Introducing…
Charis (Ka-reese) from At the Gate called Beautiful. Charis is a 32 year old mom to 4 (soon to be 5) boys and wife of 10 years to her best friend Bill. They are a full-time intercessory missionary family giving themselves to oversee The Watch House of Prayer in Redding, Ca. She is involved in raising up godly children, pastoring, leading worship, and encouraging people in growing in a life of prayer and pursuit of loving God as the “One Thing” (Psalm 27).
I have found that learning to eat healthy is something that comes in baby steps. I couldn’t imagine completely changing the way my family eats overnight, nor would I expect you to either! I believe that we learn and then we make small changes in our lifestyle that are sustainable. Fad diets are not sustainable. However, small changes to your lifestyle and perspective on food will last the long haul.
So today I want to encourage everyone to take the baby step of working in more raw fruits and vegetables into your eating and meal planning. Eating fruits and veggies in their natural state allows our bodies to gain so much of their nutrients and some believe that cooking them above a temperature of 118 degrees destroys their living enzymes that are so important for our bodies. While I am not advocating an extreme raw food diet, I do believe that most of us could benefit from increasing the amount of raw produce we consume.
If you came over to visit our home for dinner a couples times, chances are you would be served a main course salad at some point. We have 4 kids, 8 and under, and they all eat salad (even the 18 month old)! For our family, it has never been an option to not eat our greens so it is all that our kids know! Salad doesn’t have to be a boring side dish of plain greens with a white dressing on top… oh no, it can be so much more! We do salads all different ways, throwing what we have in the fridge and pantry in, and it is always exciting and different. One of the best ways to make your salad really pop is to make your own homemade dressing – something I will talk about more below.
We try to eat as seasonally as possible for health, taste, and money reasons, so the salad I am going to share with you is made with what is available in season right now! It is an easy recipe for one of our favorite main course salads – Asian Chicken Salad. It is fast and easy to put together for a healthy meal that everyone will love. We never have leftovers when I make this salad and my boys – 8 and under – have even requested this as food at their birthday parties. It is just that good.
Since our star ingredient is cabbage, I would like to list some of the health benefits you get from eating more cabbage:
- Rich in vitamin C, iodine, calcium, vitamin E, magnesium and potassium
- Aids in treatment of constipation, headaches, excess weight, heart diseases, arthritis, eczema, among other ailments!
- Ranks up with broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts with the reputation of fighting cancer
- Rich in fiber
- ½ cup chopped only has 16 calories!
Disclaimer: The way I cook isn’t precise – I instead like to put amounts of ingredients in my cooking according to the tastes and preferences of my family. So… all amounts are just a suggestion and please adjust the flavors to your own liking. I don’t even use spoons or cups to measure when I cook – I usually just shake and pour and taste as I go.
Ingredients
- chicken
- sesame oil
- soy sauce or coconut aminos (a soy substitute)
- ½ - 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp – 1 ½ tsp ground cumin
- juice of 1 lime
- head of your favorite cabbage
- ¼ - ½ head of radicchio or purple cabbage
- 1 carrot
- ½ bunch green onions or green garlic
- 1 whole bunch cilantro
- chow mein or rice noodles
- rice vinegar
- sesame oil
- extra virgin olive oil
- juice from 1 lime (or ½ if you want less tart)
- ½ - 1 tsp ground coriander
- ½ - 1tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp sugar (I use rapadura which is an unprocessed sugar that still retains the molasses)
Instructions
- Put enough sesame oil into a caste iron skillet, or your favorite pan, to lightly cover the bottom. Put your chicken in and season with the soy sauce, coriander, cumin and lime and sauté on both sides. Use as much chicken as you think will be appropriate for your family size – we often use the leftovers of a roasted chicken or if we are using frozen chicken tenderloins we will one 4-6 tenders for our family of 6. When the chicken is cooked, shred it with a fork and set aside.
- Wash and chop the cabbage of your choice. We are members of a CSA, so I will often use the cabbage we receive in our weekly produce box – sometimes a head of green cabbage, sometimes napa cabbage, and sometimes we get the fun stuff like radicchio or purple cabbage to add in as well. Since cabbage can vary in size, chop up enough to fill a large salad bowl to the size of your family. I find this dish very popular with my kids, so I try to overdue it on the amount of cabbage I put in the bowl and I always run out with them wanting more salad (2nd… 3rd helpings).
- Chop up the carrot into small pieces and dice the green onions or green garlic (looks very similar to green onions), including the greens and whites. Cilantro is what I consider to be the key ingredient for the true Asian touch, so we chop up all the leaves of an entire bunch of cilantro and throw it in the bowl. Discard the stems.
- Next add your shredded chicken and some sort of Asian crunchy noodle on top – I have used chow mein or rice noodles in the past. I lightly salt and pepper the salad before I mix in the dressing… something about doing this makes it extra tasty!
- Make the Dressing: Now making your own dressing is one of the best health and money saving tips I can think of – if you look on the back of dressing bottles from the stores there are always a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce and usually something called “natural flavoring,” which is code for MSG - no good for you! Asian dressing is so easy to whip up and really tasty. *more money saving ideas on good food here
In what ways do you try to incorporate more raw fruits and vegetables into your lifestyle? What are your favorite types of salads?
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oh my, that looks amazing and sounds wonderful! i cook everything to taste as well, writing out a recipe is hard for me because of this….so this recipe fits perfectly into my style of cooking.
It was nice to “meet” you Charis and thank you for sharing!
so glad it is your type of recipe – you will flow well with the “rough” measurements.
great to meet you too!
Great advice to incorporate lifestyle changes in baby steps. We are a family who has fruits and/or veggies as part of every meal. Our children don’t know any other way either. They eat salad regularly although my six year old has been making efforts to push back on that lately, as her taste buds are becoming more like that of her friends at school. The recipe looks yummy!
thanks rosann. fruits and veggies at every meal, especially for kids, is so wise! you are teaching them good eating habits they will take with them the rest of their lives. my four year old is in a phase where he has tried to push back a bit on some salads – if it is part of the meal and not the whole meal i have tried giving him a small portion of what i know he really loves and tell him that if he eats the salad he can have more of the other thing. it works like a charm with him. hope you get a chance to try the recipe – i think you will love it!
This looks so good! I may need to try this one.
i think you will love it debbie! i just was asked to bring it to a baby shower this month.
Looks delicious, Charis…I don’t always follow recipes to the “t”…thanks for sharing
you are welcome! feel free to change it up however you wish!
This recipe looks nice .I will also try this one and taste this one.