One of my favorite things to do is to try new things in the kitchen, and lately I have been trying to stick pretty strictly to the less-processed foods. The other day, I stumbled across Dr. Joel Fuhrman on PBS. The premise of his dietary suggestions, from what I have gathered so far, is that eating whole, unprocessed vegetables, fruits and beans as the bulk of your diet can help create boundless health and energy, and even thwart quite a few of the common health issues that we see so frequently these days. And while he seems to support a primarily vegan (or at least vegetarian) diet, the important part is to make the bulk of your diet consist of fresh produce, beans, nuts and seeds.
I have been fairly happy with the keto-diet approach to eating that I have been following lately, with the exception of one aspect...I have not lost any weight. I am happy to have stopped gaining weight but it's been a little discouraging overall. So I decided to see what Dr. Fuhrman has to say, first, because maybe there's a key to my own weight-loss in here somewhere, and second, I've always loved my veggies anyway so what can it hurt. I'm only about 20% through his book, Eat To Live and I haven't even gotten close to the actual meal plans but it has a lot of good information in it so far (a couple of things that I question but that is for another posting if I choose to go there, and I definitely want to finish reading the book before I think about going there).
I recently came up with a dressing recipe inspired by a recipe on his website that I have been happily eating on my salads lately. Dr. Fuhrman's recipe is for Orange Sesame Dressing found here. My deviation from his recipe was based primarily on the ingredients that I had on hand at the time.
First, you will need 3 oranges (the fact that only 2 are pictured above will be explained in a moment), 1/4 cup of Tahini (easily found at health food stores and Asian markets), and 2 tablespoons of your choice of vinegar (I chose Raspberry-infused Balsamic).
Peel 2 of the oranges and chop them up into pieces. Place them in a
Add the Tahini and vinegar. Juice the 3rd orange and add the juice to your mixture as well (not shown).
Use a hand blender food processor to blend ingredients to a liquid consistency.
I suggest NOT using a hand blender for this step. If you notice in the above picture, there are splashes of the ingredients up the side of the bowl. Those splashes were not limited to just the bowl. I wholeheartedly suggest using your food processor or blender for this step in order to avoid spending the time wiping off your kitchen counter tops, cabinets, face, shirt, the dog, etc. Trust me on this.
But whatever blending tool you choose, the finished product should be pretty liquid and very tasty. Store in a lidded container in the refrigerator and enjoy on whatever floats your boat. Honestly, I think this would be good on any kind of salad, veggies, fruit and even used as a dip for spring rolls, etc.
One thing to note is that the dressing seems to set up a little bit after it sits in the refrigerator for a while. This is why I suggest 3 oranges, the 3rd of which you juice and add to the mixture. This is solely for consistency. I ended up having to add the juice of the 3rd orange the next day when I tried to pour the dressing over my salad for lunch and found that nothing would come out of the bottle. Adding the extra liquid and shaking for a few minutes did the trick, though, and I have not had that problem since.
I think this basic recipe idea lends itself to a lot of different versions...instead of Tahini, you could use almond, cashew or even peanut butter. Instead of oranges, you could use lemons, limes or grapefruit. And then there are so many different types of vinegar that you could try. If you want it sweeter, you can add a few drops of liquid stevia or a small amount of honey. If you want a more liquid consistency, add more juice and less fruit pieces. You could even throw in fresh berries or mango chunks.
...Just make sure to use a covered blending device. And if you decide to try this out, post a response and let me know what you think.
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