Menu Monday: Enjoy a Salad Today

It is the time of year for salads. As the weather heats up and up, no one wants to heat their house by cooking or baking. Salads are cooling and can be embellished by wild plants and flowers growing in your backyard like dandelion, red clover, even day lilies.

Here are some Birch Center suggestions for making a great salad. And make sure to read our homemade delicious salad dressing ideas!

For your salad:

• Start with your favorite salad greens, like Romaine lettuce, green bib, or whatever lettuce is in season or you love.

• Add darker greens (you can chop these up small at first) like spinach, kale, collards or chard.

• If you can identify wild plants like chickweed, dandelion, clover, lambsquarters or purslane, grab those. (For more information on using and identifying wild plants, visit Food Under Foot.)

• See what you have in your garden: lemon balm, mint, greens, radishes, Jerusalem artichokes etc.

• What's in the fridge or pantry? You can chop cucumber, tomatoes, grate carrots or beets, even sweet potatoes can be grated raw onto salad.

• Nuts and seeds add protein and give you a more satisfied feeling: pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pecans.

• How about edible flowers: nasturtium, dandelion, clover, day lily petals, kale flowers (last year's kale is currently flowering in our garden!)

Salads are the perfect way to get vitamins, minerals, enzymes and all sorts of vital energy into your life. They give us energy, leave us feeling light yet satisfied, clear complexion, strengthen teeth and nails, help heal your body.

The cooling energy of salad helps offset "hot" conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, headaches, overheating, hot flashes, feeling hot due to pregnancy, obesity, and many other conditions. This is definitely the time of year to start incorporating fresh salads into your lifestyle if you haven't already.

 In health,

David and Melissa Sokulski, L.Acs.