Sunflower Cream Salad with Sweet Taters + Dill Chicks

By July 18, 2015

Happy Friday 13th! Good things always happen to me on Friday 13th, so I’m pretty excited to see what flourishes today!

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There are a couple of requirements that a salad needs to have in order for me to want to eat it:
  • a good [homemade] salad dressing.
  • lots of spices and flavor.
  • a vast array of different veggies.
  • chewy toppings.
  • starchy toppings.
  • lotsa toppings.
But really though, it all comes down to the toppings. No toppings? No go. Some of my favorite toppings as of late have been crackers, bison, smashed/shelled flax seed, avocado, roasted veggies, basil leaves, and flax oil. I really believe that the best approach to eating clean and staying healthy is loving what you eat. A pile of iceberg + Italian dressing just doesn’t do it for me. I need pizzaz! And this salad didn’t disappoint.  
Sunflower Cream Salad with Sweet Taters + Dill Chicks
Author: 
Recipe type: Vegan, Gluten free, Dairy free, Refined sugar free, Yeast free, Corn free
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4 entree sized salads + ~2 cups of dressing
 
Sunflower seed, dill, and lemon dressing poured over dill chickpeas, baked yams and fresh veggies.
Ingredients
Sunflower cream dressing
  • ⅔ cup sunflower seeds
  • ⅓ cup grapefruit juice *see note
  • ⅓ cup lemon juice
  • ½ cup filtered water
  • ¼ cup flax seed oil
  • 3 cloves garlic, sauteed
  • 2 teaspoon dried dill
  • ¼ teaspoon himalayan rock salt
  • ⅛ teaspoon white powdered stevia
Sweet taters
  • 2 yams, diced – do not peel!
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin coconut oil, melted
  • ½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
  • ¼ teaspoon herbamare
Dill chicks
  • 2 cups chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 2 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon dried dill
  • ¼ teaspoon herbamare
Salad
  • Feel free to use any thing here – celery, peppers, whatever you have on hand.
  • 8 cups lettuce – I used mixed greens
  • 4 carrots, chopped
  • 1 English cucumber, chopped
Instructions
  1. To make the salad dressing: place sunflower seeds in food processor and blend until smooth. It should take about 4-5 minutes and should be the consistency of nut butter. Alternatively, you can use ½ cup sunflower seed butter! Once it’s a butter like consistency, add the remaining ingredients and pulse until combined. Set aside.
  2. To make the sweet taters + dill chicks: preheat oven to 375F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Place a foil wall down the middle of the cookie sheet. In 2 separate bowls, mix the ingredients for the sweet taters and dill chicks. Place each mixture on either side of the cookie sheet and cook in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, or until yams are soft. Allow to cool for 30 minutes before using for your salad.
  3. Putting it all together: Fill a big bowl, or a bunch of little bowls with your desired veg. Top with dill chicks + sweet taters, followed by a generous helping of dressing.
Notes
I just squeezed the juice from a fresh grapefruit.
View Nutritional Information (once on page scroll down) I made the mistake of mixing in the flax oil a bit too early and was then worried about the food processor heating it up too much before everything was done. So, my dressing was still a bit chunky. It was really good like this too! Kind of reminded me of Parmesan cheese! Why shouldn’t we heat flax oil? Flax is a very unstable oil. When it’s heated or left in the light, it turns rancid [same process as with roasted nuts]. The cooler you can keep it, the less damage to the fats. That’s why you always want to make sure that the flax oil you’re buying is in a refrigerator and a dark container. Are you a fan of flax oil? What are your salad requirements? Most importantly: what are your plans for the weekend? I need to figure out what color we’re painting the bedroom + bathroom next weekend. It’s such a hard decision. Other than that, we plan to clean out the garage, hang out outside, and make some ice cream.

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This entry was tagged: dill, lemon, salad, salad dressing, sunflower seed


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