The Greatest “Heal Your Gut” Salad Dressing Ever!

Reena’s Kitchen

A series of kooky yet nutritious recipes I concoct daily to feed my taste buds AND my health! Hope you enjoy and please share comments if you are brave enough to try these recipes!

Gut Healing Red Dressing

I am a sugarholic.

I am not a salad fan.

Leaves are cold and tasteless and bitter. So when I started my healing process I needed to figure out how to dress these greens with more than vinegar, oil, and salt. Here’s one of my inventions as I tried to get lots of healthy gut healing ingredients in large quantities into my body.

INGREDIENTS

• Sauerkraut or Pickled Raw Beets with the liquid (without additives, please check label) 1/2 cup
• Ground Fax seeds 1 tablespoon
• Walnuts 1 tablespoon
• Pineapple (including center stem) 1/2 cup
• Himalayan or Celtic salt to taste
• Mint few sprigs for taste
• Broccoli sprouts 1/3  cup
• Add Apple cider vinegar or broth to create the consistency you like!

Optional:

• Avocado 2 tablespoons (optional but great fats and minerals)
• Cooked green apple 2 tablespoons (optional but gut healing pectin)

DIRECTIONS

Toss everything into a high-speed blender and blend till smooth. You can always change the consistency by adding a little vegetable or bone broth (yup you read that right!). You can store in a glass jar with a tight lid for a few days before it getting too tangy as the bacterial in the pickled beets have a fiesta inside.

Enjoy! Let me know how it turned out.

BENEFITS

• Sauerkraut: The beneficial probiotics found in sauerkraut are important for good digestive health, and whilst more research is needed into the exact types of beneficial bacteria found in sauerkraut and other fermented foods, we do know that they ‘feed’ the good bacteria in your gut and can help to combat inflammation.
• Pickled Raw Beets: Beets are high in fiber and vitamin B-9. Together, these compounds help promote proper digestion. Fiber helps with healthy bowel movements and helps prevent constipation. It’s also an excellent prebiotic, which helps feed healthy probiotic bacteria in your gut. Pickling adds millions of probiotic to make it gut fixing!
• Flax seeds: These seeds are full of soluble fiber, which help promote the growth of healthy gut bacteria
• Walnuts: Nuts are known to be a precious source of fiber, and dietary fiber helps to diversify and strengthen our gut bacteria. But the scientists’ findings go beyond that, showing how walnuts may benefit our cardiometabolic and gastrointestinal health.
• Pineapple: Enjoying a serving of pineapple helps improve digestion by providing fiber and a certain type of digestive enzyme.
• Himalayan or Celtic salt: Having enough stomach acid also helps our bodies to absorb vitamins and minerals like calcium, zinc, iron, folate, and B12. So consuming a high-quality sea salt regularly can help your body absorb more nutrients from the foods that you eat. The right amount of sea salt helps your body produce proper amounts of HCL since sea salt provides chloride, which is the building block of stomach acid.
• Mint: Mint is a calming and soothing herb that has been used for thousands of years to aid with upset stomach or indigestion. Mint is thought to increase bile secretion and encourage bile flow, which helps to speed and ease digestion (and which may also support healthy cholesterol levels).
• Broccoli sprouts: If you struggle with digestive health, broccoli sprouts can protect the immune system of the gut and reduce the presence of dangerous bacteria, such as H. pylori, and optimize the bacterial balance, ensuring good nutrient uptake and digestive health, lowering the risk of constipation, ulcers, and colorectal cancer.
• Apple cider vinegar: Helps improve digestion by increasing stomach acid. Drinking a glass (8 oz) of water mixed with 1-3 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar* 15-20 minutes before a meal can improve digestion and nutrient assimilation by increasing HCl production.
• Bone Broth: A stock made with chicken or cow bones and marrow is super healthy as it contains various minerals and amino acids. These components can seal gut lining of the large intestine effectively. They are also known to heal irritable bowel syndrome without any adverse effects.
• Avocado: Avocados offer beneficial nutrients, including healthy fats, vitamin E, and vitamin K, as well as several nutrients important for digestive health. Avocado’s beneficial fiber helps to promote healthy digestion. Fiber doesn’t break down into energy as it passes through your digestive tract, but instead absorbs water to soften and loosen your stool. This helps combat constipation. A diet rich in fiber also lowers your risk of diverticular disease, a disease associated with the growth of pockets, called diverticula, in your colon.
• Cooked green apple: All the varieties of apples have huge health qualities, but the green ones, in particular, have proteins, vitamins, minerals, and fiber. They are well known for their benefits, fighting digestive disorders, their low levels of good cholesterol, regulating glucose levels, and improving your appetite.

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