blissful eats with tina jeffers: White bean and tuna salad with avocado parsley vinaigrette

I’ve never subscribed much to the “you are what you eat” mentality but in the last few months I have been experimenting with my diet to see if eating or eliminating certain foods would affect the way my body feels.  After three months of trial and error I have established that adding a green juice or smoothie in the morning has helped alleviate  some chronic inflammation problems I have been struggling with.  The combination of alkalizing greens, lemon, and ginger that I start my day with has really made a difference in my energy levels and I am noticing a lot less stiffness in my joints.  I have been trying to incorporate more ingredients that fight inflammation into my diet and parsley is known to help with inflammation so when I saw this recipe in Bon Appetit that features a parsley vinaigrette I knew that I had to try it. 

 I did make a few changes to the recipe, I'm not a huge fan of celery so I replaced it with fennel and I replaced some of the olive oil in the original recipe with avocado.  I have eaten a version of this four times in the last week, it's super easy to put together and you can experiment with adding some extra veggies for variety.  Today I added some snap peas, radishes and asian greens to the mix just to change it up and it was delicious!  I could eat a big salad every day but I do admit I get into a rut eating the same two or three salads all the time.  

Blogging has allowed me to be more creative with my cooking and forces me to constantly try out new foods and techniques.  I have just joined the Food Matters Project, every week a recipe is chosen from Mark Bittman's Food Matters Cookbook and we all post our interpretation of the dish.  The cookbook encourages eating more plants and fewer animal products and processed foods.   First up was fish in spicy rhubarb sauce, not a recipe that I ever would have tried but I'm so glad I did!  Visit me here at www.scalingbackblog.com if you'd like to see the dish! 

White bean and tuna salad with avocado parsley vinaigrette 

adapted from Bon Appetit

Serves 4-6

Ingredients: 

for the vinaigrette:

2 cups packed flat-leaf parsley (leaves and stems)

¼ cup olive oil

¼ avocado

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 garlic clove, crushed

½ jalapeno seeds removed

¼ cup water

kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper 

 for the salad:

3 cups of homemade or 2 - 15 ounce cans cannellini beans 

1 small head of radicchio, cored, leaves coarsely torn

1 medium head of fennel thinly sliced

1 cup drained olive-oil packed tuna in a jar or good quality canned tuna

flat-leaf parsley sprigs

Method:

Place parsley, olive oil, avocado, lemon juice, garlic, jalapeno and water in a blender or food processor and process until well blended.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Place the radicchio in a large bowl and drizzle with 2 tablespoon of the vinaigrette and toss to coat.  Transfer to a serving platter, spread out in an even layer.  Combine 2 tablespoons vinaigrette, cannellini beans and fennel in a large bowl; toss to coat.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Arrange bean mixture on top of radicchio.  Top salad with tuna and garnish with parsley.  Drizzle some vinaigrette over the top.  Reserve extra dressing for another use.