After taking Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Quiz, I found that I’m an “upholder.” The four tendencies are basically your response to the question “How do I respond to expectations?” Meaning that as an upholder, I will always do something I need to as long as I write it down. If it’s on my calendar, I do it. If you know me, you know how much I love a good list. I once got super fit by simply making a workout calendar and highlighting the days I worked out for ten weeks. Guess what? As soon as I ran out of room on my calendar, I quit working out.
This means that I now have what I call a “Good Habit Calendar.” I have a checkbox each day to determine if I flossed, meditated, exercised, washed my face, and the biggie “ate vegetables.” Yes, I have to write down that I’m going to eat vegetables to convince myself to eat vegetables. Simply because I want to check off that box so badly. If you’re an upholder, try this method and you’ll succeed at anything.
This Sesame Carrot Crunch Salad is me trying to check that “ate my vegetables” box on my calendar. So you bet I’m dragging all my blog followers with me. I love sesame oil, and I really wanted to make a carrot salad that had a delicious sesame dressing. As a lifelong salad hater, I found that I love a good salad without greens! I like everything bitesize and crunchy with lots of vinegary dressing. If you’re a crunchy salad lover, you’ll love this recipe. It has an Asian toasted sesame oil dressing, shredded savoy cabbage, and I used a bag of those pre-shredded bags of carrots for less fuss. You can certainly spiralize rather than julienne the cucumber! I leave that up to you. Let’s get started on this recipe!
First, mix together all your dressing ingredients in a small bowl. We used rice vinegar, sesame oil, vegetable oil, chili garlic paste, ginger, soy sauce, dijon, and salt. Yes, it’s a lot of ingredients, but the dressing is so perfect! You may not use all of it, so only add a little at a time to the salad when you dress it.
Next, prep all your vegetables. I used the pre-shredded bag of carrots. Then I sliced my green onion, green and white parts. I julienned my cucumber, but you could also spiralize it. I used savoy cabbage, and I shredded it with a knife. You could also use red cabbage if you wanted to. Chop up your cilantro leaves and stems both and throw everything into a big salad bowl. Sprinkle it with sesame seeds and peanuts, and give it all a good mix. Then dress it by adding a little dressing at a time and tossing. You may not use all the dressing, so don’t just dump it in. See the full recipe below.
- 3 tbsp rice vinegar
- 2 tbsp sesame oil
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp chili garlic paste or sriracha
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp minced fresh ginger
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- half of a savoy cabbage
- 3 green onions
- half a bunch of cilantro (stems and leaves)
- 1 cucumber
- 10 oz bag of shredded carrots
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- ¼ cup roughly chopped peanuts
- In a small bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients. Set aside.
- Slice the cabbage thinly. Slice off the root end of the green onions, and thinly slice both the white and green part. Roughly chop the cilantro stems and leaves. Cut the cucumber in half longways and deseed it with a spoon. Julienne the cucumber.
- In a large mixing bowl, add the cabbage, green onion, cilantro, shredded carrots, sesame seeds, and peanuts and mix together. Pour over half the dressing and mix. If it needs more, add another quarter of the dressing and mix, adding more as needed.
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