How to Make a Superfood Salad

Super Salad

As I write this, we are in the midst of a pandemic. COVID19 has come to a town near you and you may be self or government mandated sheltered in place. Or you might be an essential worker or a front line medical worker exposed to this virus daily. Whatever your situation, I bet there isn’t a day that goes by that the words “immune system” don’t cross your mind.

Everyone is thinking “how can I boost my immunity?” One of my sons, who has been taking immune boosting supplements and superfoods for years since he contracted Lyme’s disease, cannot find his supplements on the shelves of Whole Foods. Everyone is reaching for an answer to “how can I fight this thing if I get infected?”

Food is not the one answer to this question, and neither are supplements. Even if they created a safe vaccine by tomorrow, we would still want a strong immune system so that the vaccine works in our bodies.

We hear that some people get a mild case. I keep thinking how can I be one of those if I get infected? So here is my opinion. I do not have a medical background, so this is just my opinion.

I think we can do everything in our power to do two things:

1. Decrease the toxic load so our crucial elimination organs (skin, liver, kidneys) have less work to do. Let’s let them rest.
2. Strengthen our bodies by lifestyle and diet changes.

Decrease the Toxic Load

This might include alcohol, recreational drugs, non-organic foods (when possible), over the counter drugs, foods that hurt (like sugar). Decreasing our use of over the counter drugs may include finding other ways to deal with pain (hydrotherapy, hot packs, clay packs, castor oil packs, ice, hot foot soak, etc.).

Strengthen Our Bodies and Immune System

This might include eliminating foods that hurt, and eliminating foods that aren’t nutritionally dense. These may fill us but not give us much to build a good foundation with.

One way that we can do this is by making a superfood salad. This will include helping us get as full as possible with superfoods before eating other things.

Superfood Recipe: 

Base Superfoods are organic veggies:

Chop veggies of your choice. Include lettuce, carrots, a dark leafy green, red cabbage. Add other veggies as desired. My favorite leafy green is arugula but I haven’t been able to find any in the area since this began. (Do not use iceberg lettuce.)

If you can get your hands on or grow sprouts, add those. They are power packed with nutrition and enzymes. Yellow Blue Greens is a local business that grows these microgreens and you can get them the day they are harvested.

Add more superfoods:
The basics: nutritional yeast flakes, organic flax oil (keep refrigerated), apple cider vinegar. Nutritional yeast flakes adds a nutty, cheesy flavor and tons of B vitamins.

Other superfoods you can add include flax seed, chia seed, nuts (soak overnight or for 4 hours), seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, un-hulled sesame, etc.) Soaking seeds and nuts activates them and makes them easier to digest. We want to give our bodies less work to process our nutrition.

 Most salad dressings are packed with sugar. Avoid these and instead make your own. In the salad pictured here, I just added flax and vinegar and some seasonings directly to the salad.

I’d love to see your superfood salad! Please post pictures here and on our facebook page and tell us the ingredients you used!

The Healing Chef