Detoxing the detox
Come January, who isn’t being bombarded by messages to increase their greens, make juices, spend wicked money on smoothies out with friends who also are declining burgers, fries and anything deemed as less than nutrient-dense by our society?
It’s enough to make my head spin! And yet, this spinning head still wants a salad in January. Let me break it down, because this type of recipe falls into the grey area of wellness. It is a green salad, vegan even, that is being released during an intensive dieting month. Would you like to know why I want to write a recipe for a tasty ass salad and get it out into the universe right now?
And so, why?
Because we NEED these conversations. We need more space in the grey area, in the undefinable part of wellness culture that it seems few really want to talk about. That salads can come in, that burgers can come in (and really, we need another blog post to unpack the idea that a burger is a “bad” thing…), that appetites can be large, that appetites can be different this month than last month and that next month they’ll likely be different again. Who offers this? Who decides what your appetite is, or what it desires?
Oops. I’ll spoil the answer for ya: you! Delightful, ever-changing you, my tender human friend. This month is already half over and really, isn’t this a good time to be discussing the utility of the desire of salads? Like, if you’re two weeks into some sort of detox, and it;’s cold where you live, is a low fat salad what you desire? Is a higher fat one more aligned? What about a warm salad, or a meat-based salad? What about a higher starch salad, would that one make more sense for your needs?
It can feel, to me, that in an effort to push back on diet culture, we decide that we must reject ANYTHING diet culture has touched. We make the process, again, all or nothing. This is still a facet of dieting culture. It’s a subject I am clunky in discussing but I’ll keep showing up to it.
Because you can love salad and hate diet culture.
So here’s a salad I love, myself. One that I’ll eat any time of the year because no matter if it’s hot or cold out, raining or snowing, it provides for me in ways that tire diet culture. And every bite of salad has absolutely, completely, soul-achingly no impact on the next bite of my next meal and the last bite of my previous meal (much to diet culture’s disappointment).
January Avocado Kale Salad
Ingredients
- 2 heads lacinato kale torn off the stem and roughly torn into 1 inch pieces
- 1/8 th teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
- 2 avocados cut into 1-inch chunks
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
- 1/2 a cucumber sliced into half moons
Lemon Tahini Dressing
- 1/4 cup tahini ground sesame seed paste
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 garlic clove grated
- 1 tablespoon water
Instructions
For the Salad
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In a large bowl, use your hands to scrunch and work the kale pieces with the sea salt for about one minute, or until the kale becomes glossier and breaks down from the abrasive salt! Set aside while you prep your other vegetables and the dressing. When ready, combine the remaining salad ingredients with the massaged kale and top with the lemon tahini dressing!
Lemon Tahini Dressing
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Combine all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk to combine. The dressing will seem thin at first but just keep stirring!
