Thai Inspired Zoodle Salad
I am ridiculously and totally excited to report that it feels like summer out here in Oakland, and it is incredible.
Lately I have been working as a farmer’s market vendor once a week with a fancy-pants raw vegan superfood chocolate company called Coracao. I am in LOVE with coracao’s locally produced, organic, low glycemic and raw chocolate, but that’s a post for another day. Today’s post is about the perks of working a far-mar, AKA FREE SALAD. That’s right, my dudes, in addition to chilling with vegan treats and hanging outside with my very cool co-worker’s, my position with Coracao provides me with market trade, which means this salad was 100% inspired by the beautiful things I got for free the last time I worked.
I have a thing for pairing cooked foods with raw foods, mostly because I DO WHAT I WANT. I love raw veggies sometimes, but the deep flavor of a panfried leek or a roasted asparagus gets me every single time, and I think pairing the texture of cooked and raw food is a straight up great idea. To top my veggies, I whizzed up a fresh and light dressing and chopped my favorite protein to produce a salad so large I was almost sure I couldn’t finish it.
(Spoiler alert, I downed that sucker in fifteen minutes flat, every last bite of it. I may as well have licked the bowl, by which I mean I did lick the bowl. #sorrynotsorry)
| Thai Inspired Zoodle Salad |
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- 1 medium large zucchini, spiralized
- coconut oil spray
- 1 generous handful thin asparagus, washed and trimmed
- salt and pepper to taste
- ½ a medium leek, sliced thin
- 2 stalks celery, sliced thin
- ½ orange bell pepper, sliced thin
- 1 handful fresh basil, chopped
- 1 cup protein of choice. I used Beyond meat but other suggestions would be tempeh, chickpeas, or baked tofu.
- 1" fresh ginger
- 1 tangerine, juiced
- 1 tablespoon powdered peanut butter
- ¼ teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon gluten-free tamari
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- spiralize your zucchini and chop all your veggies and protein.
- Place your veggies and protein (except for the asparagus and leeks) into a giant bowl. Add your protein to the bowl.
- spray your cast iron stove top grill with coconut oil, add asparagus to the pan, spray a bit more coconut oil and top with salt and pepper. Add a slight bit of water to the grill for extra help steaming and cover with the lid of a pot (your lid doesn't fit the grill skillet perfectly, it just needs to trap some of the steam in. Alternately you can pan saute these with the leeks if you are sans grill.)
- Cook asparagus for 5 minutes, flip them, and cook for five more.
- Spray a non stick skillet with coconut oil and add your leeks to the pan. Cover the pan and heat your leeks until they are just a bit soft and have crispy brown edges. (approximately 7 minutes)
- While your veggies are cooking, put the dressing ingredients (ginger through tamari) in a high speed blender. Whiz until completely smooth.
- Once veggies are cooked to your liking, add them to the bowl with the raw vegetable ingredients.
- Toss with dressing, using enough to cover the salad. I used about ½ of the batch that I made.
- Enjoy!
What flavors are inspiring you recently? Is the farmer’s market bumpin’ in your town yet?
Working my legs/working my mind
Good afternoon!
I feel good today! The barbell WOD got a new set of exercises this morning (the movements switch every 3-5 weeks) and I am really feelin’ the reintroduction of my good old friend, the stiff legged deadlift. My quads are burnin’ as I sit and type, and what can I say, I LIKE IT.
What else? My friend Raechel over at Rebel Grrl Living introduced a new series on her blog called Mindfulness Monday today. I loved the concept of this, not because I don’t try to be mindful every day, but because a lot of the time I just plain forget to pay attention to the world around me. I forget that waking up at 6:30AM to slay my workout with amazing coaches is a super rad privilege. I forget that my ninety minutes behind the barbell has done incredible things for my body and my mind. I don’t always stop to take deep clarifying breaths as I develop recipes, as I photograph images for the blog, as I connect with all the awesome people that the WWW has brought into my life. Taking Raechel’s cue to just fucking NOTICE what is going on around me is making the normal every day things that I do significantly more enjoyable today. Thanks Raechel!
Of course, it is nice to be mindful and notice the wonder of the world around me, but I think it is useful to be mindful about the less-savory experiences that we deal with on a day to day basis too. Speaking of such things, here is an (edited to protect myself from any legal weirdness that could possibly enter my life from disclosing the company/people involved) email that awaited me when I returned to my computer post-workout:
Hi Lacy,
Spring has sprung! And it’s time to begin sporting sleeveless tops, shorts and skirts. Fitness expert and creator of the _ _ _ _ workout, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, would like to share effective arm and leg exercises that will tighten and tone in preparation for wearing our right to bare arms and legs spring attire. I’ve provided _ _ _ _’s tips and bio below.
Cheers,
_ _ _ _ _
Can we take a minute with this email? It’s benign enough, theoretically (if not incredibly bland and predictable in it’s tone). Generally, when I receive emails of this nature I just delete them, because wait, you’re asking me to advertise for your big company on my little blog for FREE? PSHAW. Because I was in the spirit of mindfulness though, I read the email slowly and really tried to take in the message that I was being delivered (and that I was being asked to deliver my readers.) One part of one sentence really struck me, and that was this: “…. would like to share effective arm and leg exercises that will tighten and tone in preparation for wearing our right to bear arms and legs.”
Wait.
You’re asking me to support the concept that I need to change something for THE RIGHT to show my arms? And to tell my readers that they, too, have work to do before they can exist in public without shame?
HMMM.
I want to be honest, an absolutely wonderful perk of blogging is the free stuff you get. (Free food, free workout ideas, free swag) but never, and I mean never, will I sell the idea that my (or your!) arms don’t deserve to feel springtime air without augmentation. While my normal reaction to such an idea would be a swift eye roll, today I thought the more mindful thing to do would be to say this:
It’s getting warmer
Your arms and legs are perfect the way they are
No one can take away your right to live in your body.
Any idea that says otherwise is just patriarchy-
And no one likes they patriarchy, now do they?
Have a good Monday!
An ode to strong women
Good morning!
I want to talk to you a little bit about strong women.
This has been my year of really appreciating strong women. From the female coaches at my gym, to my best friends, to the writer’s and bloggers I avidly follow, to my sister and my mom. More than any other thing in the world, I am completely inspired by every day awesome women.
On that note, I started a podcast, with an INSANELY strong woman that I want to introduce you to. My friend is an entrepreneur, a business owner, a chef, a competitor in the sport of power lifting, and for goodness sakes, a fucking sweetie! Please take a moment to listen to us talk about body image, other people’s perceptions of us vs. our perception of ourselves, veganism, punk rock, and living a jeans-less existance AKA owning our squat thighs.
(Above is the embedded podcast, but you can also download here)
What strong women have inspired you lately?
