No cook raw vegetable salad { plus a giveaway }

This no-cook raw vegetable salad is the perfect meal salad for hot summer nights or crowd-pleasing side at your next summer BBQ. 

You know The Ninj is all about healthy, real-food recipes that are easy to make, right? So what could be healthier and easier than a raw vegetable salad?

Pretty much nothing, peeps. No cooking. Just chopping. Good eating.

I've adapted this raw vegetable salad recipe from one by London chef Yotam Ottolenghi (he of the gorgeous Plenty cookbook fame), so you know it's bound to be super fresh and healthy, loaded with good-for-you veggies readily available at your local grocery or -- better yet -- farmers market.

Plus, it's packed with grated cauliflower. Yes, grated, which it turns out in awesome way to overcome Mr. Ninj's texture aversion to cauliflower (and dupe him initially into thinking it was grated cheese!).

Now, being The Meatasaurus, I chose to add some grilled chicken to this salad -- which probably makes the vegetarian Chef Ottolenghi cringe, but that's how I roll. It's completely optional if you prefer the meatless route or want to use this salad as a side rather than a main dish salad. Chicken or not, you're going to dig the light but tangy vinaigrette plus how super-fast it is to whip up this salad.

Pan-roasted cauliflower pasta

A better way to eat cauliflower: healthy and easy pan-roasted cauliflower pasta with spicy sausage, arugula and olives.

I think I may have mentioned a few hundred times that I'm a pasta addict. In fact, I always say that if you really wanted to punish me, you wouldn't have to send me to prison -- just make me give up carbs.

Yet I don't do your standard American spaghetti and meatballs. I like my pasta to be interesting. Like when it includes healthy, yummy ingredients like butternut squash, pumpkin, olives, beets, broccoli and even sardines.

And sometimes bacon. (Who am I kidding? Often bacon.)

No bacon in this cauliflower pasta but there is spicy Italian sausage, another one of my pasta add-in faves. The spiciness pairs really well with the pan-roasted flavor of the cauliflower and the peppery arugula.

Yep, you pan-roast the cauliflower in this stove-top meal. It comes out tender with just the right amount of cruciferous crunchiness left. And who couldn't benefit from a better way to eat lots of cauliflower than drowning it in cheese sauce or picking it off a crudite platter, am I right?

Slow cooker cauliflower cashew soup

Rich, creamy slow cooker cauliflower cashew soup is full of healthy ingredients and easy to prepare. Vegan, paleo and gluten-free. 

"Let's move back to the South!" Mr. Ninj said last year. "The winters will be much milder than they are in Vermont," he said.

Pfffft.

Somebody's pants are completely on fire, since I'm looking out the window at 10 inches of freshly fallen snow.

Which can only mean one thing: time to break out the slow cooker.

I'm excited about this slow cooker cauliflower and cashew soup because ... well ... the name kind of gives it away. It's a cauliflower soup (so yay for a meatless meal) with an extremely creamy, nutty flavor, thanks to both the cashews in the name and the almond milk that's not in the name.