Mediterranean Radicchio Salad: A Symphony of Flavors and Nutrients

The true delight of any meal lies not just in taste but in how it makes you feel. This Mediterranean Radicchio Salad is designed to leave you feeling light, energized, and deeply nourished. Packed with nutrient-dense greens, plant-based protein, and healthy fats, it’s both satisfying and satiating.

Looking to elevate the flavor? Lightly grill the radicchio and scallions for a smoky depth that complements the zesty lemon and briny olives perfectly.

Why Power Greens Matter

Processed foods bombard our palates with sugar, salt, and fat, leaving behind the other essential flavors our bodies are designed to crave—especially bitter. Bitterness stimulates digestion by encouraging the production of saliva, stomach acid, and bile, all of which are crucial for breaking down food and absorbing nutrients.

This salad reintroduces your taste buds to the often-overlooked beauty of bitterness while offering a delicious way to nourish your body:

• Arugula: Its peppery bite brings a delightful contrast to the plate, with just enough bitterness to spark your digestive system into action and awaken your appetite.
• Frisée: With its airy curls and gentle bitterness, frisée adds texture and balance, making each bite feel like a little adventure.
• Dandelion Greens: Their bold bitterness might surprise you, but they’re nature’s way of hitting the reset button—supporting your liver and helping your body feel its best.

Together, these greens don’t just balance your plate—they help you reconnect with the richness of natural flavors, reminding us that food can be as healing as it is delicious.

Ingredients

• 1 medium head radicchio, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 bunch arugula, frisée, and/or dandelion greens (or a mix), coarsely chopped
• 5 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and halved
• 1/2 cup garbanzo beans (optional for added protein)
• Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (ACV)
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 avocado, diced

How to Make It

1. Optional Grilling:
   • Lightly brush the radicchio and scallions with olive oil and grill briefly over medium heat until slightly wilted and charred in spots. This step adds a smoky depth to the salad but is optional (addictively delicious!)
2. Prepare the Greens:
   • Coarsely chop the radicchio and your chosen mix of arugula, frisée, and dandelion greens for a rustic, layered texture.
3. Combine Base Ingredients:
   • Toss the greens with apple cider vinegar, lemon zest, lemon juice, EVOO, and freshly ground black pepper in a large bowl.
   • Massage the radicchio gently with your hands to soften its natural bitterness and allow the dressing to infuse the greens.
4. Add the Extras:
   • Stir in the scallions, Kalamata olives, and garbanzo beans (if using).
5. Finish with Freshness:
   • Just before serving, garnish the salad with cherry tomatoes and diced avocado for bursts of juicy sweetness and creamy richness.

Why This Salad Shines

This salad isn’t just another recipe—it’s a vibrant invitation to rediscover the power of whole, natural foods. The combination of bitter greens, briny olives, and zesty lemon vinaigrette creates a harmony of flavors that delights your palate while supporting your digestion.

Bitter flavors stimulate the production of digestive enzymes and bile, helping your body break down food efficiently and absorb nutrients more effectively. This means every bite tastes good and works hard for your body.

With its bold ingredients, nutrient-packed greens, and balanced flavors, this salad reminds us that food can be deeply satisfying, nourishing, and incredibly delicious—all at once.

Serving Suggestions and Tips

• Make It Your Own: Swap garbanzos for lentils, add toasted nuts for crunch or sprinkle on nutritional yeast for a cheesy finish.
• Choose Quality Ingredients: Fresh, organic greens and cold-pressed EVOO will elevate this dish to restaurant-worthy status.
• Pair It Perfectly: This salad pairs beautifully with raw goat cheese and… a crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc if you are so inclined.

Let’s Talk

This salad isn’t just a recipe—it’s a celebration of how incredible clean, vibrant eating can be. Did you make it your own? Perhaps you swapped in grilled shrimp or added a handful of toasted seeds? Let me know in the comments below—I’d love to hear your creative twists!

Serve, enjoy, and savor every bite, knowing you’re nourishing your body with every forkful.

My 5 Top Healthy Holiday Tips

You’ve made your mind up. You’ve made the decision to indulge in things over the holidays that you don’t normally eat. And some of your choices may be downright “unhealthy.”

It’s all good.

You can indulge smartly.

As much as I help my 1:1 coaching clients level up their get healthy game, I firmly believe that “we zig and we zag” in life — that there are times in life that we deviate from our every day level of commitment to accomplish what we are most committed to… and just “cut loose,” and have fun! We zig and we zag.

Hans Christian Anderson said it best, “Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.”

And, if ever we are going to break from our “standard” healthy approach to eating and life, I know full well that the holidays are the time, so I created a short list of my top 5 healthy holiday tips, to help you balance out your commitment to be healthy and indulge.

START. Drink Lemon Elixir when you first wake up every morning now through the holidays, and thereafter if you’d like. I recommend it. Read more why here.

PREPARE. Drink a green juice in the morning is my first recommendation. If you don’t have a juicer, or just want something more satisfying, make a green smoothie. The green will help quell the inflammation you experience from those top 5 inflammatory foods you may choose to indulge in, sugar, dairy, coffee, wheat and, yup, alcohol. AND … eat a big salad before your guests arrive, or before you arrive to your holiday dinner. You may not deviate “too” far off your healthy track if you fill yourself up with greens before your dinners.

PLAN. Choose ahead of time what your “cheat” will be during your holiday dinners. By choosing ahead of time, you will feel empowered, rather than reactive.

INSPIRE. Bring something healthy with you to “inspire” and turn your family and friends on to your healthy recipes, especially if you know that healthy choices will be limited. Here are 2 ideas, Holiday ‘Nog, and Raw Bark, that I know 100% will NOT disappoint. I promise.

CLOSE. Complete your day with Cleanse Your Body Tea or Probiotic Lemonade. You can even offer this to your guests — they’re a perfect delicious “warm” beverage to help you digest, reduce inflammation and cleanse your cells

Holiday celebration is about family, friends and special times together, it doesn’t have to be solely about food. But whatever you do choose to indulge in, whatever you do choose to zag with, I hope you enjoy every single bit, with beautiful memory-making times together!

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Blessings and wishes of vibrant health and soaring energy to you and yours always! 

Matthew Kenney’s HOLIDAY ‘NOG RECIPE

Let me say this has to be one of the very best Holiday “Eggnog” recipes I’ve ever had! It is so delicious, and created by one of the very best “raw food chefs,” Matthew Kenney, who trained in Paris at the French Culinary Institute and twice nominated as a Rising Star Chef in America by the James Beard Foundation. I highly recommend Kenney’s Everyday Raw, or his most recent, Plant Food and Wine, and you can find both in my new Cook Book collection.

The Holiday ‘Nog Recipe:

½ cup soaked almonds
½ cup soaked cashews
1 ½ cups water
1 date
2 tablespoons maple syrup, coconut nectar or agave
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 inch vanilla bean, including pod
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon chia seeds or chia flour
pinch of salt

Blend well. Strain or sieve and serve.

Enjoy!

Raw Chocolate Bark Recipe

Everyone I know LOVES chocolate! And I LOVE to recommend everything healthy, so…. here is a raw chocolate bark recipe that I created to make you happy, and keep you healthy during this holiday season!

NOTE: It’s so good that you may want to double it up so you can share some too!

Basic Recipe
1 cup raw cacao butter (or coconut butter)
3/4 – 1 cup raw cacao
1/8 cup raw honey or maple syrup
1-2 vanilla beans, or 1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Soften raw cacao butter, but do not liquify.

Combine all ingredients by hand or in a food processor and adjust the chocolate, vanilla and sweetener to taste.

Pour chocolate into a parchment lined baking sheet and put in the refrigerator or freezer to set.

Favorite “bark” combinations:

• Hand-stir in crushed almonds, pecans or walnuts and sprinkle with coarse pink Himalayan salt, or:
• Pistachios and Fruit-sweetened Dry Cherries, or:
• Pumpkin Seeds & Goji berries. or:
• Hazelnuts & Currants, or:
• Chili Pepper, or:
• Lavender

Enjoy! 

Spaghetti Squash and Tomatoes

This really delicious and easy-peasy recipe may not seem like much because it is SO easy, but everyone loves this one!  

• 1 spaghetti squash
• 3 tomatoes or 2 cups,cherry tomatoes
• 2-4 cloves garlic
• 2-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste
• ¼ cup basil, Chiffonade

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut spaghetti squash in half and scrape out seeds and discard. Fill a roasting pan with 1 inch of water, and place squash flesh-side down. Roast 45 minutes to an hour, or until tender.  Sauté garlic until translucent. Add tomatoes and sauté until tender and flavors are blended together. Remove from heat. Stir in salt and pepper. Using a fork, scrape out the spaghetti squash and put in bowl, combine all ingredients, stir and serve.

Buono Appetito! 

No matter the season, we all enjoy some good old fashioned “Mom’s” kind of meals once in a while. But, I personally do not enjoy how I feel if I do indulge in those old time recipes prepared “old school” style. The fun part is, I often giggle when I make a recipe like this “Raw Vegan ‘Mock” Chicken Noodle Soup because 1), it tastes SO darn good and 2), it’s so darn good for me! I hope you too enjoy it as much as I do! And sure, will it tastes like “Mom’s?” Probably not, but I like to say, “it’s a close enough second,” for how good it tastes and how good I feel after eating it!

Recipe:  

• 1 cup water plus, to thin soup if preferred
• 1 cup celery
• 1 cup cauliflower, chopped
• 1 yellow squash, chopped
• ¼ white onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsely
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon white miso paste or ¼ teaspoon salt
• sea salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 zucchini, shaved into spirals (optional)

Add to blender with (warm) water, cauliflower, celery, squash, onion, parsley, garlic, and miso paste. Blend and add more water if necessary. You can warm the soup with the heat of your blender the longer you leave it in, but don’t make it hot, or you will breakdown the live-enzymes in the vegetables, which defeats the whole goal of making a raw soup!

Add “spiralized” zucchini“noodles”to soup. Finish with salt, pepper and fresh parsley.  Serves 2

You can prepare this soup 2 ways: Creamy or brothy. The less vegetables you add to the blender, the brothier it will be.

Buono Appetito!! 

Any opportunity to add kale to a recipe is a good opportunity! Kale is rated as one of the most nutrient dense foods we can buy today, and a stellar source of Vitamin K, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, B Vitamins, manganese, dietary fiber and wide range of minerals. In this Asian Chopped Salad, we mix the kale with a selection of vegetables to create an Asian flair!

• 1 cup kale, finely chopped
• 1 cup leafy greens, chopped
• 1 cup carrots, diced small
• 1 cup sprouts of choice, chopped
• 1 cup snap peas, chopped (if you can not locate snap peas, substitute snow peas or green beans)
• 3 scallions, sliced thinly
• 1 avocado, chunked (½ for salad and retain ½ for dressing)
• 2 tablespoons sunflower seed butter or tahini
• ½ teaspoon fresh shredded ginger (fresh makes all the difference!)
• ½ teaspoon fresh minced garlic (or powder)
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh cilantro
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Coconut Aminos
• 1 teaspoon honey
• ¼ cup water

Place the kale in a large mixing bowl. Massage with hands until it becomes wilted. Literally “massage the kale” and it will get tender – about 2 minutes. Add greens, carrots, snap peas, sprouts, scallions and cilantro to bowl with kale.

To make the dressing, combine ½ of the avocado, 2 tablespoons sunflower butter or tahini, ginger, garlic, lime juice, vinegar, Coconut Aminos, honey, and water. Toss the salad ingredients in this dressing before serving. Finish with chunks of avocado on top!

Serves 2

Buono Appetito! 

I’ve made many versions of raw chocolate mousse, and by far, this recipe is my favorite. Why? The zucchini lightens up the heaviness found in some other recipes I’ve made, so it is both rich and lusciously light.

Raw Chocolate Mousse

2-4 Servings

Ingredients

• 1 avocado
• 1 cup almond milk, hemp milk or coconut water
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 tablespoon raw cacao powder (or more to taste)
• Stevia to taste (chocolate or vanilla if you have it)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder (to taste) I LOVE the way the vanilla rounds out the cacao!

In a high-speed blender or food processor, blend ingredients until you achieve a smooth, velvety texture.

Put in refrigerator to chill and set… and then enjoy!

Optional Serving Suggestions:

• Fresh Berries
• Peppermint extract or food-grade peppermint essential oil, raw cacao nibs and fresh mint leaves

Do keep in mind, you may very well want to double up this recipe, even if it is just for you! It is that good!

Buon Appetito Raw Chocolate Mousse! 

 

In Immersion Health RECHARGE™ Spring Detox, participants learn that we cleanse our liver and our gall bladder during this season, according to ancient Chinese medicine. I offer you a juice recipe that participants get in their Recipe Guide this season, to support you in your own healing journey. I too offer up a few other herbs and foods to include, to experiment with, like chlorophyl and everything green, which binds to toxins for speedy removal. Add broccoli sprouts to enhance detoxification, dandelion greens to cleanse the digestive tract and offer liver support, lemons which stimulate enzyme production… and if you juice, add fresh turmeric root to improve liver function. This is a powerful liver cleanser green juice and amazing for cleansing and nourishing your whole body!

Serves 2

• 2 cucumbers
• 10 stalks raw asparagus
• 1 handful of parsley
• 1 handful of cilantro
• 1 handful of dandelion (wash well)
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 1 inch ginger root (optional)
• 1 inch tumeric root (optional)

Cheers!

Mineral deficiency continues to show up on my desk. As I delve deeper into the theory of acid/alkaline balance, gut health, cognitive function, even the health of our skin and bones, proper mineral balance looms in the background as a very important, yet very underrated variable for creating vibrant health.

Hello glorious sea vegetables! Why? First because sea vegetables (or seaweeds) offers us the broadest range of minerals in any food, including calcium, iron and iodine, which help balance hormone and thyroid levels and every other bodily function. Secondly, that our bodies process whole-food nutrition so much more readily than pill-form supplementation, sea vegetables offer us a broad range of minerals and all its cofactors in a whole food form. I advocate whole foods nutrition precisely because each food that we choose to eat offers a specific set of co-factors and enzymes that work synergistically with the the vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals of that food. And in this case, the minerals in sea vegetables are more bioavailable because of the high concentrations of Vitamin C and Vitamins B1 and B2.

In Chinese medicine, sea vegetables correlate to the winter season and to the kidneys, adrenal glands, bladder and reproductive organs. The strengthening, balancing and cleansing properties of sea vegetables are known to help these organs as well as the hair, skin and nails.  Eating too many processed foods or foods grown in mineral-depleted soil can result in a lack of minerals in the body, leading to cravings for salty or sugary foods. Adding sea vegetables to your diet can help balance your energy levels and alleviate cravings. Here is one very easy go-to recipe that I lean on quite regularly, simply put, because it is so easy and so nutritious! But do please note that there are endless ways that you can use sea vegetables every day. One other very easy way is to stock kelp, nori or another sea vegetable in flake form, to season and nutritionally fortify any dish you serve!

Mighty Miso Soup

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Cooking Time: 10-15 minutes

Yield: 4-5 servings

Ingredients:

4-5 cups spring water

1-2 inch strip of wakame, rinsed and soaked 5 minutes in 1 cup of water until softened

1-2 cups thinly sliced vegetables of your choice (see notes)

2-3 teaspoons barley miso (add more or less to your palate).

2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions:

1.  Chop soaked wakame.

2. Discard soaking water or use on houseplants for a boost of minerals (your plants will love it!).

3. Place water and wakame in a soup pot and bring to a boil.

4. Add root vegetables first and simmer lightly (maintain firmness for nutritional value).

5. Add leafy vegetables and simmer for 2-3 minutes (leave firm again, to maintain nutritional value).

6. Remove about 1/2 cup of liquid from pot and dissolve miso into it. Return it to the pot.

7. Reduce heat to very low; do not boil or simmer miso broth (you will destroy the gut-promoting enzymes and healthy bacteria).

8. Allow soup to cook 2-3 minutes.

9. Garnish with scallions and serve.

Note:

Any combination of vegetables can be used in miso soup. Here are some classic combinations:

• onion-daikon: cleansing
• onion-carrot-shiitake mushroom-kale: mildly sweet
• onion-winter squash-cabbage: great in wintertime
• leek-corn-broccoli: great in summertime

Variations:

• Add a tablespoon of uncooked quinoa or millet at the beginning and let it cook with vegetables for 20 minutes.
• Add bean sprouts toward the end.
• Season with 1/2 teaspoon ginger juice for an interesting twist.

Enjoy!