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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Tuna Salad with Endive Dippers

If you're like my fiance Max, your pre-Gundry lunch life was fairly exciting... a sandwhich here, a burger there, maybe a Chinese chicken salad with those delicious, little, fried, crunchy things... and now, well, all you see is salads... and is it just you or is Poppy putting more and more greens in every day!?!? While I would happily eat a salad everyday, I empathize with Max and thought "I can figure out a way to pack a bunch of raw greens into a meal that is not a salad".  My first sick-of-salads-for-lunch invention is: Tuna Salad with Endive Dippers.  You can see in the pictures below, I pack the tuna salad itself with a bunch of chopped greens.
TUNA SALAD
2 5-oz. cans tuna
1 shallot, minced
2 Cups arugula or other greens, chopped
3 - 4 Tbsp Vegenaise*
1 - 2 Tbsp capers, coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with endive leaves.   This recipe is for approximately three servings in Phase 1 and six servings in Phase 2. The endive is a "free food", so stretch out your serving of tuna salad on a bunch of these crunchy, slightly bitter leaves!

*So, I'm not exactly sure what are Gundry's thoughts on Vegenaise.  Mayonnaise is listed as an unfriendly "white food", even though it has no sugar (well, full fat mayo has no sugar whereas lower fat mayos substitute fat with sugar).  From what I can surmise, the reason mayo is an unfriendly food is because of the high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids.  Mayo is made with soybean oil, which is a "brown", grain-based oil (high in omega-6 fatty acids)  See DGDE, page 108.  Vegenaise on the other hand is made with Canola oil a "green" oil (high in omega-3 fatty acids).  Follow Your Heart brand vegenaise offers a High Omega-3 variety. According to the packaging, it is "made with expeller-pressed canola oil, making it naturally rich in omega-3's, with a superb 2.5-to-1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Canola oil also has the lowest saturated fat of all widely used salad oils. High-Omega-3 Vegenaise delivers all the rich taste of real mayonnaise, without the usual cholesterol and preservatives..." According to Dr. G. our ancestors ate a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids of 1:1 or 2:1 and our traditional western, grain-based diet means a ratio between 20:1 and 40:1. Yikes!  So... I am pretty confident that vegenaise with a 2.5-1 ratio is a friendly food and it tastes like real mayo!  You can also use unsweetened, plain yogurt, olive oil or a combination.

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Hi! I am new to the diet, just finishing Dr. G's book. I would love to see you add the suitable phase to the recipes. Like in Dr G's book, he will have the basic recipe, then add ingredients for ph#3 and Ph#3. It would be a great way for us newbies to start!

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  3. mlm - welcome! and thank you for your comment. I have been meaning to post a page which summarizes the phases and other key aspects of the book and also to put more information about the phases in my recipes, but I haven't done it yet. I will try to go back and add a few notes to my recipes. To my recollection, all of my posts have been phase 1 friendly, so if you're just starting, you can use the recipes as written. Of course, I would always encourage my readers to double check anything iffy against their own reading of Dr. Gundry. He's the expert! I refer to his book all the time!

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  4. Oooh this looks yummy! Great idea to mix it up. The picture looks lovely too.

    (I had to re post my comment because I sounded like a drunk person)...

    Now where is that Rosso?!?!

    xx

    http://www.novembergrey.blogspot.com/

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