Spinach and strawberry salad
Spring is a great time to hit the reset button.
Introduce greens, and fresh berries into your smoothies, or like this divine salad, combine them with some sheep or goat feta, and pecans. So good! In spring and summer, strive to Eat the Rainbow, by taking advantage of the variety at the local farmers market bounty of seasonal fruits and veggies. In spring and summer, to eat seasonally, and optimally for our Lymph, we want to include more raw foods into our diets, with fewer starches, grains, processed, and dried foods.
Eating lots of dark greens every day helps keep our lymph flowing optimally, Greesns activate our lover with their bitterness, which gets our digestive juices going, they are packed with vitamin A, K, C, magnesium, potassium, and antioxidants. From an energetic perspective, foods in the bitter category like greens, act to cool the body, dispelling heat and inflammation. They carry away inflammation to be processed by our liver and kidneys, and get our lymph moving and flowing. Bitter Greens encourage our lymph to circulate and cleanse, to replenish our living river. Neat, right?
You could make this salad with any fresh lettuce, greens, or even baby kale or a spring mix of several different greens to really get the most out of the bitters. Eating spinach with a fruit high in vitamin C, makes the iron in the spinach more bioavailable and thus easier to absorb by our bodies. IF you have trouble digesting raw foods, try them in a smoothie, or have them at lunchtime instead of dinner. Our digestive fire, our Agni is strongest around the hours of 10am-2pm, making it easier for our body to digest raw foods at this time of day.
I LOVE fresh strawberries from the garden and the farmer’s market this time of year. They are just divine! So juicy and seasonal. Eating berries like strawberries are good for our lymph because they are red aligning them with our circulation, liver, heart, and womb in Ayurveda, they are naturally low in sugar, high in vitamin C, and offer sun protection to our skin and hair by consuming local berries and cherries throughout the season. Don’t forgo the sunscreen, but it’s nice knowing the foods we eat offer therapeutic and protective benefits to our bodies exactly when we need it, when we eat seasonally.
Ingredients
Makes 2-4 servings
2-4 cups Organic Spinach leaves, washed
1 c fresh dandelion leaves
1-2 c. Organic Strawberries, freshly washed and sliced
1/2 c. Whole pecans (optional)
1/4-1/2 c. Sheep or goat feta (optional)
DRESSING:
Juice of 1 fresh lemon
1 tsp. Honey
pinch Sea salt or Himalyan pink salt
3 tbsp. Olive oil or avocado oil
DIRECTIONS:
Wash spinach, dandelion, and strawberries. Chop or tear spinach or dandelion greens if desired. Chop strawberries and set aside.
Place greens in a bowl, and decorate with strawberries. I LOVE strawberries, so the more the better in my opinion! LOL
Sprinkle with pecans, and feta if desired. Then mix up the ingredients for the dressing.
In a small mason jar, add the lemon juice, honey, pinch of sea salt, and olive oil. Then, shake to emulsify the ingredients together.
Drizzle over your salad when ready to eat.
