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Cucumber Dill Salad
Debra Redalia
Cucumber Dill Salad with early torpedo onion, raisins, and yogurt.
I had already had some dill from making Garlic Dill Brine Pickles and the very next morning there were half-price Persian cucumbers at my favorite produce stand, so I had to make a cucumber salad with fresh dill. I love the smell of fresh dill.
I also added chopped early torpedo onion from the farmer’s market and Strauss Organic Whole Milk Greek Yogurt.
At the last minute, as I was taking the photo I suddenly had the idea that it needed a few raisins as well, and that really made the salad special. Just a few, really, i can count them on top—15 I think—but just those few raisins gave it a nice sweetness. We get this big juicy raisins from the farmer’s market that are so much better than raisins in a box.
That’s it. No recipe required. Just chop and toss together the ingredients and use enough yogurt to just coat everything and bring it together and you’ve got a salad.
Larry and I both LOVE this salad. I made enough for two nights so we get to have it again tonight. It’s waiting for me in the refrigerator.
Ingredients for Cucumber Dill Salad: Persion cucumbers, early torpedo onion, and dill.
Your food blog looks great Debra!
I’ll have to try this with Forager plant-based yogurt. Have you tried it? Never could have dreamed it tastes like the dairy stuff! “Forager Project is a family-owned and operated organic food company, and we’ve been crafting our plant-based foods in California https://www.foragerproject.com/about-us/ https://www.foragerproject.com/all-products/dairy-free-yogurt/
One of the many reasons I stopped dairy— Functional Medicine experts say dairy is inflammatory to most people.
Since this blog is about wholefoods from nature versus industrial foods, I need to comment about Forager.
But first a word about dairy and yogurt.
Yogurt is an ancient food. It is one of the oldest foods created by man in human history. Read more about the history of yogurt here.
Yogurt begins with milk and is fermented in a natural process to become yogurt. There’s nothing more natural than that.
We buy and eat whole milk yogurt. Yogurt is a fermented food that adds beneficial bacteria to our intestines. It fundamentally transforms the natural milk into another natural form.
Theoretically, one could take milk from any animal that produces milk and turn it into yogurt. I can purchase goat milk frozen yogurt from a woman less than two miles from my house who milks her goats and makes it into yogurt and cheese. That’s not an industrial process.
The yogurt I use is made locally from local cows. As I drive around the county I see signs on dairies where the cows are being raised for the milk for the yogurt I eat.
My body responds joyously to eating this particular yogurt.
That is not the case for all yogurts, but it is the case for my yogurt. I am going on my own experience of my own body to determine this is a good food to feed it, not a statement of science based on observation or testing of other bodies.
Now about Forager.
Here’s why I won’t eat this product.
Here’s the ingredient list of their plain yogurt (the * ingredients are organic):
They start with cashews, made into cashew milk and end with live active cultures. That’s fine.
But the also add tapioca starch and locust bean gum, both industrial food additives. They have to do this because without them, they cannot turn cashew milk into something resembling yogurt. Of course in the beginning they are made from organic plants, but they are no longer plants in their whole form. They are now industrial manufacturing ingredients that are as about industrial as you can get.
I want to eat real, whole foods that my body recognizes. I want to eat foods I can make at home, not foods that require a factory in order to exist. [That said, I did find a recipe for homemade cashew yogurt which I think I will try. This would be a wholefood by my definition because it’s made from 100% wholefoods.]
Forager is part of the Plant-Based Food Association. Hmmmm. When I went to their website, right at the top of the page it says
The plant-based food industry. Industry. That’s industrialization. This organization is all about marketplace, sales, and consumer insights. They exist to promote consumer products into the industrial marketplace. “U.S. retail sales of plant-based foods grew 11.4% in the past year, 5x faster than total food sales.”
Yes, foods in the plant-based food industry begin as plants, but after they go through the industrial process to become processed and packaged commercial foods they are no longer whole.
Because we live in an industrial consumer society, when someone does some research and says “we should eat plant foods,” immediately industry jumps on this and produces industrialized plant food products. And well-intentioned consumers purchase these products, and well-intentioned bloggers blog about these products, and well-intentioned consumers comment about these products. But they are NOT PLANTS in their whole and natural state, which is what our bodies need and want to eat.
I’m looking at their members. Plant-based ice cream. Plant-based seafood. Plant-based seafood? Sea food comes from the sea. “Plant-based protein options that have the rich flavors and flaky textures of fine seafood” OK, please understand this. They are taking plants and turning them into something that appears to be seafood by using industrial processing.
This particular “plant-based seafood” is made from “our proprietary six-legume blend of peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans and navy beans” which “delivers protein and a texture that resembles the exact flakiness of seafood.”
To give this product seafood flavor, “Our chefs and seasoned R&D team worked hard searching for a special plant that embodies that certain je ne sais quoi flavor of fine seafood. Where else to look but the sea, where they found their dream ingredient: algae oil, extracted from sea algae. Also known as algal oil, it offers the primary note in our authentic taste profile.”
This is industrialism at it’s best. Take the raw materials of nature and transform them into something that completely eradicates their own nature. If you were to have this “plant-based seafood” on a plate in front of you, you would not be able to identify peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans or navy beans because they have been turned into an industrial “proprietary blend.”
Why not simply eat peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans and navy beans? Why eat peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans and navy beans that taste like seafood? If you don’t want to eat seafood, don’t eat seafood. I don’t eat seafood, I eat peas, chickpeas, lentils, fava beans and navy beans, cooked at home, any way I choose. I eat these beans as beans, not as ersatz seafood.
Our bodies were designed to eat primarily plant foods. But virtually all traditional cultures also included milk and particularly milk products like yogurt and cheese, and also some meat.
Obviously I agree we should eat a lot of plant foods. But I don’t agree we should eat plant-based industrial food products. There is a big difference
Thanks for making me more aware of this Debra. Excellent sleuth, like you’ve always been!
I can’t always judge healthiness of foods by how they make me feel. Sometimes I’ve learned the hard way, only years after. For example, all my life I’d experienced gluten-containing whole grains as healthy, until I lost massive amounts of minerals from eating it. Then the news came out about gluten being inflammatory for most people’s gut, along a continuum.
And dairy farms, too, are industrial. Less so with small family farms.
That said, some traditional cultures have been healthy on yogurt.
OK, I’ll look for a non-industrial plant-based yogurt brand.
Of course, I don’t have to eat yogurt at all. I wasn’t even wishing for yogurt until I spotted it on the store shelf. Ha!
Thanks for your awesome blog Debra! So glad to hear you’re healing.
So I would say, learn to be more aware of body cues so you can improve your awareness of how your body is feeling when you eat different foods. It’s a good skill to have to be able to evaluate for yourself what is going on with your specific body rather than relying on studies done on bodies that are not your own.
I don’t think you are going to find a non-industrial, plant-based yogurt, unless it is local and hand-crafted.
Large-scale “brand” products are virtually all industrial. That’s how they get their volume and profits.
Still, if the food itself isn’t industrially processed but only packaged, I’m OK with that for now.
Debra, Have you ever eaten ramps? On the East Coast, you can forage ramps in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains. WE can’t find them in our exact area but my partner’s cousin in WV mailed us a package he had foraged off the Greenbriar River Trail. I added them to soups and they are exceptional in chicken dishes. They taste kind of like a cross between a leek and garlic. And they stink to high heaven!
Yes I love them!
We actually have a whole hillside of them right down the street from where I live.
It’s past the season now, but I’ll write about them when they come around next spring.
They are one of our local plants and are on the menu of local restaurants in the spring.