You’ll rarely see me sharing/making/eating a salad in the dead of winter around here. Raw, cold vegetables that are out of season, and out of place in these cold months – VERY HARD PASS. But this Warm Chicken and Rainbow Chard Salad is truly something I can get behind. And I’ve been making (and loving!) it a lot lately. It’s elegant. Educated. Seemingly basic seared chicken and innocent rainbow chard get zhooshed up, in an adult version of what “chicken salad” needs to be. Not too sweet or salty. Punctuated by chewy dates, briny capers toasted pistachios, and a bright citrus vinaigrette to tie everything together. This salad honors what our bodies need through the winter, brings all six flavors to your plate, AND is exactly what I think of when I think of a “reset;” a recipe that turns outdated, poorly informed nutritional information on its head and gets your body and being aligned for excellence. How could I not share such an upstanding salad?
All sorts of things. Now I KNOW that the influencers you’re seeing on the interwebs, and those old, horrible diets myths that haunt practically everyone at night are telling you that the only way to “clean up your routine” this winter is to eat salad, but that is so far off base it isn’t funny.
Winter is the season of vata dosha, the qualities of which are rough, cold, dry, light, subtle and mobile. The way we keep our bodies and beings balanced in any season is through opposites; like increases like, and opposites balance. So consuming something that is also rough, cold, dry, light and also not growing anywhere near where most of us live only contributes to more dry, light, rough, cold, subtle qualities in the body. What does this look like?
It looks like constipation. Gas and bloating. Dry skin. Cold extremities. Insomnia and restless sleep, for starters. And, if you’ve been “salading” through the winter for a long time, it may look like acne, skin blemishes, inflammation and swelling, and more.
The way to combat these uncomfortable symptoms (that may be common but are NOT NORMAL?) is to enjoy cooked, warm, seasonal vegetables through the winter. The greens that are readily available to us now are very hardy and require cooking anyway. (Don’t even get me STARTED on how rough a kale salad is on your body. Woof.)
I like to eat this one as I would a deli chicken salad. With fat crispbread crackers, or slices of baguette. You could mix up the nuts if you like, of even swap in figs for the dates…something like that. What I don’t recommend is adding cheese (did you read last week’s recipe on mixing proteins?,) But enjoy this one until the spring brings tender, delicate greens that are begging not to be cooked because they’ll wilt into soggy oblivion.
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