It's a raw salad day for me!  Gettin' some amazing colours going on, on a beautiful spring day. Check out the nutritional benefits of these ingredients below. This makes a BIG salad so you may like to half it if you are not feeding a tribe.

This is for sure one of the yummiest salads I've made...the dressing is so delicious. Will definitely make this one again. It's an in-season spring salad - courgettes and asparagus are so cheap right now! Eating these veggies raw means you get the best possible nutrition they can deliver. See below for more nutritional data on this salad - you will be surprised at how much the humble courgette and asparagus has to offer. I was! Here's a start...this food combination forms a complete protein with MORE than the 9 essential amino acids :)

An oldie but a goodie :)

FULL of flavour. Can be made gluten free. Could also be made as a loaf :)

You don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan to enjoy delicious sweet capsicums stuffed with olives, fresh herbs and pine nuts. The roasted cauliflower with soy sauce and sesame is a delicious side dish. It's all very filling - I could only eat half!

If you like carrot cake, you will love this raw version! 

Seriously delicious and without all the extra flavourings and colours that you get in store bought ice-blocks.

Garlicy/gingery greens + mushrooms with smoked paprika flavoured cheesy polenta chips. Yes, chips made from polenta...and they are surprisingly cheesy tasting! 

Lunch today. This is so easy and tasty that there is officially no reason not to eat your greens. And it's in season! :D

Food manufacturers have done a great job of creating many foods that are easy to eat, inexpensive, and rich in sugar, fat, and salt so that they taste good. Starches, fats, and sweets are the least expensive foods in the diet, so it’s easy to see why we lean toward ‘brown/beige’ foods. They fill us up for very little monetary cost, but there are significant health costs to a diet that is so high in refined carbohydrates and devoid of the vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals that are so abundant in plant foods. Plant products are sources for phytochemicals of which there are thousands. 
Counting colors instead of calories may be an easier fix for not only weight control but overall wellness.

Coloured peppers are an amazing source of plant pigments. These phytochemicals occur naturally only in plants. So what's behind the yellow and orange pigments? Beta-cryptoxanthin, beta-carotene, and alpha-carotene are all orange-friendly carotenoids and can be converted in the body to vitamin A, a nutrient integral for vision and immune function, as well as skin and bone health. These foods are commonly considered the eyesight foods. 

Tasty little morsels. The Cranberry-Pear sauce is delicious! 

Vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free. 1 serving has 15.7 g protein, 7% daily need of calcium, 31% daily need of iron, 40% daily need of Vit A, 48% daily need of Vit C, 17.4g Fiber and HEAPS of other mirco nutrients. BOOM!

From the hilarious Thug Kitchen:

Get some COLOUR in your meal :D Call me a geek, but whenever I eat ANY food, I'm ALWAYS thinking about how many nutrients it contains. I'm always aiming for HIGH nutrient dense foods. How to tell if your meal is nutrient dense: 

• Bright or intensely-colored (think reds, oranges, dark greens, purples)
  
• Whole and unprocessed (the less done to a food, the better)
• Raw or cooked at low temperature (leaving heat-sensitive vitamins, minerals, and enzymes intact)

...while you eat your super amazingly colourful salad, watch the 3 minute youtube clip below to find out more about nutrient dense foods.

Time to ditch the cheese...you don't need it. Plus it's freekin' weird eating breast milk at the age of 30.......you're not an infant anymore. That stuff's for baby cows, not humans. This pizza is so so tasty and filling - give it a try.

Sweet potatoes are full of beta-carotene so don't ruin them by drowning them in some crazy butter type mash thing. Make a tasty curry out of them instead and add in heaps of green stuff so make it even more nutritious for you. And by baking the potatoes first, they come out slightly crunchy :)

Forbes recently named its top ten food trends of 2013 and high-end vegan fare topped their list.