beet me up

Chicken and wild rice soup with spinach and carrots.

Boom!! Nuts may be a secret to longevity according to the latest Harvard study.

I find it amusing that today there are studies done, diets created and labels put in place to establish what is already common sense. 

This:

is better for you than this:

Just compare the list of ingredients.

RAW nuts contain:

Eh... Nuts

Nacho cheese Doritos contain:

...Well, here's a fun article on the subject

I eat nuts every day. They are a perfect snack for a number of reasons. They are filling, they're packed with tons of flavor (and obviously nutrients) and don't require a pairing with a creamy dip, cheesy sauce, or beefy chili. I mean, just imagine dipping a hazelnut into a jar of nacho cheese!

On top of that, the effort it takes to chew them up, makes a small serving more than enough. After the bowl pictured above, my jaws beg for a break.

Chips, on the other hand, are boastful of their addictive nature. "Once you pop, you can't stop!" Pringles tell me proudly. Oh OK, that sounds like wholesome offer — addiction. 

So isn't the nuts' case pretty clear? If not, then read on! It's good stuff! 

No beets here, but lots of other super eats. I promise that this ugly-looking smoothie will wake you up even after the wildest of nights. Away with coffee and Advil!

A 5-month old (I've got one of those) can make sleep a coveted commodity and mornings foggy and lethargic, but nothing delivers a wake-up punch to your mouth quite like this green-brown slush.

Here's the goodness that goes in. Click each ingredient to read up on the awesome nutrients you will be putting in your body. 

Lemon slice, with rind

Raw ginger root

Fresh (or frozen) cranberries 

Kale (I put kale in almost everything)

Cucumber with skin

Coconut water

Apple (you're going to need it to offset all other sharp flavors)

Until I came to this country this is what I knew as a Vinaigrette. Not a low-calorie, low-fat sauce, that has replaced Ranch as the staple dressing for most salads. It might be healthier, but flavor-wise, it does not hold a candle to Ranch's creamy goodness (you don't have to sacrifice flavor to be healthy, it's all about portion control).   

I digress... In Russia, a vinaigrette (винегрет) is a beet salad. As a child, it always seduced me with its bright colors, but every time I tried it, the sophisticated, grown-up flavors were too much for my juvenile palate. So I hated it. 

But much as you grow to love the once mind-numbingly dull  conversations about baking, doing laundry, shopping when they actually become your grown-up responsibilities, one day I realized I loved the Russian Vinaigrette. It only took me 30 years...

And so last night, without the help and supervision from my mom, who was probably just now waking up in her Moscow flat 9 hours into the future, I made it for the first time! 

Here's what you need:

Beets (the star of the show)

Carrots (for color and sweetness)

Potatoes (it's a RUSSIAN salad, potatoes are a must!)

Pickles (for crunch and saltiness)

Sauerkraut (or Russian pickled cabbage, which takes days to make and skills far beyond mine at the moment, also for saltiness and crunch)

Olive oil (the dressing)

Vinegar (the flavor punch, you only need a little)

Onion (for taste, depends on how much you like it)

Here's what you do:

Peel and boil beets, carrots, potatoes.

Let cool to room temp or lower, then cut into small cubes.

Cut pickles and onion into small pieces.

Mix everything together.

I intentionally left out the amounts. The beets should shine as the star, but if you prefer the flavor of other ingredients, add more of them. 

Do you love salad? Like salivate in your mouth when you see it, close your eyes as you eat it, no plate is big enough, hope it lasts forever kind of love. Like juicy burger on a toasted bun with layers of cheese, and bacon, and mayo slathered all over kind of love. I don't think so. 

But don’t feel bad. Most salads aren’t juicy, creamy, warm or comforting. And thus, they are not satisfying. The majority of their flavor comes from the dressing and all other non-vegetable additions, such as meats, cheeses, bacon, etc., so if you choose to "healthy-fy" your salad by subtracting the meat and dairy, you will be left with a droopy, lifeless and not very sexy plate. Just goggle image search "salad" and you'll know what I mean.

What is the main ingredient of most salads? Lettuce! Green, bushy, spiritless, it fights viciously as you attempt to spear it with a pronged utensil. See, it doesn’t want to be eaten. It wants to lay there limp and unimpressive at the bottom of your plate, long after you’ve cleaned off all the tasty morsels such as juicy steak, the nuts, the raisins, the perfectly square cubes of ham (they creep me out), bacon bits and those wonderfully-stinky, salty pieces of blue cheese.

So why give it such a prominent place at your dinner? There are plenty of other vegetables that would love to share the spotlight and can actually enhance the flavor of the dish without needing to be dressed up and decorated with the likes of Ranch, Thousand Island, Raspberry Vinaigrette or Caesar. And if you are trying hard to limit your meat and dairy intake, be it for health reasons or because your pet is a cute little potbelly pig named Falcon, why should you have to suffer through a monotonous bowl-full of pale-green roughage? 

So here is a salad I enjoy at lunch. It takes 10 minutes to prepare, it’s full of flavor, it's quite filling and uses an equal amount of the green stuff to the other tasty veggies. AND it will give your jaws a serious workout. :) No meat, no dairy.

This is all you need:

To make this:

Directions are so simple they don't need to be written. But:

Wash and peel beet and carrots.

Shred beet and carrots on the biggest hole setting of the grater.

Chop up spinach. I do it because it gives the salad an even consistency, since all the components are the same size. It also makes is easy to fork the green goodness. Plus, it's fun to chop up food with a large knife.

Mix it all together, adding cooked quinoa (I use what's left over from dinner the day before), salt, pepper and anything else you wish.

Dress with extra virgin olive oil. You don't need a lot because the beet an carrots have plenty or flavor and, being freshly-shredded, they are juicy. A little bit of salt also goes a long way to bring out the flavor of the ingredients.