Kale and Mango Salad

Silva Mirovics, one of our cherished coaching graduates from the Natural Wellness Academy recently posted this photo on her Facebook page.  It looked so appealing and easy to make that I immediately asked if we could share this on our blog.  Silva is the founder of  Earth’s Door.  She lives in beautiful Melbourne, Australia and is the author of the Handbook for the Aussie Vegan.  For her final project, Silva created a superb “6 Week Vegan Kickstart – Change your Diet, Change your Life, Change the World”, which I urge you to check out at this link as she has a special offer currently.

Even if you are not a dedicated fan of this wonderfully nutritious leafy green, when you massage kale you change both the texture and the taste.  In my monthly raw food classes at Abby’s Health in Nutrition in Carrollwood, Tampa, one of the favorite recipes (I’ll post this one of these days) is an Asian-inspired kale and seaweed salad that is salt-massaged to soften the kale.

You can swap out any ingredients that you don’t have on hand; For instance, if you don’t have chives, try scallions (green onions) instead.  Did you know that a single scallion has your total Vitamin K requirement for a day?  It also has 8% of Vitamin A requirement and 4% of Vitamin C.  And here’s the best part — you can have perpetual scallions!  Just leave an inch and a half (or more) of the white part at the bottom and place them in a glass with water.  By the next day you will see growth!  (I personally did not believe this until I saw it with my own eyes!)

Sui’s Kale and Mango Salad

Ingredients:
10-12 large kale leaves or 12-16 medium size leaves
2 TB olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 avocado – sliced
4-5 TB. lemon juice (about half a juicy lemon)
1 mango – cubed
1 carrot – sliced or diced
1 red pepper – diced
8-10 cherry tomatoes – halved or quartered
4 med-large radishes – sliced
Handful chives or scallions – finely cut
Handful sprouts of choice (I used snow pea sprouts).

Method:
Wash kale leaves well. I used curly kale, but use any type you like.
Place 4 leaves at a time inside each other and cut down the middle lengthways. If the leaves are large you may like to also place a lengthways cut on either side of the middle as well.
Then chop leaves into small pieces.
Place in a large mixing bowl and add the olive oil and salt and massage (with your hands) really well.
Add the avocado and lemon juice and massage again – working the avocado into the kale leaves.
Let stand while you prepare the other ingredients.
Add all ingredients to the bowl. Mix well with some salad spoons.
Serve as is.
Serves 4.
This size does the both of us for dinner two nights in a row.
Make sure that you use the freshest ingredients (especially the tomatoes) so that the salad is still fresh the next day.
Store the remaining salad not eaten immediately in an airtight container in the fridge.
Take out of the fridge about 30 – 60 minutes before serving as the flavours intensify as the salad reaches room temperature.