Campervan Recipes: The Ridiculously Simple Beetroot Salad that Helps You Live to 90…

summerbourne

OK, so the ‘live to 90’ bit may be a bit of an exaggeration but, if you eat this delicious micro-salad regularly your liver will certainly get a tune-up and that means feeling good. And it’s a brilliant addition to your BBQ meals while you are out camping…

simple-ways-to-prepare-beetroot-face-packs

Beetroots are a totally under-appreciated food, maybe because they are cheap and not much of a looker, but in the taste and health departments they are stars. This is a beet salad that has a wonderful mix of flavours that dance in your mouth – earthy from the beetroots, sweet from the apple and zesty from the lemon with a subtle nutty under-note from the flaxseed. I make it regularly and keep in the fridge and almost use it as a health supplement – sometimes I just eat a couple of forkfuls each day even if I am not having it with a meal. If we are going to make our healthspans match our lifespans now we really need to start thinking about food in this way.

However, let’s not get too precious about it, it’s important to just relax and enjoy our meals too – ‘Delicious’ is as important as ‘Nutritious’.

Ridiculously Simple Beet Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 medium raw beetroot, peeled (organic if you can)
  • 1 medium apple (organic if you can)
  • Juice of 1 lemon (organic if you can)
  • 1 tbp Flaxseed oil

How to Make

You just grate the beetroot and apple in to a bowl, cover with the lemon juice and mix in the Flaxseed oil. And that’s it! I like a lot of lemon juice but you may want to adjust that according to how big and juicy your lemon is. You can also leave out the Flaxseed oil if you don’t have it to hand.

You can have this micro-salad on the side with any main salad you are making and it goes really well with burgers for some reason. Just experiment and, like I say, sometimes you can just eat it on its own or have it as a pre-salad to a meal.

Food-as-Medicine

Beetroots: provides many vitamins (especially Vits A & C). minerals and fiber, helps your liver detox your body, reduces inflammation, increases stamina

Apples: fights the effects of aging on the brain, reduces risk of pancreatic cancer and diabetes, lowers cholesterol, boosts immune system and soothes irritable bowel.

Lemons: helps with digestion and detoxification, tons of Vit C which improves skin texture (collagen formation), helps our body to absorb iron, keeps the bile flowing through the liver.

Flaxseed Oil: provides Omega-3 oils which is good for heart and brain health, natural relief for constipation, calms inflammation in the digestive system, may prevent gallstones.

My new book, ‘The Camper Cookie Does: Easy, Delicious, Nutritious’ with lots of campervan, health-friendly recipes and tips will be available this summer.