Healthy delicious beets! So much goodness in the actual beetroot but also the beet greens (the leaves)! This recipe post is a simple way to incorporate some really healthy greens into your salad while also adding toppings such as I roasted beets, raw radishes and hemp seeds, to make for a nutritious start to your dinner!
I wrote previously about how to roast beets in my Oven Roasted Beets – Beautiful Blood Booster! It’s a super easy way to have these healthy vegetables ready for your salad! Take a look at the infographic below, from www.livelovefruit.com. Sooooo many health benefits from the beetroot (or most people just call them beets). Packed with essential vitamins, minerals and even plant compounds that have medicinal properties!
I wrote about the benefits beets have on athletic performance last year in my post Beet Juice! A powerful Performance Booster!? Easy way to roast them is to simply add a touch of olive oil and herbs to beets wrapped in foil. Roast in oven for about an hour at 375F!
What I really want to showcase in this post is the powerhouse of nutrients from these greens you can make as a salad pre-dinner! Beet Greens, Kale, Dandelion Greens and mix in a few of your favorite leafy greens such as Romaine and you’re ready!
Starting with the Beet Greens, there is so much nutrition, usually many will disregard the greens after cooking the beets. If you make sure to buy beets with greens looking good and not mushy or torn as they sometimes can be, definitely don’t throw them out!
Just as Beet Greens offer fantastic health benefits, Dandelion greens are another way to get some nutrient-dense, leafy-greens into your eating healthy lifestyle! You get a great bunch of vitamins and minerals from this bunch of what most consider a weed! You can forage dandelion greens from your own yard or lawn before the yellow flowers grow but you won’t want to eat them if your lawn is treated with anything to prevent weed growth! Plus the greens from the grocery or farmer’s market are usually more tender than the wild ones and obviously more convenient if you don’t have dandelions growing wild, and it’s not summertime!
Kale is an obvious nutrition powerhouse! Although kale without being cooked can be difficult to digest for some. So what I do is cut it into very tiny pieces and I don’t use too much of it in my salad, but enough to have it be an added nutritious powerhouse. In small doses I feel fine, however some may not be able to handle just small doses, so if this is you, you can consider lightly sauteing it in olive oil then adding it to your salad, or omit it and use an easier green like mesclun mix or spinach!
Wash and combine all greens, slice the radishes for a nice crunch, add red onion for a zesty kick and add the roasted beets for great flavor and tons of nutrition! You can also add some hemp seeds or other seeds such as flax or chia, giving the salad some plant protein! Drizzle with a touch of Olive Oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice if you prefer and shake on a few dried herbs such as oregano, basil, thyme and ground pepper!
In a separate post I have directions on roasting rosemary cashews! The great thing about those cashews is that they go very well with a salad such as this (and not to mention eggs or mixed in with quinoa!).
Talk about ‘Fork not Pharm’, In that bite right there, you have yourself a powerhouse of nutrition! A great way to help your body heal and use food as medicine! Beet greens, dandelion greens, kale and vegetables with a touch of olive oil maybe a splash of lemon juice! Nutritiously Well-Fed!!
| Prep Time | 5 min |
| Servings |
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- 2-3 large leaves beet greens cut into easy to eat pieces
- 1 or 2 leaves kale, purple or green curly or flat kale cut into very small pieces
- 1 bunch dandelion greens cut into easy to eat pieces
- 1/2 cup mesclun mix optional
- 1/2 cup fresh spinach optional
- 1-2 whole radishes cut into easy to eat slices
- 1/4 Red Onion sliced
- 1-2 tbsp hemp seeds and/or any other seed or nuts!
- 1 tbsp mix of oregano, basil, thyme, black pepper
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 fresh lemon juice squeezed
Ingredients
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- Wash and combine all greens making sure they are cut nicely for easy to eat pieces.
- Add toppings of red onion, radishes, hemp seeds and herbs. Roasted beets are optional as well as any other nut or seeds!
- Drizzle with olive oil and squeezed lemon juice and enjoy!