In honor of Wheatless Wednesdays, KCET Food will be posting gluten-free recipes on the site every week. We don’t want to rely too heavily on substitute flours, so we’ll try to find other filling ingredients. This red and green salad from food blogger Ari at The Diva Dish fulfills the request perfectly: a ton of fruit, veggies, and nuts — plus dairy and chicken, but only if you want — that can be tossed together in whatever proportions you like. It’s so virtuous, in fact, that we recommend pairing it with today’s other wheatless recipe, coconut cake.
Beware the Leafy Greens So you’re doing the “good thing” for dinner. Instead of plowing through a medium-rare factory-farmed piece of cheap steak, or ordering up a pizza from down the block and stuffing your face with it, you decide to do your body good. You get some fresh vegetables from your produce provider of choice — tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, a few carrots, what-not — throw them into a bowl, mix ‘em around, add just the minimal amount of salad dressing, and you have yourself a nice dinner salad. Things go great for a few hours after, but then you start to feel something … wrong. A problematic ache in your stomach, maybe a cold sweat, and suddenly you’re down for a few days with a terrible bit of foodborne illness. Aren’t you glad you decided to go healthy? This scenario is actually a lot more common than you’d think. According to a new report dropped by the CDC, all of those leafy greens in your salads or smoothies or nestled-in-your-sandwiches-to-trick-you-into-thinking-you’re-being-health-conscious are actually among the most dangerous items of food we eat. In the CDC’s study, they looked at the stats of which foods begat sickness, hospitalizations and death from 1998 to 2008. Of the 4,600 outbreaks of foodborne illnesses that the CDC tracked, researchers found that 46% of those cases could be attributed to produce.
