Festive Winter Salad with Winter Spice Seasoning

It’s the holiday season and with this season comes all the fun, hustle and bustle that’s associated with it, notice I included fun, because if you’re not having fun why do it!?

Food! That’s what any holiday revolves around, but who wants to spend all their time in the kitchen? I was sponsored by FeedFeed and Vitamix to share the newest addition to the Vitamix family – the Ascent series.  This new series is just as great as the other blenders in the Vitamix world but with some extra added tech – a touch interface, digital readout and programmable timer. The Ascent 3500 comes with 5 program settings: smoothies, frozen desserts, soups, spreads and self cleaning – it takes the guess work and time out of trying to figure out how long and what speed to use. All you do is add in your ingredients, set the timer, press start and off you go, giving you less stress and more time to have fun!! Visit Vitamix for more information about this blender and the others in the Ascent lineup. Included with the blender is a beautiful recipe book full of tempting creations that you can make using the blender.

Vitamix has an amazing new spice recipe that is perfect for the winter holiday season, bringing all the spices and flavours we associate with winter together in one versatile blend – Winter Spice Seasoning.  The combination of flavours in this blend smell so good, I have opened my mix and just smelling -mmmmmmmmmm getting in the festive mood just from the smell. You may need to make a trip to your local Bulk Barn for some of these ingredients in the amounts you need, nut the trip will be well worth it. This versatile blend can be used in a variety of dishes from poultry to pasta to spicing up your potatoes – so many possibilities but of course I opted to make a dressing for…yep you guessed it, a salad!

 

You know how much I love my salads and getting creative with my own dressings to dress them up so what better way for me to showcase this great new blend. Making your own dressing does take a couple of extra minutes but the benefits of knowing exactly what is in your dressing is so worth the time and energy, plus you get to customize the amount of salt, spice and flavours to your preference. This spice blend made me think of a light and creamy sauce mixed in a bowl of greens with my favourite winter ingredients.

Festive Winter Salad

  • mixed field greens
  • chopped cucumbers
  • chopped tomatoes
  • chopped red onion
  • butternut squash spirals (sautéed in ghee, sea salt and black pepper)
  • micro greens
  • pomegranate arils
  • raw pumpkin seeds
  • crumbled cranberry goat cheese (*optional)

Layer all the above ingredients and add the Winter Festive dressing a little at a time, toss well, taste and add more dressing as needed.

* addition of goat cheese is optional can be substituted with just cranberries

Festive Winter Dressing:

  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp. plain full fat yogurt (*optional)
  • 1/2 tbsp. Dijon mustard
  • 1 tbsp. Winter Spice Seasoning 

Add everything into the blender and blend for 30 seconds till everything is well combined.

 

Winter Spice Seasoning Blend:

I made this blend at home and found all the ingredients that I didn’t have in my kitchen at my local Bulk Barn, best part was I could control the amounts I purchased – I don’t often use candied ginger so just needed enough for the recipe. Due to my dietary restrictions I subbed the brown sugar with coconut sugar which works better for me and my body, recipe can be altered to meet your personal needs and tastes but try to stay as close to the original as possible.

Recipe for the Winter Spice Seasoning blend can be found here.

With this scrumptious smelling blend in my kitchen I decided to experiment with it and added it to my homemade cashew milk, base recipe for the milk is here and I added 1/2 tsp of the winter spice blend instead of the salt (you can add more or less according to your personal preference) – such a decadent treat on its own warmed up with a stick of cinnamon in the cup 😉

Since I had this fresh festive cashew milk and it was late afternoon the obvious thing for me to do was to add it into my afternoon matcha latte creating a festive matcha latte – oh my, so good!

Festive Matcha Latte:

  • 1 tsp matcha powder
  • 3/4 cup boiling water
  • 1/2 cup festive cashew milk (see above)
  • sweetener of choice (optional)

Add matcha powder to mug, pour in boiling water and stir well.

Heat cashew milk and add to mug of matcha.

You can use either a hand frother, a frother or a blender to mix up the drink.

Sprinkle on some cinnamon.

You have the perfect afternoon pick me up, full of natural energy and antioxidants! More benefits of matcha to follow soon…

 

Needless to say I had a fun time experimenting with this blend, just smelling it puts me into a festive mood.  With so many possibilities of where and how to incorporate this blend flowing around my head there will be more fun recipes and creations to come 🙂

One of my New Year goals is to get back to blogging more and sharing recipes, health tips and health products with you – stay tuned. Thanks for hanging in here with me.

Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season and all the best for the New Year!

xo