#thats kvass | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jahntang · 7 years ago

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💣 Kaboom! 💣

Since I started learning more about nutrition and experimenting with various diets, I’m constantly refining and improving on my meals based on what I’ve learnt over these years.

Lately, my diet has been heavily influenced by the traditional dietary wisdom of our ancestors taught by the Weston A. Price Foundation. However, I still continue the best practices from my past diets such as the 9 cups of vegetables daily from the Wahl’s Protocol. These are divided into 3 categories of vegetables, all crucial for the different nutrients they provide – the dark green leafy veggies, the cruciferous sulphur-rich veggies and the colourful veggies.

Here’s where my Daily Salad Bomb comes in.

As asians, we cook most of our foods, including the vegetables. I’m not saying cooking is bad, in fact, cooking helps break down starch and cellulose thereby making food easier to digest and softens food, improving texture.

However, “any sustained heat of approximately 118-129 degrees F (48-54 C) destroys virtually all enzymes”. [2] They get denatured as they are very sensitive to heat. The enzymes are important for predigestion and take the load off of our bodies’ pancreas from having to overproduce our own enzymes.

Personally, I feel great improvements in my health from including a bowl of salad a day – often as the first meal to start the day and before any carbs. I feel this especially so in my sensitive skin which tends to be easily prone to acne. Overall, I also feel much less inflamed.

In this post, I’ll show you how I make my daily salad bowl a nutrient BOMB! 💣😉

Contents

Shopping Rules

Prepping in Advance

The B-b-b-base

Dressing

Protein

Accessories

Conclusion

Shopping Rules

Here are some simple rules I follow when shopping for ingredients and prepping a few days in advance:

Always opt for organic and grown as close to home as possible. You want to avoid ingesting pesticides and herbicides and you’ll want your food as fresh as can be!

Shop for convenience. For example, I almost always buy the “ready-to-eat” pre-washed and chopped packages of salad mix. That way I save a some time here and there and the savings accumulate.

Go for variety. Different colours, species, plants, sprouts … the supermarket is your oyster! Don’t just stick to iceberg lettuce! You get a more varied nutrient profile by eating a variety of veggies. Thats why I like those mixed leaf packages.

Don’t scrimp on quality food. Not just organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free, it also means pasture-raised, cage-free and wild caught. Think of it an investment in your health. Your health is your first wealth. You don’t want to spend the wealth you’ve earned on chasing health in your golden years.

For more simple rules and in-depth explanation, check out this post!

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Prepping in Advance

Drying the veggies after washing and cutting. Some overnight soaking of grains in the background!

Neatly stored in recycled salad boxes in the fridge!

When I make these salads, I like to make them under 10 minutes so I can get on with my priorities for the day. This means the ingredients I use have to be all ready to be ‘assembled’. Kinda like what you see in those fast food grab-and-go chains like Subway.

This is where prepping comes in.

Almost immediately after coming back from a grocery run, I’m prepping some foods in advance for the next few days. This usually involves washing and shredding and not so much cooking.

Washing wise, if its not organic I use vinegar and baking soda to wash. I will wash everything that isn’t in the “ready-to-eat” pre-washed packages.

This blogpost will teach you how to wash foods to turn them almost “organic”!

After washing, I usually shred carrots with a fruit skin shredder, dry out the sprouts and whatever else I washed and boil/blanch veggies like beetroots and broccoli.

Then it all goes into the fridge in recycled plastic boxes or containers, ready to be grabbed and assembled!

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The B-b-b-base

The first part of the Salad Bomb is its base. I first grab about 2 handfuls of the “ready-to-eat” pre-washed salad mix – I usually get the Mesclun one as it has a good variety of leaves.

An example of the “ready-to-eat” prewashed salad mix! (Image source)

Next, I add a handful of sprouts, such as alfalfa and pea (“dou miao”) sprouts. Because they are the first products of germinating seeds, sprouts have a very high concentration of nutrients. [3]

2 Handfuls of a “ready-to-eat” prewashed salad mix

A handful of nutrient-dense sprouts over the mix.

Another handful of shredded carrots!

Lastly, I add some colour with the shredded carrots from the earlier food prep! Below from left to right, is how the bowl builds up from the b-b-b-base. 🙃

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Dressing

There is a unique group of people who like or don’t mind their salads dry (my dad is one such individual) and you are certainly free to do so and skip this step. However, the dressing is an irreplaceable part of my salad bombs for the following reasons.

Firstly, taste. You get all sorts of flavours that enhance your bowl from mixing a bit of oil and vinegars together.

Secondly, texture. There is something about salad dressings that softens the leaves and almost predigests them in a sense. I’ve found raw vegetables much easier to eat and swallow with dressing.

Lastly, nutrients. There are some nutrients you just can’t get enough from just eating salads alone. One important one is an important macronutrient called fats. You can get lots of healthy fats through your salad dressing.

That said, here’s how I make my simple salad dressing in 3 steps!

STEP 1: Add some oils! I usually add 1-2 tablespoons of organic cold pressed coconut oil. I use this brand but another one I like is the Coconut Secret, Organic Alive Coconut Oil, Raw Extra Virgin (Amazon.com, iHerb.com). Learn more about why this brand is so special here. Sometimes I add 1 tablespoon of MCT oil too, if I have any on hand.

Then I will add another tablespoon of organic cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. You get different nutrients from different oils. Even the ratios of fatty acids differ. Look for brands with opaque bottles as olive oil is easily oxidized when exposed to light. I like this brand.

STEP 2: Add some acids! About 1/2 or 1 tablespoon of your favourite acid. This can be organic apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar and even 1/2 a lemon or lime!

STEP 3: MIX! I usually use chopsticks and a tablespoon (for measuring too) to mix everything together. Eating salads with chopsticks also makes it so much easier!

Some of the oils and acids I have on hand.

Its fun to experiment and play with different combinations of oils and acids. You get a new flavour not just from different ingredients, but also from different ratios of the same ingredient!

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Protein

Contrary to popular believe, you don’t need that much protein as you think. If you’re not exercising intensively, about 0.8g/kg of body weight is more than sufficient. [5]

As with the b-b-b-base, I like to make things easy for myself so I choose protein sources that are easy to prepare but still very nutrient dense!

Here are a few of my go-tos:

2 Soft boiled ‘Kampong’ (cage-free) eggs! After boiling the water in an electric kettle, I just pour enough to cover 2 eggs in a pot and leave it to cook while I assemble the salad. I guarantee you the eggs will not turn hard-boiled, even if you forget about them and leave them for more than 10 mins, as long as you don’t cover the pot.

Dessicated beef liver powder. It’s hard to get quality pasture-raised organ meat in Singapore and try as I might, I am still unable to like the taste of liver despite the various recipes I’ve tried. Dessicated liver powder is one workaround to this problem. When added over salad, it kinda reminds me of pork floss! I use these brands (Amazon.com, iHerb.com)

Might have over sprinkled the liver powder here…

Homemade Kefir! Probably the most nutrient dense form of fermented dairy, it’s probiotic and nutritional content is far superior than yogurt in my opinion. See here for more info. Because kefir is quite fluid, it can double up as a dressing too!

Jar of kefir fermenting.

About 5 tablespoons of kefir over the beef liver powder

Raw prawn or fish roe! Another nutrient bomb, just like cage-free eggs, these are genuine superfoods. I get these from the sushi section of most supermarkets these days. Try to get those packed as fresh as possible (i.e. the same day you buy).

Raw fish roe

Leftovers from previous meals. Another way to make your meals easier is to always cook more than you think you need (or not force yourself to finish everything if you are full!🤢). This way you can store the leftovers in the fridge for the next meals. Since salads are cold anyway, these are perfect!

Alternatively, you can always warm leftovers quickly in a pan over some melted grassfed butter/ghee or coconut oil. I definitely don’t recommend microwaving!

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Accessories

Last but not least, accessories mean anything else to add flavor or nutrients to spice up your bowl! Some of my favorites include:

Organic blueberries (or any other berries for that matter)

Fruit slices like pineapple, jackfruit, persimmons, kiwis, bananas, etc.

Half or a whole Avocado!

Chopped, pre-steamed veggies like beetroot/cauliflower/broccoli! Or various other tubers and starches like yam, sweet potatoes or tapioca.

A pinch of raw, finely minced garlic and ginger! This adds some heat and spice to the salad without the spicy punch from chilli which is a nightshade.

Homemade sauerkraut! Or any other unpasteurized lacto-fermented condiments like beet kvass and pickles. These are all superfoods as the fermentation process increases the nutrient density of the foods!

Overnight soaked oats! Or any other organic, gluten-free pre-soaked/sprouted grains, nuts and seeds or legumes. The soaking and/or sprouting is an essential step to reduce anti-nutrients and improve nutrient bioavailability (absorption). More info here.

Unpasteurized Miso paste! This is something I’m experimenting with

Fish Sauce! I sometimes add this to the dressing for flavor. About 1 teaspoon is more than enough! It’s packed with B-vitamins and amino acids from the fish. Plus, its fermented so you get a different range of beneficial bacteria.

Above are some of my past Salad Bomb combinations. That last picture was when I decided to weigh how much a typical bowl weighed and I was shocked that it was over a kilogram!

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Conclusion

So there you have it. I hope I’ve given you plenty of ideas and motivation to make your own daily Salad Bomb! 💣 It’s nutritional content will truly explode inside you! 😉

Thanks for taking time to read this! Please share if you found this useful!

Questions? Tips? Suggestions? Opinions? I’d love to hear them. Comment below!

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