Meatless Monday: Purple Cabbage & Green Onion Slaw

So Thanksgivng has come and gone, and if your holiday was anything like mine, then you're probably wishing you had packed more macaroni and cheese and ham in your "to go" Tupperware while simultaneously regretting your decision to eat half your body weight in meat, mac n cheese, stuffing and 3 types of cakes during the last 72 hours.  And you may or may not have eaten the skin off of half the turkey all by yourself. I plead the fifth!

If there's one thing I've learned in my 25ish years of Thanksgiving gluttony, it's how to pace myself so that I don't overeat to the point of hating myself and everything around me. Why it took me that long to learn that lesson is beyond me. However, it's also taken me 25 or so years to learn that when it comes to the holidays, and Thanksgiving especially, that I am inevitably and unabashedly going to eat nothing but meat, cheese, bread and sugar, for at least 3 consecutive days. It's just a fact of life.

So this year, I decided to act proactively, and made a "detox" salad for my epic and no doubt heavier return home after the holidays. Following some serious research over in Smitten Kitchen's beautifully organized recipe index and I found this gem, a purple cabbage and green onion slaw recipe that really spoke to me.



It spoke to me right up until the point I realized that the red wine vinaigrette called for mayonnaise. I don't do mayonnaise [shudder], so I tried to improvise by using Greek yogurt instead. Except not only did the dressing look a bit like pink skim milk with oil floating in it [eww], it just didn't taste good. So I improvised again, this time with lime juice and splash of balsamic vinegar, and of course the outcome was exponentially better. It's also a double win because eliminating the dairy products made the dressing lighter, thus eliminating the threat of sogginess AND it makes this dish entirely vegan and thus 1000% healthy for you.

Purple Cabbage & Green Onion Slaw (adapted from Bobby Flay)*
Print this Recipe

3 Medium limes, juiced
1/2 Cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Cup green onions, finely chopped
1 Head purple cabbage, finely shredded
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1/4 Cup chopped cilantro leaves
Smoked Sea Salt
Fresh Crack Black Pepper
Combine cabbage, green onions, red onions and cilantro in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk lime juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar until combined. Add smoked salt and pepper to taste. Pour over vegetables, toss until evenly coated. Serve and enjoy.

This slaw serves up great as a salad on it's own, but served a flour tortilla with avocado, and it's gold I tell you. Gold!

*When looking for the link to the original Bobby Flay recipe, I realize that when I printed the recipe half of it didn't print, thus possibly explaining why my vinaigrette turned out so darn awful in the first place. No matter, the Serrano chilies that I bought at the grocery store had absolutely zero heat to them, and I don't own a blender so either way, this recipe was going to end up modified. But still, I think it's funny