Broccoli and Trail Mix Salad

Note: is anyone else having formatting problems with their Blogger?!  Doesn't matter how many times I re-do this post/last few posts the format keeps bunching together...

Confession:

I love my body, however, I strongly dislike my stomach.

I am a veg, but the biggest part of my diet consists of fruits.

Being in Korea, I have only worked out a few times, but I have done a lot of walking.

…

So here it goes.  My days remaining in Korea are very limited, and with that, I’ve been starting to think of how I want to work out when I go home.  When I was living in Montreal, the biggest part of my exercise routine was biking, now, I still want to keep that up, but I want to start doing weights as well.  I’m not speaking the five-pound weights I was doing in my metcon workouts, but I’m talking the heavy guys, so I can do “real” weight lifting.  Now, I’ve considered a few things, hire a personal trainer, get a gym membership, think of different ways to get varied work outs in from rock climbing, running, swimming, biking, etc… I just want there to be variety.

With all of this being said, I do not believe it will take very long to see results.  I eat healthy, I’m already pretty skinny, and definitely have muscle, but my diet is a little, ehhhh… I mean, I do not eat poorly by any means, but there is one thing that I have a weakness for and that’s fruits.  It doesn’t matter how healthy a food is, eating it in bulk quantities is just as bad as eating little quantities.  Eating a whole pineapple in one sitting?  Yes, it may be healthy, but it’s loaded with sugar, which doesn’t matter if its fructose or glucose it’s still sugar, it still turns into fat.  If I were to cut down on the amount of fruits in my diet, and upped the vegetables even more than I do, I should see results from that alone.

I decided yesterday I was going to try to make a change in my “fruit-intake” and yesterday I definitely did well.  I had two apples only.  Yes, two apples, it’s because Jordan cut one and left it there so I didn’t want it to go bad, and I’d already eaten one.  Now I could of cut into my pineapple but I did not and was very proud.  Right now I am at one banana, woo!

Anywho, with all that, I decided I’m going to double my vegetable intake versus my fruit intake.  This morning I made one of the best salads I’ve had in a long time.  It was super filling, incredibly healthy (wait until you read the ingredients), and a synch to throw together, no cooking or baking required, all you need are your ingredients and voila!

Broccoli and Trail Mix Salad

So I wanted a very basic, vegetable salad with a little bit of additional fruit (however, a tiny amount in comparison to the vegetable amount).  I didn’t have a food processor, so I chopped my vegetables very small beforehand.  I didn’t want to have large chunks of vegetables, I wanted everything to be minced, and it was perfection.

Ingredients:

• Gosari Namul (Korean fern), chopped very small
• 2 broccoli florets, chopped very small
• 1 large carrot, chopped very small
• Handful of mushrooms, cut into tiny pieces
• 1/4 cup + 1 tbsp raisins
• 1/2  cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup dried cherries
• ~ 1/2 cup coconut meat
• 1 lemon, juiced
• Maple syrup, dressing
• Salt

Directions:

Cut and chop all of your vegetables very small, unless you have a food processor toss ‘em all in.  Mix well together.  Add in your dried fruits, seeds and coconut meat.  Mix together.  Toss with salt.  Squeeze your lemon over your salad.  Top with some maple syrup and eat up.

How do you spice up everyday-day salads?