I’ve been in a little bit of a food rut lately. Maybe it’s because I’m still in withdrawal from Thanksgiving – luckily I have friendsgiving remix this Saturday so I have one more chance to relive Thanksgiving glory before I have to shelve it for a whole year. But really, all I’ve been wanting to do is make other people’s genius recipes instead of trying to create anything of my own. Truth be told, I’m a pretty simple eater and a creature of habit. Example: my hands have started to turn orange again (yes, this change in hue has in fact happened previously) from eating the same sweet potatoe breakfast for the last 2 months. It’s not my fault – I just love sweet potatoes – coincidentally more than I love my natural skin tone…

Anyways, this salad is one rut that I am rather enjoying. It’s easy, transportable (make all your office mates jealous), and dare I say delicious. And yes, I have had it for lunch pretty much every day for the last two weeks. Problem acknowledged. On the plus side, I hate fish oil, and my obsession with canned salmon bodes well in this scenario. No, this is not totally random – run with me here. Even though I get the nice, somewhat expensive, liquid fish oil – I still taste tangerine fish for like 8 hours later, and for someone who doesn’t so much love fish, or tangerine flavoring, this is a less than ideal circumstance. But why do we need fish oil? Fish oil contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are anti-inflammatory. In the standard, grain-fed beef and seed oil consuming, modern diet, we get a crap load of omega-6 fatty acids, which are inflammatory. Theoretically we would like our omega-3 and our omega-6 fatty acid ratio to be close to 1:1. Or rather the anti-inflammatory omega-3s to balance out the inflammatory omega-6s.  Most people eating the standard American diet have a ratio closer to 1:15 or even as high as 1:30. Eating grass-fed and finished beef, which contains a much lower ratio of omega-6s is a great way to mediate the surplus of omega-6 in one’s diet. Another way is to supplement with high quality fish oil in order to boost your omega-3 levels – if I were to use fish oil, I would use this one: SFH. But, I hate fish oil. So I opt for wild caught salmon (which is higher in omega-3s than its farmed counterpart.) Acknowledged: eating canned salmon a few times a week probably doesn’t totally fix my omega-3/omega-6 ratio, but eating a diet comprised predominantly of grass-fed beef, pastured chicken, and low in seed oils with the addition of wild caught fish, definitely helps. So throw in some wild caught fish in your life!

One more thing since we are talking about fat here. Bacon, nature’s sweet candy of many a Paleo eater, can be a super awesome fat source. It can also, however,  be not a super awesome fat source. Fat is a storage vehicle. Thus, while the good things that we eat, or more pertinently, what we eat eats, gets stored in fat cells, so do the bad things. So if you eat a bacon from a happy pig that wasn’t pumped full of hormones and antibiotics its whole life merely so that it could survive till it was bacon time – got for it! Eat that bacon and cook with the excess fat. However, if you aren’t choosy about the bacon that you buy (opting for the one sold in bulk quantities at Costco over the one where the pigs aren’t given hormones or antibiotics and is nitrate free), then bacon: not so much your friend. Be conscious about what you put into your body. That doesn’t mean that it can’t knock your little taste buds’ socks off, but know where it came from, know what it ate, and make sure it was a happy fella (which probably guarantees the first two, yes I would like to put you in my body, prerogatives.)

Ingredients:

• 1 can wild caught salmon (mine are 6 oz and boneless – totally clutch!)
• 2 slices of bacon (I’m rocking Niman Ranch’s Maple at the moment)
• ½ avocado
• 4 dates
• handful of shelled pistachios
• baby kale, or arugula, or spinach, or a lettuce medley of your choice
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt, pepper, onion powder, cayenne pepper

How it’s Done:

Heat up a sauté pan for your bacon. Wander aimlessly around your house until your pan is hot and then throw on the bacon. While your bacon cooks (make sure you don’t forget about flipping it a few times) assemble your salad. Throw lettuce in bowl – pit and cut dates – slice your avocado and arrange artfully if you so desire – drain and gracefully plop then separate canned salmon – sprinkle your pistachios – add spice (totally recommend the cayenne pepper,) drizzle olive oil. At this point your bacon should be ready or has been ready. Chop up your bacon, while eating at least one piping hot piece on its way into the bowl, and add as the finishing touch to your salad.

Enjoy!