KALE CEASAR SALAD | easy + healthy lunch idea

With the holidays behind us, I am more than ready for some fresh, light, nutrient-dense recipes to help recalibrate my body and start the new year off on the right foot. I'm Dani Spees, and for this quick bite, I'm making a raw kale caesar salad. The first thing we're going to do is assemble the salad, and in this bowl I've got one head of kale that I've cleaned, stemmed, and then cut into bite-sized pieces. Now, I just so happen to be using dinosaur kale here, but you could use whatever kale you have on hand. To that, we're adding half of a small red onion, sliced as thinly as you possibly can, and then two chopped up hard-boiled eggs. Now, usually the eggs are found raw in caesar salad dressing, but since my kids like to eat this salad too, I like to play it safe and just skip the raw eggs, and I find that by adding the hard-boiled eggs into the salad, it really adds a nice flavor and texture. So this is all we need to do for the salad, now we just need to make our dressing. Now, traditionally speaking, caesar salad is based with egg yolks, extra virgin olive oil, and parmesan cheese, and while these are all real whole food ingredients, I just wanted to make something that was a little bit lighter to help counterbalance all those holiday festivities. So this is actually a recipe I found in Clean Eating Magazine, and its base is tofu. So here's what you gotta do. Grab a food processor or a blender, either one will work, and into that you're gonna add four ounces of firm tofu, two cloves of minced garlic, a quarter cup of water, cold water, the juice of one juicy lemon, a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, a tablespoon of fresh parmesan cheese, a teaspoon of anchovy paste or two fresh anchovies, and guys, if you think you don't wanna do the anchovy paste, I beg you to give it a try, because it really adds a depth of flavor that you're not gonna get from any other ingredient. A tablespoon of red wine vinegar, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and then a nice hearty pinch of kosher salt, and some fresh cracked black pepper. Then get the lid on, and you're just gonna blend that up until you have a nice, creamy, smooth consistency. Perfect. Now, we're only gonna need about half of this dressing, so whatever you don't use, store in an airtight container, pop it in the fridge, and it'll last you about five days. Also, guys, everything we've done up till now, you could do ahead of time, so prep all this ahead of time, and then right before you're ready to eat, you just take about half of that dressing and pour it right over the salad, and toss it together. Now, this will make two hearty meal-sized salads, or you could serve it as four smaller appetizer salads. Now, I know this isn't the time of year that you might be thinking, ooh, I feel like eating a salad, but if you choose nice, hearty, leafy greens like kale, they really do provide that sense of comfort food that we're all looking for on these colder winter months. That hearty, bitter sweetness of the kale really balances the salty, earthy flavor of the dressing. You guys have got to try this salad. For more simple and nutritious recipes, tips, and ideas, be sure you come on over and check out cleananddelicious.com, where you can print out all the recipes, save your favorites right to your own personal recipe box, and subscribe to my newsletter. Thanks so much for watching, guys. I'm Dani Spees, and I'll see you next time with another quick bite. To kick this New Year off on the right foot and recalibrate my body. I forgot what I was going to say next.