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Truly, this is a summer salad made with fresh seasonal tomatoes, that takes 5 minutes to make! Depending on how quick you chop… 😉

Summer tomatoes

If you’ve been keeping up with me on Instagram stories, each Friday I get a bushel of fresh produce with our CSA, from Bloomsbury Farm and the past 2 weeks we’ve been getting massive amounts of tomatoes. These aren’t just normal tomatoes, these are some of the best tomatoes I’ve ever had! I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a big fan of tomatoes (and beets) but I eat both of them regularly for the nutrition and health benefits. The key to this recipe is to get fresh and in-season tomatoes or else you may be left with mushy or mealy tomatoes out of season from the grocery store. If that’s the case, table this recipe for another time (seriously!). Fresh and delicious tomatoes, make this recipe. So much so that I actually want to eat them raw in a simple salad to show off their flavor.

If you can chop tomatoes and put them in a big bowl, this recipe will take you 5 minutes. Fresh tomatoes, olive oil, sea salt, freshly ground pepper (pink peppercorn is delicious with this one), and fresh dill and chives. That’s it!

Takes 5 minutes to make
A fun twist on a salad made entirely of tomatoes versus greens
Loaded with antioxidants
Encourages the use of seasonal and local farmed tomatoes

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(nutrition) stripped and how this will inspire you to give tomatoes a chance:

• Lycopene, a carotenoid, the most notable and highly studied antioxidant when it comes to tomatoes. The compounds in tomatoes, lycopene, in particular, have been linked to helping fight a variety of cancers (1), help improves circulation, decrease high blood pressure (2), reduce cholesterol (3), reduces cardiovascular risk (4), and reduction in metabolism syndrome (5).
• Antioxidants: We’ve chatted about antioxidants a lot here on NS, but in a nutshell, our bodies need antioxidants to fight off free radicals. Free radicals can damage our healthy cells causing oxidative stress, which may cause harm to our hormones, blood vessels, proteins, lipids, and genetic code; causing cancer, inflammation, pain, degenerative diseases, heart disease, and aging itself.
• Healthy fat: the olive oil used in the recipe is a must have! Healthy fat like olive oil helps your body absorb and soak up all those fat soluble vitamins and carotenoids (like lycopene). Also, cooking helps increase lycopene absorption, but I like to keep this salad raw for flavor.
• Optimizer Option: You can boost the healthy fat by adding toasted pine nuts, diced avocado, or if you enjoy cheese you can add that here as well. I use Kite Hill Foods non-dairy cheese (since dairy and I don’t jive) and it’s delicious!

We’ve been making this for the past several weeks as a side dish for dinner and it’ll last us a couple days including leftovers used for a quick lunch (with added protein and goodies to make it an entree).

If you try this recipe, I wanna hear about it, so let’s chat! Leave a comment it, rate it (this helps me improve future recipes), and don’t forget to tag a picture #nutritionstripped to show how you live and try these recipes on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Now off to make a batch of these…

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Favorite items pictured: these mixing bowls I’m obsessed with lately (they’re also my big salad bowls), serving spoons, dress pictured (I’ve been getting a lot of questions about outfits lately, hope that helps!)

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Resources: 

(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15006906

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26471075

(3) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25837214

(4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25469376

(5) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26857614