Welcome back to Nuggets of Deliciousness! This is my second installment of #NOD’s, which is pretty much the coolest blog feature ever. Just Tweet a question at me (@ElivenGuy) and your question, along with your Twitter account could be featured in the next NOD. Enjoy!
@HeatherBrewerMA posed an excellent question:
First of all, thank you Heather, for the Tweet. For those of you who don’t know, Heather Brewer is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern with a Master of Arts in Somatic Psychotherapy. She does amazing work and if you would like to know more about how she can help you on your path to well being please visit her website: heatherbrewermft.com
As my brain was storming on what dish I would offer up for Heather’s #NOD, this song popped into my head (don’t go getting into a YouTube spiral now, you need to read the rest of this blog post). For those of you who know Heather, or if you are a “free-associater” like me, you know why that little ear-worm is friggin hilarious. But the hilarity does not stop there, instead of the actual words to that song my crazy brain somehow automatically created my own Enliven Guy/Weird Al version. The lyrics are as follows:
Let’s talk about health, baby.
Let’s talk about rice and beans.
Let’s talk about all the good food and the bad food, that we eat.
Let’s talk about health. Let’s talk about health.
What does that have to do with today’s NOD? Absolutely nothing but it made you laugh didn’t it? I hope so. If it did that will be $92 for this week’s prescribed laughter, which we all know is the best medicine. Be careful though because we also all know what happens when ya can’t stop laugh’n:
But I digress. Heather asked for a seasonal, cleansing and healing dish and a seasonal, cleansing and healing dish she shall receive. But first, kindly allow me to drop some knowledge:
DID YOU KNOW? Watercress is one of the newest “trends” in healthy eating. I personally think that the word “trend” has no place in a sentence with healthy eating but the fact remains that Watercress has more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach and it equals oranges in the vitamin C department. This is not to mention the bevy of additional healing properties packed into this precious little perennial. Check out this fabulous article to learn a little more about Watercress and other exciting things like the power of the Kiwi! https://www.caring.com/articles/12-foods-super-healing
And now, without further adieu, I give you the #NOD:
Salad Words
When it comes to cleansing food you typically want alkalizing ingredients. Many people’s bodies are sitting at a slightly too acidic level due to the consumption of coffee, soda and traditionally processed red meats, poultry and dairy (more on that here). So in order to combat that I have designed a nice lite meal that is strong enough for a man but P.h. balanced for a woman…just kidding it’s P.h. balanced for everyone.
The Recipe | “The Buttercress Baby”
Served with White Balsamic Vinaigrette along with a cleansing & invigorating Cranberry Green Tea Refresher.
The Gear
- A Knife
- A Bowl
- A Blender
- A 1 – 2 Gallon Pitcher
- A Fork (for eating things)
The Food Stuff
- 2 Cups Butter Lettuce (Chopped)
- 1 Cup Watercress (Chopped)
- 1 Cup Baby Spinach
- 1 Cup Kale (Chopped)
- 1 Pink Lady Apple (Julienned)
- Almond Slices (Toasted)
- Dried Cranberries
- Gorgonzola (Crumbled)
The Dressing Stuff
- 1/2 Cup White Balsamic Vinegar
- 1/2 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
- 2 Cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Shallots (About 4 or 5)
- 2 Tbsp Honey
- 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
- Basil (About 5 fresh leaves or 2 Tbsp dried)
- 1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
- Salt-N-Pepa (Get it!? It’s like full circle man!) (1 tsp each)
The Drink Stuff
- Water (1 Gallon Filtered)
- Green Tea Bags (Like a bunch of em)
- Yerba Mate Bags (Like a few of em)
- Cranberry Juice (Preferably the unfiltered raw kind)
- Lemon Juice (Squeeze it, squeeze it real good)
- Sweetener if desired (Preferably honey or stevia)
What’s Cookin Good Lookin?
Well actually nothing is cooking in this dish which is part of what makes it such a power-packed recipe (alright so the almonds are a little toasted but that’s okay, I get a little toasted sometimes too). For the most part, raw food is really the way to go. It’s not always fun and some people may just want to burn some flesh from time to time but ultimately, if you want your diet to have healing and restorative powers you need to focus on the rawness. Do it!
All Dressed Up
Personally I like my dressing chilled so if you are like me then you may want to make the dressing ahead of time and toss it in the fridge but it is certainly not necessary.
To make the dressing put everything in the blender except for the oil and get your motor running. Then just drizzle in the oil nice and slow like, while the blender is running. Not only will you have achieved an emulsion but you will have one of the best vinaigrettes you’ve ever tasted!
It’s A Toss Up
The assembly of this salad is quite difficult so brace yourselves. Put everything in a bowl and toss it in the dressing. Voila! You’ve got yourself an incredibly cleansing and healing meal and there is even some built in protein.
Now if you want to get fancy with the plating then you need some height. Pile up that lettuce, sprinkle on the almonds, cranberries and gorg. Then stack those julienned apples as high as you can and drizzle the dressing over top. If you do that you might end up with something similar to this:
This recipe yields about 3 dinner size servings of nutritional power but if you wanted to serve it along side a piece of protein (fish or chicken) then it’s easily more like 6 servings.
The dressing recipe yields about 4 cups of dressing as is but if you like your dressing with a little more punch then back off on the oil a bit. If you don’t like the taste of vinegars then what the heck are you doing following this recipe! 🙂 Just kidding, simply up your oil to give it a milder flavor. Actually the standard ratio for a vinaigrette is 3-1, oil to acid (aka – vinegar, citrus, etc), but you know what they say: ratios are made to be broken (wait, that doesn’t sound right).
But hold on there! You need something to drink don’t you?
Pink Drank
The Cranberry Green Tea Refresher is pretty fool proof (take it from a fool). Bring the water to just before boiling, pour it in your pitcher, toss in about 6-8 green tea bags, about 2-4 Yerba Mate tea bags and steep away. The longer you steep the more nutrients you get but your tea can get bitter and biting if you steep too long. I’d say no more than 10 minutes. Then add your juices and sweetener to taste and chill it or ice it.
Shall we sum up the awesome nutritional power of this meal? Yes? Okay. The primary cleansing ingredients include the apple cider vinegar, the dried cranberries, the cranberry juice, the green tea, and the Yerba Mate tea but the nutrition in the salad helps your body do it’s thing so, really, the whole dish is cleansing.
Alkalizing ingredients include pretty much everything else. You would think that things like lemon juice and apple cider vinegar would be acidic but they are actually alkalizing foods. Check out this neat little chart for a pretty good list of acid-alkaline foods. You will notice that aside from the Gorgonzola and the cranberry everything in this meal is either neutral or alkaline and if you maintain a diet like this you will notice the effects on your health in no time flat.
I hope you all have enjoyed today’s #NOD. If so please subscribe, follow, comment, like or share. All the cool kids are doing it! Thanks for reading.
The Enliven Guy 