Chef Wendell: Hoosier Spring Green Salad

Recipe developed by Chef Wendell Fowler
Eat Right, Now!

Yields: 3 Servings

Ingredients:

• 3 tbs. Flax seed or virgin olive oil
• 1 Lemon, juiced
• 3 tbs. Chopped onion
• 1 tsp. Bragg’s liquid amino acid (liquid protein concentrate derived from soybeans,)
• Pinch ground celery seeds
• Spring Chives
• 6 cups assorted edible greens, washed and torn into bite-size pieces
• Garnish with tomato wedges/ Grape tomatoes and English cucumbers.

Directions:

1. In a small bowl–using a wire whisk or a fork–combine the oil, lemon juice, onion, Bragg’s liquid amino, celery seeds and chives until the dressing becomes thick as heavy syrup.
2. In individual salad bowls, place the greens and sprouts.
3. Top with dressing and toss.

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If the earth "laughs in flowers," as Emerson once noted, it surely rejoices in wild weeds.

Eat Your Weeds! Taste the weeds. Become the weed.

Lettuce, spinach and other dark salad greens are an essential part of a healthful diet. This means only produce grown in one's locale preferable to produce from 2000 miles away. Support, meet and shake the hand of a local farmer by visiting a Farmers Market.

One man’s weeds, however, are another man’s food. Dark-Green leaves are nutrient rich because they contain the light-catching, energy-converting machinery of plants. Salad greens contain Vitamin A, Vitamin C, beta-carotene, calcium, folate, fiber, and phytonutrients. Red and dark green leafy vegetables are generally higher in nutrients than light-colored greens. Wimpy Iceberg lettuce offers little or no redeeming nutritional value.

But, please do not asphyxiate the flavor of the greens with copious amounts of costly store-bought dressings. Making your own dressing at home is economical and creative, plus YOU control the ingredients. NO MORE RANCH and artificial, fattening, caloric dressings!

If you are looking for a way to get more omega 3 EFA’s into your family diet, use Flax oil instead of olive oil. Olive oil is good, of course. At home we use Bragg’s Amino’s to season and to boost nutrition. Amino acids are needed to build the various proteins used in the growth, repair, and maintenance of body tissues. Amino acids play innumerable roles in human health and disease.

This recipe celebrates spring’s most delicious and health-sustaining young greens. American mescluns may include lettuces, arugula, endives, mustards, purslane, chicory, watercress, parsleys, fennels, and escarole.