Fruit and fish salad...or what to eat when you need to empty the fridge

My family was blessed to visit Oahu last week, including my in laws, we were six strong in Kailua!  It was amazing....

We rented a little house walking distance from the beach, we didn't want to be stuck eating out all the time plus with Paulo's food allergies it just isn't an option!  We were lucky enough to find a cute little three bedroom, two bathroom house literally a two minute walk away from the ocean.  We spent a lot of time in this water! 

Since we had a well equipped kitchen we ate at home as much as we could.  Mostly simple stuff, a lot of fresh fruit and salad and we took advantage of the local Whole Foods to buy some fresh Hawaiian fish.  A couple of days into our trip we bought some Marlin steaks.  I steamed them up and seasoned with black salt-I'd never seen that before!-and pepper.  Very simple and very good.  We had some left over that my mother in law shredded up with the intent of making a "tuna" salad.  Good intentions aside we just didn't make that happen.  So on our last night there we were faced with the task of emptying the fridge as much as we could, we made a gallant effort to eat up the left over goodies and to that end I made this for dinner:

In a large bowl combine:
Diced tomato
Peeled and diced mango
Chopped pineapple
Red onion
Minced serrano chile

Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and season with salt.

Heat a pan with oil, we had canola on hand, and add the shredded (cooked) fish.  Squeeze lemon and season with salt and pepper.  Heat through and then add to the fruit, stir well to combine.  Serve on a bed of baby spinach with crusty bread and cheap wine!

Juicing for Health

This juice should come with a caution sticker to warn you that you might question the health and well being of your internal organs if you drink too much...but don't worry-it's the beets!

I make no secret of my love for my Breville Juicer, it sits in a place of honor on my counter-right next to the best Mother's Day gift EVER a Vitamix (thanks Daddy!).  These two appliances get daily work outs, sometimes both of them in the same morning if I'm feel particularly undernourished.  I love green juices, so does Paulo, and we drink those regularly and I love to experiment with new juice recipes and create my own concoctions. 

Before I get to the ingredients though I want to encourage anyone that is thinking about juicing to watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  It is an amazing documentary about the healing power of good nutrition.  While I believe that most people would not need to go to the extreme that Joe had to go to in order to get healthy I think that just about everyone on the planet could use a little, no a lot, more vegetables in their diet and juicing or blending is an easy way to increase your fruit and vegetable intake.  My normal morning juice is kale/celery/apple/lemon.  It's refreshing, energizing and it tastes great.  But when I saw this particular juice on the Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead Facebook page I knew I had to try it.

So, what goes into this beautiful glass of goodness??

1/4 pineapple
1 orange, peel cut off
1 lemon, peel cut off
1-2 beets (depending on size)
4-5 carrots
5 fresh strawberries

Run the above through the juicer and enjoy!  The strawberries were an addition I made, they weren't in the original recipe but I had some extras on hand and they looked so good I had to use them. 

I hear a lot of feedback about how much time juicing takes and yes, I agree, it takes time.  But I think the bigger question is how much time does being sick take?  Our country loses countless hours of business productivity a year because of an unhealthy work force.  We sink thousands of dollars over our lifetime into the "health" care industry (or is it really sickcare?).  In the grand scheme of things if you spend a few extra dollars a month and take 15 minutes a day to make a fresh juice and it keeps you healthy isn't that worth it?  I think it is and that's why I juice, or blend, nearly every day.