Garlic Parsley Dressing
I'm a die-hard salad lover, but not just any sort of mundane salad. I mean the ones that are bursting with colour and a wide variety of ingredients – carrots, red cabbage, beets, chickpeas, sunflower seeds, goji berries and beyond! Heck, some of my salads don't even lay on a bed of green leaves most of the time. Point being, if us holistic nutritionist's are going to tell you to eat the rainbow and get your veggies in, we have to make it as exciting as possible, right?
What I've found over my years of becoming a salad connoisseur is that, though the ingredients are what makes or breaks a salad, it's the dressing that keeps you coming back. My Dad is living proof of this – he's the type of person that has about 5 restaurants he frequents and doesn't usually stretch too far beyond that unless someone comes at him with some raving reviews about another place. One of his go to's in Toronto is Mama Martino's, your classic red and white checkered table ma-and-pop Italian restaurant. Noodles and red sauce don't typically get me super excited, but there's one thing that'll always bring us back to this place – the salad!
Imagine the most crunchy quenching bites of iceberg lettuce topped with the savoury playful flavours of garlic and parsley that offer the perfect blend of zest, bite and mystery – all the key ingredients to keep you coming back for more. Naturally, we wanted to recreate these fun flavours at home (and keep the parsley-in-between-the-teeth look for the house where no one could see us). And so we did, and it was awesome and I encourage you to do the same!
Garlic Parsley Dressing
Ingredients:
Handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1 Clove Garlic, minced
1 tbsp Lemon Juice
Directions:
Blend chopped parsley with olive oil in a blender. The amount of olive oil used is subject to the amount of parsley used. Add or reduce amount of olive oil as needed to reach consistency in image.
Add garlic and lemon juice and blend for 20 more seconds.
Dollop 1-2 tbsp of dressing atop salad of your choice. Drizzle with olive oil to spread dressing evenly if necessary.
And because I don't like to let much food enter my mouth without it offering an abundance of nutrition, I'll leave you with these little tidbits as to why parsley is so wonderfully healing for us:
It is a "chemoprotective" food that helps neutralize particular types of carcinogens
It's flavonoids (luteolin) function as antioxidants which help protect cells from oxidizing and damage
It is a fantastic source of Vitamin C (immunity!) and A (healthy eyesight!)
It converts homocysteine, a dangerous molecule that can damage blood vessels, to benign molecules
It purifies the blood and cleanses toxins from the body
It cleanses our key elimination systems – the bowel, liver and blood
It helps to neutralize bad breath