Cucumber Seaweed Salad

Sea plants otherwise known as seaweed, are amazing nutrient dense options for us to include in our diets.  They add variety of flavor, and high vitamin and mineral content.  There are all types of seaweed we can use in our daily diets; spirulina, arame, dulse, wakame, nori, and agar agar to name a few.  My favorites and easiest to work with are arame and wakame.   They are high in vitamin K (assists in clotting our blood during times of injury or healing) vitamin E, vitamin A, vitamin C, iodine (which supports our thyroid to produce thyroid hormone), cancer fighting lignans, iron and calcium.  

Since these plants come from the sea you aren't going to escape the "fishy" flavor entirely, although you can mask it pretty well by mixing it with other ingredients.  My husband loves just plain arame with soy sauce and salt, I need a little more than that!  This is an easy seaweed salad recipe I like to use, and it will keep in the fridge for a few days.

Cucumber Seaweed Salad

1 cucumber, sliced

1/4 c pickled ginger, diced

2-3 scallions, chopped

1 carrot, shredded

1/2 c arame, dry (you will get about 3/4 c once you soak it)

1/4 c wakame, dry

1/4 c slivered almonds

salt & pepper

dressing:
1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

juice of one lemon

You'll need to rehydrate your seaweed, so while that is soaking back to life you can shop and mix your remaining veggies together in a bowl.  Drain the seaweed as best you can, the more water you get out the better (directions for seaweed prep are on the seaweed package btw).  Fold in your seaweed to the salad mixture, and add the dressing.  Mix until evenly distributed an enjoy as a side dish, man dish, snack, or dessert (jk!)