Kale & Cranberry Salad w/ Walnut Crumble

Woah everyone… this salad changed my life a little bit. About two weeks ago, I stayed at my friends cabin loft in the country (shout out to K2 – it was so beautiful. You go girl) and she had made all kinds of delicious food. One dish being this salad. She got her recipe from Rachelle over at BeyondNourished and let me grab the recipe as well. I made a few changes due to ingredients I had on hand. I can’t seem to find a link to her original recipe on their website (I only have my dark, faded photo of the recipe that I went by ha-ha) but here is their website so you can check out their stuff!

Kale & Cranberry Salad w/ Walnut Crumble

For salad
1 large full bunch of kale (green, purple or lacianto (black)) – or two small bunches
1 cup dried cranberries (sweetened with apple juice instead of cane sugar)
1/2 – 1 cup pre-soaked pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds *see note below for pre soak*
Walnut Crumble
1/2 cup pre-soaked walnuts
1/2 cup pre-soaked sunflower seeds (optional)
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp pink sea salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
Cracker pepper
2 tbsp hemp hearts
Dressing
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp pink sea salt
2.5 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp dijon mustard
1/2 garlic clove chopped

Directions

1. First, you will want to massage your kale. And yes, I am serious about this. It’s no joke. De-stem your kale and tear it into small pieces. Place kale into a large bowl with a splash of olive oil and a pink of sea salt. Using your hands, massage the oil and salt into the kale and focus on breaking down the kale’s toughness. You can tear it apart more doing this too. Do this until your kale becomes softer (and it will shrink in size due to this). This usually takes about 3-5 minutes. Watch some TV while you do it!
2. Add the cranberries and the pumpkin (or) sunflower seeds to the massaged kale and mix together.
3. In a food processor, add in all ingredients for the walnut crumble and pulse a few times so that it’s mixed together and broken into smaller pieces that resemble a “crumble”. Don’t over process it! Once it’s done, place as much of the crumble onto the salad as you prefer. Some times I will save a bit of it for a later salad but you can 100% use it all on this salad.
4. Wipe out the processor so you can make the dressing. In the processor, add in all dressing ingredients and blend until well mixed. Add as much of the dressing as you prefer onto the salad. You might have some left over and you can just store it in a small mason jar in the fridge for a few days.
5. With your hands or salad tongs, mix up the salad, crumble and dressing until well combined.

Additional toppings: grilled chicken, sliced avocado, sauerkraut (get them good bacteria in ya), fried eggs, or baked sweet chili chickpeas. You can choose either one of these and it will be delicious <3

Pre-soaking: to do this, simply add nuts or seeds to some water (covering them) and let them soak for 6-8 hours. You can add a small splash of apple cider vinegar to further help break down phytic acid (this is optional). If you are strapped on time and can only soak for an half hour or so, anything it better than nothing! Soaking helps with the digestion and absorption of the nuts/ seeds when you eat them.

Enjoy!

Marcy xo