Summer Salad with Creamy Vegan Dressing

Hi friends!

I hope you’re all having a great summer.  I’ve been working away and looking forward to my break from school for the month of August.  Not that I don’t love it, it’s just a lot on my plate 🙂 . This salad was inspired by our recent HOT HOT weather, where I didn’t want to move and we tried to utilize our BBQ as much as possible.

If you’ve been following along with me for awhile, you’ll know that I can’t have dairy so most of my dressings are homemade.  I don’t mind though, it takes very little time and also helps cut out the extra preservatives and junk you will find in a lot of commercially available dressings.  Usually I can survive but I was craving a deliciously creamy caesar-type dressing that was healthy lately.  I’m usually super careful buying anything that is ‘creamy’ because that is most often not synonymous with healthy but this dressing is guilt free and full of REAL food!

I’m a big believer nourishing your body with REAL food 80% of the time.  That doesn’t mean I eat salads all day but it does mean eating my vegetables and fruits to ensure I’m getting my micronutrients along with my macro nutrients.  I to have cravings and will order pizza on a Friday night or make some myself if I’m really good at planning ahead but that is life friends! I used to beat myself up for eating ‘bad’ foods but as long as you make an informed decision and not one because you’re starving…I can live with my choices.  That’s the best way to describe the point where I’m at now.  I consciously choose to eat chicken and waffles at brunch or Chinese food for dinner once in a while because for me, if I feel deprived, I’ll just go on a binging rampage…which is no fun and the best way to derail my goals.  I know that doesn’t work for everyone but I encourage you to find what does work for you and stick to it.  DIETS ARE WACK!! Sustainable changes are the way to go.

So anyways, back to my recipe.  This recipe is really to show off the dressing that I know you’ll LOVE and that is very nutritious.  It is creamy, tangy and the nutritional yeast adds a vegan cheesy-delicious flavour along with offering a lot of B vitamins and some protein.  Nutritional Yeast has a slightly cheesy taste and is great in soups, salads, pizza, rice, noodles…maybe it’s easier if I write what I wouldn’t use it in, which isn’t much!  I don’t remember where I got mine…but the brand is Purely Bulk.  You can check them out by clicking here.  If you don’t have it and don’t want to buy it, you can make the recipe without it too :).

Feel free to play around with the recipe for the salad itself.  I just used what I had and wanted to eat but there are no ‘rules’.  Same with the dressing, taste and adjust based on your own tastes and enjoy!

I’d love for you to try my recipe, please tag me on Facebook or Instagram (@balancingandie) so I can follow along :).  Click here to pin this recipe for future reference or subscribe to my blog to never miss a post!

Summer Salad with Creamy Vegan Dressing

July 4, 2017

by Andrea

Category Recipes

Persons

2

Notes

If preparing ahead of time, keep the salad and dressing separate until you are ready to serve.
Yields about 2 full meal-sized servings or 4 side servings. If using as a meal, add some protein like grilled chicken, salmon or tofu.

Ingredients

For the Salad

• 2 large stalks of Kale
• 2 cups of baby spinach
• 1 mini cucumber
• 4 radishes
• 1 orange, yellow or red pepper sliced
• handful of cherry tomatoes
• (all optional - play around & be creative!)

For the dressing

• 2 tsp tahini
• 1 tsp grainy dijon mustard
• 1 small clove of garlic minced
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp maple syrup (or honey)
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast (opt.)
• black pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Create the salad with my ingredients or with what you like/have.
2. Start by washing, drying and cutting everything to a consistent size. I like to chop my kale, use spinach as is and slice everything else thin but you can do what works for you!
3. Whisk all the ingredients of the dressing in a small bowl and taste. Adjust as needed. Add more water to thin it out, more apple cider vinegar for tang, more tahini to make it creamy etc.
4. Add to salad and massage the Kale with the dressing (this softens up the Kale) for about 1 minute.
5. Serve immediately and enjoy :)!

Tags

healthy,

Salad,

vegan

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Nutritional Disclaimer

This information is provided as an estimate for the salad dressing only .  The below information may change with any substitution you make or variances in items used.