming in third place behind smoking and armed conflict and just ahead of alcohol. It impacts all of us. But we can turn it around.

So where do we begin? I don’t believe in dieting – I believe in changing our diet. Traditional dieting is not sustainable – people end up on and off of diets, weight yo-yoing up and down, and feeling generally dissatisfied. I strongly believe in creating a lifestyle change that works for you and the way you live specifically (because everybody is different), and includes more of the foods that provide the macro- and micro- nutrients our bodies need to be at their strongest and fittest state, does. Where do you start? You start with real, whole foods. Foods that you recognize and can pronounce (although admittedly, with names like kohlrabi, aubergine and jicama – even real foods can have names that may seem unusual…!). Foods that are fresh and good, local and/or organic if possible. Meat and fish that is of good quality and sustainably sourced. Foods like this may require a bit more planning and a bit more prep, but in the end, your waistline will shrink, your health and energy will improve, and you’ll waste less time nursing common illnesses and diseases that are diet-related.

But…the food that fits into this lifestyle must taste good or we won’t bother; and it has to be super simple to prepare while packing in the flavor. As the Hairy Bikers note, we want to be healthy, but we also still want to enjoy our food along the way.

The recipe I’ll share with you today really delivers – healthy and packed with flavor and crunch and spice, it is addicting in a good way and provides tons of macronutrients and fiber along with good fats and protein. Use any variety of the freshest vegetables you can find, good quality lettuce, and peanut butter without preservatives. If you wish, everything can be made ahead and packed to take with you: for a lunch at work; a potluck; a picnic; a road trip. As for me, I’m packing this into the saddle bag on my bike and cannot wait to enjoy it overlooking some beautiful vista somewhere…

Lettuce & Veggie Wraps w/ Spicy Peanut Sauce

For the peanut sauce:

1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons peeled, minced ginger
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup natural peanut butter, creamy or crunchy – your preference
2 tablespoons tamari (can also use regular soy sauce if gluten is no issue)
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon sriracha or other hot sauce of choice
juice of 1/2 lemon

Melt the coconut oil over medium heat in a small saucepan. Add the garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant and tender; 2-3 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients and stir until smooth. Remove from heat.

For the vegetables:

one head of the lettuce of your choice (choose romaine, or a dark lettuce for more micronutrients)
variety of vegetables cut into long strips including:
- red, yellow, orange bell pepper
- kohlrabi
- cucumber
- zucchini (courgette)
- carrot
- fennel

To serve, arrange the lettuce leaves and vegetables on a large platter. Serve with the peanut sauce on a the side so that each person can pile the vegetables they want to eat onto the lettuce cup and spoon peanut sauce over the top. This can be served as an appetizer or snack, or go crazy and turn it into lunch!

Serves 4-6.

Whole Grains, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

May 8, 2015 by aplough

Oh Friday, am I glad to see you. This week has been packed and I’m ready to take a nice long walk in the fading sunlight, come back and kick my feet up, and breathe deeply for a moment.

But first Dinner.

If you been cooking meals all week long, it’s possible that by the end of it you have bits and bobs of leftover portions lingering around on various shelves. Whole grains are one item that I tend to cook extra of at the beginning of the week ‘just in case’ as they take a bit longer to cook than other ingredients do – and having them on hand means that I can get a quick hearty meal on the table with the addition of raw or cooked vegetables and a few other key items. What the easiest thing do when you have a bowl of leftover whole grains? Making a salad is high on my list.

This salad makes the most of a variety of herbs for the fullness of flavor; try these:

Basil
Mint
Cilantro
Parsley
Dill
Fennel (fronds)
Tarragon

Feel free to use all four, or mix and match what you have. I happened to have two different types of basil growing on my windowsill, so I used both Genovese basil and lemon basil for this – and I have to say I smiled a bit every time I bit into the citrus-anise note of the lemon basil – a welcome surprised scattered at random throughout the salad. The main thing is to experiment and use what you have – it’s hard to go wrong here, though I wouldn’t recommend Thai basil in this salad.

You can use any whole grain you wish for this. Good examples are:

Barley
Oat Groats or steel-cut oats
Millet
Quinoa
Brown, Red or Black Rice
Spelt grains
Kamut/Farro grains
Wheat grains or Tabbouleh

Some of these, like Quinoa and Millet cook quickly so you can get them on the stove and then prepare the other ingredients while they cook. You’ll want to make sure your grains are cool (they don’t have to be cold; room temperature is fine) before you add them to the salad for best results.

Now on to the vegetables: a variety of vegetables adds a broad array of colors, flavors and nutrients, so you can choose what you have on hand or your favorites. Try these:

Radish
Carrots
Kohlrabi
Cucumber
Zucchini
Snap peas
Green beans
Shelled edamame

I chose to add radish and carrots. Whatever you choose to put into the salad, make sure it’s sliced, grated, or diced really small so that no part of the salad is overly crunchy nor requires too much work to chew. You want this to be an enjoyable experience, not a workout for the jaw muscles!

And finally, toasted pumpkin seeds and the vinaigrette to pull everything together and all it needs is a quick toss and you can plate it up.

The thing I love about this salad is how flexible and versatile it is. You can use it to clean out the fridge at the end of the week, and then pack it along on a weekend picnic or to a potluck (if you increase the quantities, that is). If you make it mid-week, it makes the perfect lunch for the office. We’ve also packed this along for car, train and plane rides – since travel food is notoriously abysmal and it’s nice to have your own options along.

Hungry yet? Let’s get chopping!

Whole Grain, Kale and Mixed Herb Salad

Whole Grain, Kale and Herb Salad

1. In a large bowl combine:

1 cup cooked whole grains, your choice (see above)
3 cups raw kale, chopped and massaged with hands to soften
2 carrots, shredded
6 radishes, thinly sliced
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
2 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, toasted
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, stems and leaves chopped
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley, bottom stems removed and the rest chopped
1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped

2. Whisk the following ingredients together to make a vinaigrette:

Juice and Zest of one organic lemon (zest it first)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mustard (I like honey mustard for this, but any kind will do)
1 teaspoon real maple syrup
2 tablespoons olive oil

Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss well to coat. Serve immediately or store in an air-tight container for up to 24 hours.

Serves 2 as a main course.

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad in a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

April 24, 2015 by aplough

I love Spring for many reasons, but top of the list is that fact that all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, my local grocery starts offering produce that looks good, tastes great, and has a good chance of having been grown this year. After the citrus and pomegranates fade away, there is this dead zone that is filled only by the piles of red and green cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and all the root vegetables you can think of from carrots & onion to by-now-very-tired-looking kohlrabi. Now I love all of those vegetables and have happily been eating them all winter long. But at this point, it feels like I have been eating them all. winter. long.

But Spring is here again, and now I’m picking up spring onions and radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes. I know that here in Finland, most of the stuff is imported from our friendly neighbors in the south (Thank you Italy and Spain) and those which aren’t are green-house grown this time of year. But I’ll take it. And I’ll chop it. And layer it right into the salads my body seems to be craving.

Tomatoes in particular have been catching my eye, which is funny, because I steered completely clear of this during my entire childhood, unless they were cooked into a sauce of sorts. Seems those watered down, somewhat mealy, tasteless beefsteak tomatoes of my childhood were not really representative of what a tomato could be, and now their place in my faded memory has been usurped by a smaller, flavorful red orb that is the cherry tomato and occasionally by tomatoes of different colors: orange, yellow, purple, black. I remember seeing a cover photo on a Martha Stewart Living magazine, where a giant baguette had been cut in half and made into a giant bruschetta topped with a rainbow of tomato slices. It was so beautiful. And so far from the types of tomatoes I’d seen.

I then tried to grow tomatoes here in Finland. I bought 6 packs of seeds with different, colorful varieties. I started them indoors and nursed them through the chilly months of late winter and early spring; repotted them as the weather got warmer, and planted them with high hopes in my garden. Oh, I got tomatoes, but none that ripened on the vine. And while the virtues of green tomatoes have been touted over and over again, I’d rather have mine turn the color advertised on the seed pack.

Now I buy them, though I still have dreams of succeeding at growing my own, much as my sister-in-law S- did last summer: she planted them against her garage wall where the sun beat down all day in an unusually hot Finnish summer, and we ate them all Summer long and into Fall when she finally had to harvest what was left as the cold rains began.

I picked up a huge pile of tomatoes in the grocery store, and have been snacking on them and popping them into salads all week long. Pablo Neruda would understand. In his Ode to Tomatoes the Chilean poet and ambassador closes the poem this way:

….

it’s time!

let’s go!

and upon

the table,

belted by summer,

tomatoes,

stars of the earth,

stars multiplied

and fertile

show off

their convolutions,

canals

and plenitudes

and the abundance

boneless,

without husk,

or scale or thorn,

grant us

the festival

of ardent colour

and all-embracing freshness.

And so the tomato season begins. Here’s a salad to help you celebrate.

Tomato, Avocado & Cucumber Salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad with a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

2 avocados, peeled and cubed

2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and cut in half

1 large English cucumber, rinsed and cut into large dice

2 spring onions, sliced thinly

2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Combine the vegetables in a mixing bowl. In a small bowl or cup, whisk together the vinegar, honey, salt and pepper until the honey dissolves. Add the olive oil and whisk vigorously to create an emulsion. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss well. Allow the salad to sit for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors meld.

Serves 4 as a side dish

Did you like this recipe? Please let me know in the comments below – I’d love to hear from you!