Red Endive & Cucumber Salad

I love endive; it's so pretty and such a delicacy, especially the red tipped endive. Mixed with cruncy mini Persian cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion and just the right spices ( see recipe below) it makes a beautiful presentation for part of a very healthy meal. I get my endive at Trader Joe's, and it's fairly reasonable.

Recently, my husband eliminated salt, sugar, and white flour from his diet under doctor's orders and needs to limit protein as well. Yikes! what a crazy diet.. It is amazing how many foods have a lot of salt. Being vegetarians, I always thought we ate relatively healthy, but I never realized how much  salt we consume.

I cleaned my pantry and said goodbye to some canned soups ( 900 mg/cup), some canned garbanzo beans and black beans ( you don't want to know the high salt content) and some jars of opened pickles and olives. ( I didn't throw them out, I had some interested customers). I would have purged even more, but my husband protested, and said he hopes he won't be eating like this forever. Me too, it is difficult to say the least. I never realized how much we depend on even healthy-ish convenience foods.

We did a run to Trader Joe's and came up with a whole wheat sodium free bread for him, some no salt and no sugar spiced  applesauce, 21 Salute seasoning without salt,  some frozen brown rice packages for popping in the microwave in a pinch,  some salt free organic butter, some almond butter and some goat milk yogurt ( which turned out to be amazing) .

In an effort to find some interesting food, I turned to the produce isle. I bought a package of mini Persian cucumbers that were labeled as seedless, sweet, and crunchy. I also bought something I had never purchased before. There was a little package of mini red and white Belgian endives. I eyed them over and decided that they would make a healthy and exotic substitute for crackers.

My dinner tonight was to say the least fresh, colorful and creative, but perhaps not so filling. Lots crispy raw veggies.



The crudites of red endive and other vegetables looked and tasted spectacular! The colors, the crispness, and the appeal screamed that I have to take a picture and blog about it.

I guess it was basically a soup and salad meal , but the colors were amazing..Carrot Ginger soup

Red Belgian Endive Salad and Goat Cheese Yogurt Dip

 Individual Salad Ingredients
2 crisp mini cucumbers, sliced with peel
1 red or white Belgian endive , separated
1/4 purple ( red)  onion, diced
2 Roma tomatoes ( or any tomato) wedged
1 Tsp. cumin
21 Salute salt less seasoning from Trader Joe's
1/2 lemon squeezed over crudites
2 TBSP olive oil


Directions:
Assemble vegetables on plate and decorate endive around the edges standing up .
Sprinkle tomatoes with cumin ( unless you don't like it)
Sprinkle entire salad with 1 tsp of salute.
Drizzle with olive oil and fresh lemon juice
...
Dip:
Goat milk yogurt mixed with fresh herbs and Trader Joe's 21 herb saltue ( salt free spice mix) ( vegans could use coconut or soy yogurt)
..
The salad vegetables were large enough to pick up and use as crudite so you could drizzle the dip over the salad or dip the veggies in the dip.
Here's the soup I ate with the salad :  Carrot Ginger soup



I shared this recipe on the following fabulous blogs:
Tuesday Twister, It's a blog party,  Vegetarian Foody Fridays, Gluten Free Wednesday, Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday, Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays, Meatless Mondays, The w.h.o.l.e. Gang, Family Food Fridays
Friday Potluck, Seasonal Saturday, , Simply Gluten-Free   Katherine Martinelli cucumber blog hop
Summer Salad Sunday

Every Sunday Easy Natural Food sponsors a salad blog carnival for all kinds of summer salads during the summer