Anti-Inflammatory Diet - Tips, Healthy Recipes

Eating healthier is definitely getting easier. Cooking healthy food at home, though, can often be tricky. It’s tough to know which healthy recipes are actually going to taste good, and some recipes seem as though you need a culinary degree to figure it all out. To make it easier for you, here are some recipes that taste amazing and are easy enough for novice cooks and clumsy bakers to get right. Remember how I told you all about my own journey into the anti-inflammatory lifestyle? These are some of my tried-and-true recipes. They're great intros to the anti-inflammatory diet, and are just a few of the many great recipes found in The Immune System Recovery Plan by Dr. Susan Blum. Enjoy!

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Mediterranean Herb-Crusted Salmon

2 pounds wild Alaskan king salmon
4 tbsp prepared mustard
½ cup parsley, finely chopped
½ cup mint finely chopped
½ cup dill, finely chopped
¾ cup gluten-free bread crumbs
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt to taste
2 lemons, wedged

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place the salmon on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and spread the mustard on the salmon.

Mix the herbs, salt, olive oil, and bread crumbs in a small bowl. Cover the salmon with the herb mixture, and line the lemon wedges around the fish snugly to trap the juices. Roast the fish for 18 minutes or until cooked through (time will vary depending on thickness).

Pesto Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients
4 eggs
2 cups basil
½ cup toasted walnuts
1 tbsp white or yellow miso paste
Juice of ½ lemon
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp pesto
Salt to taste
½ cup extra virgin olive oil

Directions
Whisk eggs in a medium bowl and set aside. In a food processor, combine basil, walnuts, miso, lemon juice, garlic, and a generous pinch of salt. Slowly drizzle in olive oil until a smooth consistency is reached, then add salt and lemon juice to taste. (If you don’t have a food processor, just chop ingredients and do the best you can in a bowl!)

Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a medium nonstick pan over medium heat. Add the eggs to the pan with one heaping tablespoon of pesto. Mix the pesto into the eggs as you move the eggs around in the pan. Remove from heat once cooked.

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Healthy! Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients
2 eggs
½ cup almond butter
¾ cup sucanat or raw sugar
¾ cup coconut sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup coconut oil
1 tsp baking soda
3 ½ oz organic dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup sunflower seeds
3 cups gluten-free oats

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In the bowl of a stand mixer or with handheld mixer, cream together eggs, almond butter, sugars, vanilla, and coconut oil. Add the baking soda, chocolate, sunflower seeds, and oats and mix until well combined.

On baking sheets lined with parchment paper, drop tablespoons of batter about two inches apart. Bake about 12 minutes until cookies are brown around the edges and slightly soft in the middle.

*I usually alter this recipe by cutting out the sucanat and sugar altogether, and I also add a half cup of fresh ground flax seed to the batter before baking. They come out more hearty, less sweet that way, but they are a little healthier.

Recipes are adapted from The Immune System Recovery Plan by Dr. Susan Blum