Kale Waldorf Salad

The month of January was fairly busy for me and it went by quickly.  Here are few of my favorite posts from January:

• I made this recipe 3x –  Sweet Potato and Kale Soup 
• Baked these delicious cookies and muffins
• Being featured as Chobani’s blogger of the week – 3 things from a Healthy Coconut
• Learning to slow things down
• Celebrating with my friends.  Lizelle’s birthday and Alicia’s wedding
• Hiking at Peters Canyon
• 24 hour road trip to Las Vegas – Part 1, Part 2
• Blogger meet-up and celebrity trainer –  “Be Fit and Pain Free in 2011” event

I look forward to a very fun February. There are a lot of celebrations to look forward to. This month also marks my 100 days countdown before the wedding 🙂

Now lets get talking about nutritious food.

I enjoy eating the salads at Wholefoods. If I had a big budget for food, I would eat there almost everyday or as much as I can. There are at least 3 in my surrounding area. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. It depends on your situation.

I limit my salad bar and hot bar food purchase at Wholefoods to a minimum.

However, there’s a salad that I want each time I stepped into Wholefoods. I am in love with their Kale Waldorf Salad. I was so happy to find the recipe on their website and finally made my own at home.

In my opinion, this salad will taste great even for people who don’t like Kale or don’t know what Kale is. And if you already love Kale, you will love it even more.

The key to making this recipe great is to chop the Kale very finely.

Kale Waldorf Salad

Recipe from Wholefoods

This variation on the classic Waldorf salad uses kale instead of lettuce and adds apple and walnuts to the dressing for a creamy consistency without using the typical mayonnaise base.

Ingredients

4 cups packed finely chopped raw kale, preferably dinosaur kale
1 large red apple, such as Fuji or Honeycrisp
1 cup thinly sliced celery
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped, divided
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons raisins, divided
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard ( I use Trader Joe’s Dijon Mustard with white wine)
2 tablespoons water, more if needed
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Method

Place kale in a large bowl. Chop half the apple and add to kale along with celery, 1/4 cup walnuts and 1/4 cup raisins. Chop remaining half of apple and put in a blender along with remaining 1/4 cup walnuts, remaining 2 tablespoons raisins, mustard, water, vinegar and salt. Purée until well combined and slightly thick, adding water if needed to thin. Pour dressing over kale salad and toss to combine.

I was surprised that the dressing didn’t have any mayonnaise in it. It tasted creamy. I guess the key ingredients are the blended toasted walnuts.

One of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat.

All together now. 

This salad has great crunch texture with the walnuts, apples and celery. The dressing is creamy enough to coat the individual kale pieces.

Another salad combination winner.

Do you like Kale? What is your favorite recipe using Kale?