Hi every­one,

Another gray day.…Will we ever see the sun again? After a long ride this morn­ing ( I miss my bike!) and a back work­out (don’t for­get, peo­ple see that too!), I decided that today was the per­fect day to spend in the kitchen, so I began with my hubby’s favourite pump­kin muffins. I tin­kered with the recipe a bit by reduc­ing the sugar and fat in half (by replac­ing eggs with chia seeds soaked in water and unsweet­ened almond milk). I’ll wait to see if he notices the changes but I think they’ll still taste deli­cious. I’ll post the recipe later, depend­ing on his feedback.

Last night, I dug into my favourite fall salad — kale with pear, avo­cado and pome­gran­ate seeds, tossed in a fab­u­lous low fat tahini dress­ing. I served it with a piece of grilled salmon and was it ever delish!

Hope you enjoy this recipe; please let me know what you think!

Fall Kale Salad

¹⁄₂ bunch fresh kale, rib removed and torn into bite-​sized pieces

1 ripe Bartlett pear, diced

1 ripe avo­cado, diced

¹⁄₂ pome­gran­ate, seeded

Tahini Dress­ing:

¹⁄₄ cup tahini (sesame paste) ¹⁄₄ cup hot water

¹⁄₄ cup fresh Ital­ian parsely, chopped

2 gar­lic cloves, minced

juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and freshly ground pep­per, to taste

makes about ³⁄₄ cup

1. In a blender or food proces­sor, com­bine tahini, pars­ley, gar­lic and lemon. Process until well blended.
2. With the machine run­ning, slowly add water through the feed tube of the proces­sor or lid of the blender. Process until thick and creamy. Add salt and pep­per to taste.

3. Com­bine salad ingre­di­ents in large serv­ing bowl and toss with dress­ing until thor­oughly coated. Refrig­er­ate remain­ing dressing.

The won­der­ful health ben­e­fits of kale include:

• Vit­a­min K
• Vit­a­min A
• Vit­a­min C
• Man­ganese
• Cop­per
• Fibre
• Tryp­to­phan
• Cal­cium
• B6
• Potas­sium
• Folate

and more!