Category: Side Dishes

Spring Cooked Salad

5/6/2023

The perfect way to transition into the Spring is starting to build in your veggies. Vegetables, especially cruciferous and leafy greens are the perfect way to start getting that lymph moving and grooving after the build up of the wet and sticky cold qualities from the Winter.

The tricky thing with this, is we are not quite in the place where we can eat raw salads. Raw food is tough to digest, and until the summer time, it's best to stay away from them.

So, what's our Ayurvedic solution? Well, we slightly cook the veggies to get them ready for digestion. By sautéing the veggies we start to break down some of the dry and rough qualities which helps the veggies to digest better.

We also incorporate a ton of healthy fats and spices to further the digestion! So, here's the perfect cooked salad to get you ready for warmer weather, while also being tasty, flavorful, and perfect for this transitional season!

Ingredients:

1 cup kale finely chopped
1/2 -3/4 cup cabbage finely chopped
6-7 small sweet peppers julienned
1/4 cup radicchio finely chopped
2 green onions, chopped
Your favorite oil of choice (I used avocado)
3 tsp crushed mustard seeds (yes, crush them!)
3 tsp your favorite curry powder
1 tsp whole mustard seeds
Juice of 1/2 lime
Salt to taste

Directions:

Warm your oil in your favorite pan
Temper your mustard seeds until they start to pop
Add in your kale, cabbage, radicchio, and sweet peppers
*As a note we are not sautéing until it gets super soggy...just until the colors get beautifully vibrant and bright
Sprinkle in the salt, curry powder, and crushed mustard seeds, and mix well.
Turn off the stove, and mix in the lime juice
Garnish with green onions and your favorite microgreens!

Enjoy enjoy enjoy!
much love,
n

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Spinach Rice

11/23/2020

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Rice is one of those things that I feel as though I can never really get the right proportion down. Of course, people in my family may be a little bit moody on whether they want rice with their meal or not. Me, on the other hand, lovesssss rice (and yes, it deserved that many s's!). And not just rice, rice in any form...Spanish rice, fried rice, rice flakes, rice noodles, rice flour, lemon rice...I'm not kidding when I say that I really love rice!

Anyways, I digress. I thought I'd take my hand at a fun rice side dish, that is super easy to make and a great way to get your greens in! I introduce, Spinach Rice. It's a modern take on a classic Indian recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as my family and I did!

Ingredients:

16 ounce box of baby spinach
3 tsp grated ginger
2 tbsp avocado oil
3 bay leaves
4 cloves (whole)
4 star of anise (whole)
3 cups cooked jasmine rice
Salt to taste
Juice of 1 lime
Parmesan cheese optional

Directions:

Cook rice as per instructions.
While rice is cooking, in a blender, blend the spinach and grated ginger. Use just enough water to get the spinach going so that it doesn't get stuck.
In a large pan, warm the oil. Add in the bay leaves, cloves, star of anise. Let the spices warm up just enough where you start smelling a lovely aroma.
Add in the spinach puree, and just let the spices steep into the spinach, approximately 7 minutes.
Once the rice is cooked, add it into the spinach puree.
You will let the rice simmer in the puree until the water has evaporated, and you get a nice green-colored rice.
Mix in salt as you like and the lime juice. (Feel free to adjust the flavorings to your taste!)
Optional add-in: parmesan cheese. For me, it added a nice creaminess, but definitely not necessary!

Enjoy your spinach rice as a side dish to any meal. Your family is sure to love it!

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Coconut Mashed Carrots

5/28/2018

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Mashed potatoes. Comfort food. Seriously one of my favorite foods. There is nothing better than a side of creamy and garlic-y mashed potatoes. And as much as I love potato as a vegetable. Although potatoes have a bad rep, one of the more unfortunate parts of the potato is that it is a nightshade. Nightshades inherently are inflammatory to the body, so the more we limit the consumption of potatoes, the better overall for our bodies.

The search was on to make a side of something creamy and delicious that elicits the same comfort food aspect of it all.

In Ayurveda, when I think of comfort, the first thing that comes to mind is something that is nourishing and grounding. All of this leads to minimizing vata. So, naturally I reached for root vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes.

AND GUYS. This was the most delicious thing I have had in a long time. I want you guys to make this almost immediately. I kid you not it was so good. And the best part was that it took zero to no time to make this! Recipe below. Promise you're going to love this.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp avocado oil
4 carrots, peeled and cut in big chunks
2 sweet potatoes (same prep as the carrots)
2 cans coconut milk (see note in the recipe for exactly how to prep this guy)
2 tsp minced garlic
5 tsp black pepper
Handful of chopped Italian parsley
Salt to taste
Water

Directions:

In a large pot, place the oil to warm. Put in the garlic, and saute the garlic until a nice aroma comes out.
Pop in the carrots and sweet potato and cover it in the oil, and cook just a little bit.
Next, you're going to cover the veggies with just enough water so that it leaves about 2 inches of water above the vegetables. Close the pot. Turn the stove onto medium heat. Let the water come to a boil so that the vegetables can cook.
Here is my note on the coconut milk. One can you will use fully. The second can you want to use just the cream part. The easiest way to do this is to stick the can into the fridge the night before or for a few hours so that the cream and water naturally separate.
You want to make sure that you can stick a knife completely through both the carrots and sweet potatoes. Once all cooked, mash everything together. Depending on how you like it, you can leave it as chunky or creamy as you like.
After all is well and mashed, add in 1 full can of coconut milk and a 2nd can of just cream. Mix well together again. I mashed it a little bit more at this point as well.
Finally, I added in the parsley, black pepper, and salt for taste. One final mix, and voila! You have the most amazing mashed carrots and sweet potatoes you can imagine.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! Bon apetit!

I topped it with some rice and lentils for some heartiness.

Paired with some walnuts and arugula--you can't go wrong!

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