Easy & Delicious Salmon Salad Recipe

Ingredients

• 8 ounces of wild caught roasted salmon, canned salmon, or sushi grade salmon.

• 1 cup of shredded carrots (lightly steamed them for easier digestion) or pickled diced carrots

• 1 cup of diced cucumbers

• 8-10 Green olives sliced in quarters

• 2 stalks of green onion (only the green part)

• 4 romaine lettuce

• ½ of avocado, sliced

Dressing

• 2 T extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) or avocado oil (avocado oil is less favorable than EVOO and goes better with seasoned rice vinegar)

• 1 T lemon juice or seasoned rice vinegar

• A dash to 1/8 t sea salt (canned salmon may already be salted enough, so adjust accordingly - meaning add the minimum amount).

Additional stuffing or side entree for wraps

1 Cup of vermicelli noodles, cooked and drained

1 cup of sushi rice

Roasted potatoes with vinaigrette

Directions

1. In a medium size bowl, place salmon in it

2. With a fork smash your canned salmon so that it pulls apart (with sushi grade salmon or roasted salmon, you may want to use a sharp knife to dice it into 1/4 inch pieces).

3. Add carrots, cucumbers, olives to salmon to mix together.

4. In a small bowl, mixed dressing ingredients together.

5. Pour dressing over mixed ingredients and mixed together.

6. If you would like to add vermicelli noodles or sushi to this dish, you can add ¼ cup of noodles onto each lettuce wrap or leave it as side dish.

7. Divide mixed ingredients into four parts and place each part into a lettuce.

8. Top each lettuce wrap with green onions and two slices of avocado.

As an appetizer, this recipe serves 4 people.  As a main dish, this recipe serves 1-2.

What Matters Is Not What I Do, But The Quality & Joy It Brings To My Life

I am grateful that I reconnected with my deep desire to move with more joy this week. After the past several years of being off biologics (strong drugs I took to manage my autoimmune symptoms) it was hard moving easily and without pain. I felt all of the heights of an overworked immune system on my body. I don't recommend this professionally.

I personally did this approach, because I wanted to figure out what was working and not working while I tried an elimination diet and changed my lifestyle. At the same time, exercising for fun and strength slowly got placed on the back burner as I figured out how to work the healing practices into my life and control the fires I felt in my body.

I am now seeing a coach for help in  reorganizing my priorities as I have more space in my life and feeling a lot better. I realized that the joy of movement - a major reason why I like to help people move and practice pilates, was missing in my life. I may not be at the same level of fitness and strength as I was in the past, but moving with more joy - at whatever pace it is - will bring so much more light in my life. We all could benefit from coaches, even coaches like me - so we can be as real and whole with ourselves.

Moving forward, I plan to share more movement exercises on my blog and IG, no matter how basic they are. The lesson I learned here is what matters is not what I do, but the quality and joy it brings to my life.

Pureed Sweet Potatoes

Pureed Sweet Potatoes

Serves 8-9 people

3-4 Cleaned Sweet Potatoes (you can use other potatoes, like Yukon, here too)

4-5 tbsp Coconut Oil (duck fat works here too)  

1/4 tsp of Sea Salt

1. Set-up the pressure Cooker as a steamer.  If you don't have a steamer or pressure cooker, boil the sweet potatoes for 30 minutes.  

2. Place 3-4 medium sized sweet potatoes in the pressure cooker (I prefer Hannah or Japanese Sweet Potatoes).  

3. Steam at high pressure for about 20 minutes.

4. Turn off pressure cooker.

5. Let the pressure cooker cooker cool off.  

6. Remove lid and peel off the skin of the sweet potatoes. If potatoes are too hot, run them through cold water or place them to the side and allow them to cool for another 10 minutes.  Then peel the skin off the sweet potatoes.

7. In a saucepan, place coconut oil and allow it to melt to a liquid.  Turn off the heat.

8. Place peeled potatoes in the saucepan.  

9. Use potato masher to cream coconut oil with potatoes.  

10. Once the mixture feels and looks like a purée, add sea salt to taste.  

Whole 30 And I

Yesterday, I attended a San Francisco signing for the New Whole 30 book. While attending this event, I contemplated on how much my relationship with food has changed since implementing Whole 30 as part of my Autoimmune Paleo Protocol (AIP). And how my new relationship with food has impacted my current health.  

Before starting Whole 30, I couldn’t sit at a cafe without endulging myself on some type of dessert or sweet pastry. After several Whole 30’s and working with an Integrative Doctor, I no longer get caught in this type of behaviorial pattern. Now, I can walk into a cafe, order some cupcakes, and give them as a gift to a friend without ‘taste trying’ them.  And when I do endulge, it is with full awareness.  Some people may call this building self-control. I would call it what Whole 30 folks label it - ‘Total Health and Food Freedom’.  

By going through several Whole 30’s while on AIP, I learned how foods - including different sugars - impacted my body, mind, and spirit.  Following this type of paleo based elimination diet and lifestyle wasn’t an easy task. It is why I repeated the program several times - a total of 5 times. Each time I got back on the Whole 30 path and fell off of it, I returned back with more strength and wisdom.  

I decided to first try Whole 30 due to their social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook.  With their behavioral coaching messages and nutrient dense recipes, I got hooked to following their daily posts.   In addition, I loved how I rarely saw them post a sweet ‘treat’. Their zero tolerance - if you exclude Melissa’s Cadbury Eggs - for posting added sugars on social media was great for sugar sensitive folks like myself. 

This month may be my last Whole 30, since I feel pretty close to ‘food freedom’ and feeling as good as I can through the changes I have made while on the program. This doesn’t mean to say that I still don’t experience food or sugar cravings, but my old habit to give into unhealthy ones rarely pop up. I have replaced my endulgences with habits that support a diet and lifestyle appropriate for me.  And when I do eat added sugars or other foods that don’t nourish me, it is from a more conscious place with full awareness. 

Some Whole 30 non-scale victories I experienced.

Why Do Cooking Skills & Experimentation Matter on AIP?

If you don’t know already, I am following a diet and lifestyle protocol called the Autoimmune Paleo Approach (AIP) to heal from an autoimmune condition called Ankylosing Spondylitis.  In case the term AIP is not familiar with you, it is an elimination diet that is nutrient-dense focused, along with a lifestyle approach to support the process of healing for people with chronic conditions.

One of the popular questions I receive from folks is, "What CAN I eat on AIP when seeds, nuts, grains, egg whites, nightshades, additives, added sugar, and legumes are not included?" I normally answer back that I have plenty of choices of foods that I CAN eat - such as vegetables, herbs, starches, meats, seafood, berries, lemons (I don't do well with the other forms of citrus), sea salts, offal, and good fats.

The more appropriate question I would love to receive more often is, "Do I know how to cook and have the willingness to experiment with my food choices?"  Without my ability to cook and willingness to experiment, I would not have lasted long on AIP.  I would not have tried cooking nutrient-dense dishes that I now have on a weekly basis - such as liver pâté and bone broth. Ultimately, I would have gotten bored with my food choices and my past standard flavor combinations.  On top of that, I would have had to spend so much more money to eat this type of food at a San Francisco restaurant on a daily basis.  

Because it is much easier to track and control the type of food and its cost when I buy and cook it,  I encourage people following AIP to do the same and to learn how to cook in whatever way works for them. There are YouTube videos, books, workshops, friends, relatives, social media, and you experimenting (how we all learn) with food. For inspiration and proof it can be done, I have some pictures of dishes I have made while on my elimination diet. Do any of the dishes look deprived or lacking?  Geez, I hope not!

If you know of anyone who could benefit from following AIP, please share my story with them.  

Duck with Fried Oregano, Sweet Potato with Coconut Oil, Spinach and Bacon

Wild Salmon Topped with Seaweed and Wasabi; Plantains Covered in a Beet Reduction Sauce and Steamed Cabbage

Egg Yolks, Sautéed Cabbage, and Plantains

Chicken Breakfast Patty, Beets, Plantains, Thyme and Liver Pâté

Spring Salad with Chicken Breakfast Patties, Beets, and Citrus Dressing

Sweet Potatoes Stained with Beet Juice