Raw vegan hemp and veggies salad

Good morning!

This morning, I have a fantastic breakfast, lunch, dinner, side, or anytime dish for you. Again, there will be no awards for the photos; I was so hungry I ate most of it before remembering to take pictures. Oops!

Just trust me, this is awesome.

I woke up this morning tired of all the animal protein. On Whole30, the guidelines require a dense source of protein at every meal, alongside lots of healthy veggies. Well, I just wanted veggies, veggies, and just more veggies. So how to get some essential amino acids and healthy fats into my balanced breakfast? Hemp seeds to the rescue!

Like all salads, this one is endlessly customizable. Use what you like! Want it 100% raw? Skip the roasted beets. Is it summer where you are? Add tomatoes instead of the beets. Want more carbs to fuel a heavy cardio day? Add more carrots, some leftover roasted squash or sweet potato, orange or tangerine sections, or some fresh or dried apples. Need more protein to recover from an intense strength training session? Add some walnuts, shrimp, tuna, or egg. Need more fat to fuel a long day? Use the whole avocado. Have different salad greens kicking around? Switch them up. Kale would be awesome. Frisee would be wonderful, especially if you top the salad with some egg. Use what you have and like best. Enjoy!

RAW VEGAN HEMP AND VEGGIES SALAD

Serves 1 as a light meal, or 2 as a side

INGREDIENTS

1/3 to 1/2 an avocado
2 T dulse seaweed flakes (if you can't find dulse, try crumbled nori)
A couple glugs raw apple cider vinegar, to taste
Pinch sea salt, to taste
1 large heart or small full head of romaine lettuce, washed and chopped
1 large or 2 smaller carrots, chopped small or shredded
1 leftover roasted beet, cubed
2 T shelled hemp seeds

METHOD

Mash the avocado, dulse, vinegar, and salt together in the bottom of your big mixing bowl. Add lettuce, carrot, beet, and hemp seeds. Toss to coat really well. Season to taste, and dive in!

Salmon with Crispy Skin and Balsamic Glaze

Hello again!

We've already discussed the importance of iodine to your overall health, and especially the health of your thyroid gland. Here's a quick, easy recipe to boost your iodine intake! As a bonus, it is rich in super healthy omega-3 fatty acids, a fantastic source of easily digestible protein, and fairly low in overall fat.

It takes about ten minutes from start to finish. Can't beat it on a weeknight! Serve just like this for breakfast. For a heartier lunch or dinner, heat up some leftover soup or serve with roasted squash, sweet potato, or even rice if you are into that sort of thing.

Please try to choose wild-caught sockeye or coho salmon from Alaska. These are the healthier choices in terms of omega-3s, and they're also caught using much more environmentally sound methods than many other fish. Farmed salmon is less healthy for you, and far less healthy for the oceans.
 

This is how the fish looks before adding the sauce. Look how crispy!

Salmon with Crispy Skin and Balsamic Glaze

Two salmon steaks, about 6 - 8 oz. per person
Ghee, about 1 T in all, divided
Sea salt, to taste
Balsamic vinegar, about 2 T

Optional:
Romaine or your other favorite lettuce, as much as you like
Grapefruit or orange, one whole
Whatever else you'd like to enjoy on the side

Heat a cast iron skillet to medium.

While your pan is heating up, clean your romaine, chop it, and put it on plates. Make grapefruit or orange supremes: Peel fruit with a knife. Holding over a bowl, carefully cut each segment out by cutting along the membrane on both sides. Arrange sections on lettuce. Squeeze the rest of the juice out of the membrane and drink it! Or save it. If you have enough, you can sub the juice instead of vinegar in the glaze below.

Take your salmon steaks out of the fridge. Pat dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, both on the flesh side and the skin side. The salt on the flesh seasons the fish, and the salt on the skin allows it to stand just above the heat long enough to create a little pocket so the skin doesn't stick to the pan.

Melt about 2 teaspoons of the ghee in the pan, and swirl around to coat.

Lay the salmon steaks in the hot pan such that they don't touch.

Adjust heat if necessary - the fish should be sizzling but not going crazy.

Resist the urge to move the fish. Let it stay in one place. If you move it, it won't be crispy. Patience, Grasshopper!

Keep cooking just on the skin side until the fish has become opaque to about 2/3 or so of its thickness. This will take several minutes, but time will vary based on the size and density of the pieces, and the heat of your pan.

Flip, give it only a couple seconds on the flesh side, and plate next to or on top of salad and/or other sides.

Turn off heat, and immediately add balsamic vinegar (or reserved juice) to the hot pan. It will simmer and reduce. If it doesn't, your pan was not hot enough. Turn it back on. It's such a small quantity, this will take just a few seconds. When sizzling subsides and vinegar is reduced about half, swirl in that last teaspoon of ghee.

Pour the glaze over the fish and a little over the salad too. Enjoy!

Drool-worthy! Even though the glaze is kind of hard to see on a black plate...

Enjoy, and have a happy and healthy weekend!

Love,
Chef Mary

Even though it isn't Wednesday, linking to Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop!

Iodine

Today I want to talk about a super important trace mineral: iodine.

Iodine is critical for the health of your thyroid, and therefore the health of the whole body. The thyroid is a tiny gland in the throat that has the big job of coordinating your metabolism. Two key hormones it produces (T3 and T4 in the diagram below) contain iodine. If you become deficient, you run the risk of all sorts of disorders from hypothyroidism to hyperthyroidism to goiter.

Iodine is also considered important for detoxification, and clearing of radiation. Once, I had a client who was undergoing very aggressive radiation therapy. Iodine is a very powerful element for removing radiation from the body. Because her therapy required that she keep the radiation in her body as long as possible in order to battle cancer, she was not permitted to consume anything containing iodine. During her treatment, she could not have anything containing fish, seaweed, or iodized salt! (Since completing her treatment, she is again encouraged to get plenty of iodine.)

Many of us are most familiar with iodine from the yucky iodized salt in the supermarket. Here's the thing about the yucky salt: you don't have to eat if you get enough iodine in your diet. You can use better-tasting, non-iodized sea salt. In fact, you can get all the iodine you need from a healthy, balanced diet. You just have to know how to get it!

Iodine is abundantly available in all seafood, especially seaweed and kelp. So even if you avoid fish and shellfish, you can get plenty of iodine from sea vegetables. It also naturally occurs in soil, but we can't count on most produce as a significant dietary source because the amounts vary so widely from region to region.

Once upon a time, people living in the middle of the U.S. didn't have access to ocean fish. Lake fish is not a good source of iodine; it must come from salt water. On top of that, the soil in the Midwest is very low in iodine. In the 19th century and into the start of the 20th, many Midwesterners developed thyroid disorders. Then the U.S. government started adding iodine to table salt, and that problem was solved.

Unfortunately, now many people think that supplements (either pills or iodized salt) are the best or only ways to get iodine. But we didn't evolve to have to take supplements. How did people maintain healthy thyroid glands before supplementation? Easy: through seafood.

If you eat sea vegetables or salt water fish once or twice a week, you are likely getting enough iodine in your diet. It is abundant in fresh, frozen, dried, and canned products. So if all you can afford is dolphin-safe, low-mercury skipjack tuna in a can and packets of dried seaweed from Super 88, you can still meet your iodine needs that way. There will be recipes for grain-free "sushi" rolls and seaweed salads on this blog in the future.

If you find yourself craving seafood, one reason may be that your body is looking for an iodine boost. If you live in the Midwest and don't have easy access to ocean fish, or if you hate all seafood including seaweed and kelp, then you are a candidate for supplementation. Otherwise, just get it from food!

In my next post, I'm going to give you a wonderful, easy iodine-rich recipe for salmon with crispy skin, with a balsamic glaze. Yum!