306-715-5396 caitliniles@live.com

Hello friend! I hope you’re having a wonderful day and that your 2016 is getting off to a rip-roaring awesome start. I just finished marking the final assignments for the fall semester of The Academy of Culinary Nutrition and I’m finally getting back into my schedule after my travels out to the East Coast.

In order to kickstart 2016 I’m running my Reset Yourself Nutrition Challenge again, starting Sunday the 17th, and I wanted to share one of the simple and delicious meals from our recipe guide.

We’ll be making over our relationships with food and our bodies in order to start this year feeling fit, healthy, and grounded. If you struggle to stick with your health goals and dietary changes then this challenge is for you. I’ll be supporting you every step of the way as we figure out what’s keeping you feeling bloated, anxious, and unhappy. Check out more details here!

We’ll be focusing on real, whole-foods such as those found in our hearty, winter appropriate salad below. By incorporating wild rice, lentils, and beans we’ll be keeping our blood sugars stable, thanks to the fibre and protein, and giving our gut bacteria something to nibble on.

In order to achieve and maintain long-term health we have to work with the bacterial communities in our digestive tract and feed them the foods that keep them happy. We evolved with our friendly probiotics and over the millennia have developed a symbiotic relationship with one another.

That means that in exchange for a place to live and food to eat, our gut microbes give us beneficial short chain fatty acids, B vitamins, vitamin K, immune support, and improved digestive function.

 Now without further ado, let’s get to our recipe!

Wild Rice & Almond Salad

Ingredients

  • 2 cups wild rice or blend, cooked
  • 1 cup french or beluga lentils
  • 1 cup white beans
  • ¼ cup currants
  • ½ cup chopped almonds or pumpkin seeds (try them toasted!)
  • 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
  • ¼ red onion, finely diced
  • 1 cucumber, chopped into bite-sized pieces
  • 1 apple, diced
  • handful of parsley, chopped
  • handful of cilantro, chopped
  • 1 avocado, cubed
  • 1 cup dressing of choice
  • Optional: goat cheese or goat feta

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients except avocado in a large serving bowl and mix thoroughly.
  2. Stir in 1 cup dressing of choice. See dressings in main recipe page. I like it with the Honeyed Apple Vinaigrette or my Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing.
  3. Top with avocado and serve.
  4. Enjoy!

Well that’s our delicious and nutritious salad chock full of food for our probiotic friends. If you want to read more about these awesome friends and learn about some recipes that they love, you can download my FREE e-book here.

Have a beautiful day!

Cait xo