Cold Weather Detox Salad with Crispy Lentils

This vegan winter salad is filled with citrus, pomegranate, and red cabbage alongside crispy high protein lentils and greens. Topped with an orange ginger vinaigrette, this is a great lunch or light dinner.

Happy new year! I hope you had a healthy and happy holiday season. Here’s hoping 2018 isn’t as much of a mess politically and otherwise as 2017 was – please don’t bring another orange-haired buffoon with a finger on the nuclear button into the sphere of world politics, and Europe, stomp down that ongoing rise of extreme right wing and neo-nazi behaviour.

I made a big list of goals in 2017 and promptly lost it, and I’m staying away from resolutions this year. I think if I found that list I might just be a little down in the dumps about how much I didn’t accomplish, hah. This was also perhaps the most difficult year of my life financially because working as a freelancer stinks when people don’t pay you. But, 2017 was a big year for this blog and I want to thank all of you for helping me grow and start to reach toward some of my dreams. You’re awesome.

I had to start off 2018 with a salad recipe, right? A lot of my blogging peers shared smoothies – like this 4-in-1 from my pal Sarah – but I’m waiting on a new blender and mine is not up to the task of green smoothies, unless the point is teeth filled with green chunks. A big salad is one of my top five things to eat and I especially love them in winter.

There’s something so fresh and clean about eating bright foods like pomegranate and orange in the depths of winter that really appeals to me, and my root-vegetable laden diet. This vegan winter salad also features some spicy, crispy roasted lentils. If you really don’t want to turn the oven on you can use regular cooked lentils, but 1. the oven will heat up your house, and 2. crispy lentils are infinitely more fun than not-crispy lentils.

This is a salad with a lot of bite, with the rucola, red cabbage, and seeds, and it’s definitely not soggy and disappointing. I ate leftovers with some quinoa and it was a great light dinner. A quick note about the vinaigrette – it’s orange and ginger, with a big hit of pepper. My new big thing is orange and pepper, from a dish I had at a friend’s at Christmas. If you don’t like pepper as much then reduce the quantity called for, but I promise it’s amazing with the orange.

I don’t believe in detoxing, it’s not a real thing, but this salad is full of diuretics so it should help with bloating and water retention. Diuretic salad doesn’t sound great though. If you’re feeling a little sluggish post-holiday excess, swap out your sandwich for this and it might make you feel better. Any kind of diet high in a mix of different vegetables is good for you but I beg you not to start your year off hungry and trying to stick to a liquid diet. Be kind to yourself and eat a potato.

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