IMMUNE BOOSTING “Strawberry Mint Salad”

I love my salads and food prep one every week. Even before I became a nutritionist, my parents had a weekend farm near Barrie and they grew 5 acres of every vegetable you could think of. The earth was that black earth you see in all the garden centers. I still remember that black earth, no loss of top soil there.You could easily pull the vegetables out of the ground with little effort and the veggies were so colourful, big and taste amazing.

After helping with growing the veggies I would go home with bags of fresh picked vegetables. So vegetables have always been in abundance in my life and in my fridge. Even now my fridge is always packed with fresh vegetables for salads, vegan recipes, and juicing.

Vitamin A and C based

With this salad I decided to go with a salad that was lighter and had signs of spring and summer. I focused on vegetables with vitamin A and C because both are IMMUNE BOOSTING vitamins and BEAUTIFYING to the skin.

I decided on carrots, kale, red peppers, tomatoes and mint for A content and for C added strawberries, cucumber, apples and parsley. These veggies and fruit are so colourful and perfect for spring!

Now I like my salads to have some sweetness so I don’t always have to make a dressing. Not that I don’t like making them but with the strawberries, apples and cranberries you don’t really need one. I also like crunch, so I added some chopped walnuts and pecans — a good source of good fats too.Just for a change I added some blue cheese since I had made a coconut chickpea and tofu soup to pair this I didn’t have to worry about my protein content. I always love topping my salad with my favourites so I added more mint, chopped nuts and lots of strawberries.

Parsley is a detox superfood. It stimulates bowel function and is blood cleaning and also very anti-inflammatory. Parsley is very beneficial in helping with digestion.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup cherry tomatoes halved
• 1 half large cucumber diced
• 1 lge grated carrot
• 1 red pepper diced
• 1/2 bunch of parsley chopped
• 1 bunch of mint chopped (leave some for topping)
• 1/2 cup pitted black olives (sliced, whole or cut in half)
• 1 apple diced
• 15 strawberries diced (plus more for topping)
• 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans chopped (leave some for toppings)
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds) mix in and for topping

(large can chickpeas optional, or blue cheese)

Instructions

1. Dice all the ingredients that are to be diced. Place in large salad bowl.
2. Add in chopped ingredients.
3. Mix all ingredients together and top off salad with about 8- 10 diced strawberries, some chopped nuts and mint.