Green is Gorgeous

Here is one of the yummy healthy salad recipes I promised. I hope this helps get the “more veggies” thing going for you.

Curly kale is best when in season. Right now you can still find the nice soft curly stuff.
When the leaves feel hard and tough (see two images below), just switch to “lacinto” or “dinosaur” kale which is the kind with the long straighter leaves.

I go into detail below for your ease of understanding, but don’t be fooled - it only takes about 7 minutes to make this yummy little salad.
The increase in nutrition over a regular lettuce salad is huge. (See nutritional info at the bottom of this post)

For a quick single serving of your hearty green kale salad:
Use one very big or 2 or 3 small curly kale leaves
OR
approximately 3 large to 6 small lacinto kale leaves

Cut them up into small bite size pieces and put in your large salad bowl that you will be eating out of.

Make your simple dressing:
One pinch of cayenne pepper
Juice of 1/2  lime or meyer lemon
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil (enough to make salad nice and moist)
Salt to taste (use good quality natural salts rather than commercial processed salts)

Here is the secret to making your salad yummy tender and easier to chew:
Pour your dressing over the kale and squeeze the dressing into your kale.
Use very strong squeezing/squishing to break down the kale.

Now:
Add slices from 1/4 cucumber
If you find a good one add 1 small or 1/2 large tomato sliced up
OR
Add your favorite veggies as you wish.  I prefer my kale salad with only a tomato.

Yummm!

With regard to the lemon in the dressing and stomach acid - the information I found is contradictory at best. I have read that lemon juice becomes alkaline when digested by saliva. I wouldn’t drink lemonade with a meal, but for a very green salad dressing that is chewed well, I believe it should go down nicely. For ongoing indigestion, try re-considering your food combining. I’ll post an in depth blog on it as soon as I can sift through all this info! For now, to keep it very simple, stick to proteins with veggies or complex carbs (like brown rice or quinoa) with veggies. Avoid mixing carbohydrates and proteins. And very inportant: Don’t mix fruit with anything else. Fruits should be eaten 30 - 45 minutes before anything else or no sooner than 3 hours after meals.

Kale contains excellent resources for Vitamin C, K, A, B6, Manganese, dietary fiber, copper, potassium, calcium, and a good resource for a host of other nutrients including Omega 3, B vitamins, magnesium, and vitamin E. It is also a source of Sulforaphane (if you chew it properly) which is thought to prevent cancer. I like Kale.