Wild Rice and Canellini Bean Salad with Raisins

Category: Salad

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Wild Rice and Canellini Bean Salad with Raisins

Here we are, and another year has arrived! I don’t know about you, but I am feeling a little sluggish after an overindulgent holiday season. Even though I was still doing my best to exercise and eat healthy, when I was out at holiday parties, I ate what was there. And there were definitely times that I ate things I shouldn’t have and paid for it later. I’m human, though, and the holidays happen.

Instead of dwelling on it, I’m getting things back in order! Last night? Salad for dinner. Today? Minty-delicious fennel and celery green juice.

This easy, vegan wild rice salad makes for a quick and nutritious lunch or dinner that will get you back in the groove with your healthy eating this new year.

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WILD RICE AND CANELLINI BEAN SALAD WITH RAISINS
serves 3-4

1 1/2 cups wild rice, cooked (3/4 cup dried)
1 1/2 cups canellini beans, cooked (3/4 cup dried beans, or one can)
1/2 cup raisins, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes to plump
1/3 cup cilantro or parsely, chopped small
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil or other oil (flax)
2 drops stevia or 1 tsp honey or maple syrup

Mix the cooked rice, beans, raisins, and cilantro or parsley together in a large bowl. Mix the dressing ingredients together separately and then toss the salad in the dressing. Bam! So easy!

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Raw Butternut Salad with Cranberry Dressing

So much is happening around here! I’m really excited to not only be hosting this week’s Food Matters Project recipe, but also to be a new manager of the Project (along with Lexi of Lexi’s Kitchen). I’m hoping that we can breathe some new life into it and get people talking about it. It really is a fantastic project – you can find out more about it here – and we are always happy to have more participants, so if you think you might be interested, please do join us for a recipe or two and I’m sure you’ll love it as much as I do! You can find the other group members’ interpretation of this recipe here.

And don’t forget to check out our newly updated Pinterest board for tons of recipe inspiration!

This week I chose a Raw Butternut Salad with Cranberry Dressing, mostly because I was in student-mode when I was looking through the cookbook. I knew I would have a lot going on this week and so I tried to pick something that wouldn’t be too time consuming. Also, I had never tried raw squash before!

Plus, even though we already had Canadian Thanksgiving, there’s still plenty of time to squeeze in some healthy side dishes for American Thanksgiving – and this one is suitable for a gluten-free and vegan diet.

The squash was just a little crunchy, made softer by the cranberry sauce. I added pecans and a couple drops of stevia because my sauce was quite tart. Also of note is that 1 tbsp of ginger ended up making a reeeeeally gingery sauce, so if that’s not your thing you might want to go a little easy on the ginger. I added a pinch of cinnamon because I just couldn’t resist. I would definitely make this again as a quick side dish. It comes together really quickly, making it perfect for a weeknight dinner.

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Kamut Salad with Kale, Pistachios, and Cranberries

I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to lately. Last week instead of blogging, I went on a lovely, sunny fall photo walk with an old friend… and as a result of our frolicking, I have a fancy new photo of myself on the sidebar as well as on my About page. It’s been a while now that I’ve been meaning to get a nice photo taken for the blog, to make things a little more personal around here. So you see, even when I’m out and about, down by the waterfront on a beautiful day, I’m still working on the blog in a roundabout kind of way.

Last night instead of doing this weeks Food Matters post – tofu or bread and nut mayo - I got sucked into doing some behind the scenes work. Keeping up a blog is not as easy as I had once thought it would be. There is always something that needs work, that could be improved upon. I am always learning! Needless to say, I now have an email subscription service! You can sign up to receive an email each time I post something new. Since I have an irregular posting schedule, this is a nice way to keep in touch. You can enter your email address over at the sidebar to the right!

Now onto the good stuff.

This Kamut salad was so tasty!

I know for many of us, gluten tolerance is an issue. I personally don’t tolerate wheat well at all, but kamut and spelt, even though they do still contain small amounts of gluten, are much easier to digest. For people who are on a gluten-free diet, kamut and spelt are not suitable, however if your trouble is just with wheat, you may find this nutty, chewy whole grain a welcome replacement!

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Quinoa Tabbouleh Salad

Welcome back from your long weekends, I hope they were as enjoyable as ours was! We spent the weekend up in Whistler at a cabin with good friends, food, and company. I’m feeling really fortunate right now that I’m not back at school until Thursday because I need a bit of time to prepare myself. This is a big deal for me! I have been out of school for 3 years now after finishing my undergrad, and it feels totally surreal to be heading back on Thursday. I’m so thankful that I’ve found something I’m so passionate about though (nutrition!), because this time around I am really looking forward to going back to school.

I’m a little late for this week’s Food Matter’s Project, but my excuse is too much fun on a long weekend. Our first night up in Whistler we made a great big communal dinner and this salad went perfectly! It was so fresh, light, and tangy – and loaded with veggies. You must know by now that I love when meals are loaded with veggies.

I can’t wait until I can report back on my first day of school! And I am also really excited for all the new material I’ll be learning about, which will hopefully inspire some blog posts here. If you are unaware, I am starting a 1 year program in Holistic Nutrition at the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Vancouver. By the time I’m done, I’m hoping to be hosting cooking classes, grocery store tours, pantry cleanouts, consultations, and mostly just helping people improve their health through food! I can’t wait!!

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Taco Salad with Tortilla Crisps and Cashew “Sour Cream”

As promised, some photos from our trip. These are my favourites! Just looking at the photos again and making that collage made me want to go back so badly!

And for this week’s Food Matters Project weigh in… a deliciously healthy Taco Salad! Megan chose Greek “Nachos” with Feta Drizzle and as usual I had to change some things up!

How many veggies can you stuff in your face for dinner? I genuinely love testing out this question!

Nachos switched out for tortilla crisps to add a crispy crunch, loads of vegetables chopped into cute little cubes, and a creamy, tangy, cashew-based dressing. Instead of a base of nachos… I went for every fresh/local/organic vegetable I had on hand. The result was a tummy-pleasing bowl full of goodness. Yum!

Organic corn tortillas are gluten-free and don’t contain GMOs. Alright, so the cashew dressing doesn’t taste like sour cream – but it is light and creamy, tangy and nutty, and I use it as a sort of replacement for sour cream. I am sure you will enjoy it, especially if you are looking for a creamy vegan dressing/sauce option.

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Raw Collard Wraps with Sweet Almond Dipping Sauce

Phew! We just got back from our fantastic Rockies trip and it was oh so fun. We did some hiking and some jumping in glacier-fed lakes and rivers, some sight-seeing and some hot spring dipping. Pictures to come!

After many days on the road, and much too much junk food, I was thankful to arrive home to our bright green CSA share and a refreshing summer Food Matters Project recipe.

Alyssa chose this week’s recipe, Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce, and I couldn’t help but envision it in the giant collard greens tumbling out of our CSA bag. After all that road trip eating (read: junking), my body was begging me for a variety of veggies… wrapped in veggies. Perhaps also dipped in a most deliciously sweet and tangy almond and sunflower seed butter concoction.

Chop up some green onions, cilantro, and red pepper, shred some beets and carrots, scoop some avocado, rinse off some kelp noodles…

Kelp noodles?! These things are awesome! I purchased them at my local raw food store, Organic Lives, and I’ve also seen them at Whole Foods.

Seaweed and other sea vegetables are rich in iodine, as well as vitamin C and iron. In fact, sea vegetables are rich in a large variety of minerals. Thanks to all that nutrient-richness, sea veggies have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties, and as well as being rich in antioxidants, they are super foods full of super goodness!

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Grilled Peach Salad with Bocconcini and Romesco Sauce

I can’t believe it’s almost August. This has been a whirlwind summer. We are leaving on Saturday for our Canadian Rockies trip and I feel like we have so much to do before then! It has been tough to make time for meal prep and eating healthy when most of the time I would rather just be running around outside.

This past weekend was no exception. Our friends arrived in town from Korea. Our living room has been swallowed up by a giant, squishy air mattress. Our feet have pedaled all around town. We’ve been shopping, seen fireworks, eaten fish and chips, jumped in the (very cold) ocean, watched The Princess Bride on the big screen at the park, gone for dim sum, fired up the grill twice, and posed for some touristy pictures with totem poles. And all this in just two days. What a weekend it was!

Our friends are here all week, so I imagine there will be much more adventuring. I do so love showing people around town. I’m filled up with excitement and I feed off of their experience, seeing the city through a fresh set of eyes. It’s exhilarating!

Last night we threw together a quick dinner on the way to the movie in the park. All 4 of us squeezed into our tiny little kitchen, rinsing, chopping, blending.

The Romesco sauce from this week’s Food Matters Project recipe was made with 2 grilled red peppers, bountiful handfuls of almonds, a touch of fresh garlic, and thinned out to be used as a salad dressing.

Peaches were grilled. I insisted. Reid questioned at first, but later affirmed that grilled peaches are where it’s at. Just trust me on this one.

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Corn-Avocado Salad with Mango

Last week the climbing camp I was supposed to coach was cancelled, so Reid and I took advantage of some mid-week time off and went up to Whistler. We recently inherited a bike rack, so we took our bikes up with us and I realized in all the time I’ve spent in Whistler, I’ve never explored on two wheels. We had a great time cruising around, jumping into lakes, relaxing in the sun, playing card games, doing some casual hiking, and of course, eating our faces off.

It was a welcome respite from the city and real life.

Some really good news: My Dad is home now. He didn’t end up needing surgery, and his heart wasn’t significantly damaged by his heart attack, so he’s now been put on a drug cocktail and been given fair warning that if he doesn’t make some major lifestyle changes, that he will eventually end up right back in the hospital.

The whole thing gave him (and the rest of us, too) a pretty good scare. Understandably, he’s still a little overwhelmed. Where do you start when you know you have to make big changes in your life, and a lot of them?!

I’m doing my best to be supportive and let him work through this all in his own way. Information overload isn’t going to do much for him right now except frustrate him, so I’m working on trusting that it will all work out. Yesterday we had dinner together and he made the most fantastic veggie and fruit-filled salad. We talked about carbohydrates and blood sugar, plus a bit about fat and cooking with less (or no) oil. Mostly, I tried to encourage him to just eat as many vegetables as he could possibly manage, while cutting back on the meat, dairy, and sugar. I think his initial resistance was aimed more at the idea of extreme changes and having to eliminate all the things he enjoys eating from his diet. He kept saying “I’m not going on any vegan diet”, so I’m hoping that he will see the benefits and gradual changes coming from increasing his veggie intake and that will propel him forward into health.

I dream that one day he will start his mornings with green smoothies. That would fill my heart with joy.

He said something like “Keep dreaming, kiddo”, but I’ll convert him yet.

For now, lots more of the healthy things he (miraculously?) likes – kale, quinoa, oatmeal, salads…

And how fitting that this week’s Food Matters Project recipe is a veggie-packed summer salad?!

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Watermelon Feta Mint Salad

It’s on! Summer is finally here! The sun is shining and the thought of cooking something for dinner or being stuck in a hot kitchen is making me cringe.

Salad time. Watermelon. Feta. A little mint from the garden. Some sweet balsamic drizzle and dinner is served.

I really need to sit down and take the time to update the blog with all the things that have been going on lately. We planted our straw bale at the community garden across the street (!). I’ve finished my first week of coaching climbing summer camps. My parent’s homestay student has finally arrived and she is totally the coolest. I performed at a Motown open mic night. So far, summer has been kicking serious butt!

More to come – but for now, enjoy this sweet, fresh, light, juicy, summer salad!

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Fiddlehead, Asparagus, and Snow Pea Salad with Sesame Vinaigrette

This salad screams Spring to me. I know it’s technically summer now, but our weather has been so bizarre and cold that it still kind of feels like Spring. At least enough to sneak this all-green Spring salad into the mix.

Fiddleheads are the tops of young ostrich ferns and can be foraged for in the wild. I bought mine at the farmer’s market, but a fun-forest-forage is definitely on my to do list. Fiddleheads will usually be pretty pricey, but the season is short and I like to think of them as a nice green treat. Plus they add some diversity to our dinner table.

They pair perfectly with asparagus, and the snow peas and sesame vinaigrette lend an Asian twist to this dish. Light, fresh, tangy. Yum!

These baby fern tops do require a bit of preparation. Rub the brown, papery coating off with your fingers and then rinse them thoroughly. Chop off the tails, leaving just an inch (less is fine, too).

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