What if you could take your vitamins and minerals as a dressing. Or as a salad. Or even as breakfast.
If you think you might be short on magnesium – I am here to help.
Magnesium is essential for:
- Maintaining strong and healthy bones.
- Normal blood pressure, supporting healthy blood vessels, and regulating heart rhythm.
- It helps prevent muscle cramps, spasms, and weakness.
- It helps convert food into energy and plays a vital role in the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
- Magnesium plays a role in insulin function and glucose metabolism.
- Magnesium helps regulate the production of melatonin.
- Promotes overall well-being: Magnesium is involved in numerous biochemical processes throughout the body, supporting overall health and well-being. It contributes to immune function, DNA synthesis, and protein synthesis, among other essential functions.
Thank you Chat GPT for that little list that I abridged – Chat GPT does tend to go on!.
Take your magnesium in the form of food
If you think you are short on magnesium you don’t need supplements. You need fresh food. Eat well. (And maybe cut down on the wine – talking to myself).
Supplements and pills are not part of my Sustainable ‘Styles. They are processed, come in plastic containers, travel a long way, 86% of Americans take vitamins or supplements; over 90% of those supplements are made from materials imported from China and the overseas regulatory authorities are difficult to track and I do not recognise a pill as food so why would I put it in my belly. So if you do take supplements – check the origins.
(This is just me though – I totally get that we all have different methods).
“The best supplement is not a supplement at all. It is a good well balanced meal. Eat well and make sure you are pairing your vitamins and minerals for maximum absorption, for instance; magnesium rich foods help absorb calcium, phosphorus and potassium. Vitamin D helps you absorb magnesium”.
celi
Magnesium Rich Foods
- Leafy Greens (fresh herbs count)
- Sunflower seeds
- Greek yoghurt
- Avocado
- Dark chocolate
- Bananas
- Oily fish
- Oats
I am NOT a dietician. But my studies support the theory that local fresh seasonal food and plenty of it is the essence of good health. And you don’t need to check with a doctor before taking a salad for your health.
At the moment I am picking a lot of dark green leafy greens and piles of fresh herbs. And harvesting a lot of eggs. (eggs have a little magnesium too). Early summer fare.
A perfect dinner, rich in magnesium is salmon, with a salad of dark leafy greens and seeds topped with Celi’s Yoghurt Salad dressing followed by a 😆 banana dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with honey oats. Did I miss anything?
“Celi’s Green Goddess Dressing with Lemon Oil”
Here are two recipes (the second is a riff on the ever wonderful Green Goddess Salad Dressing) As you know I am a recipe developer not a recipe writer so I get frustrated with ingredient lists. My recipes are suggestions – offers – you just go ahead and sub this with that and have fun. Use whatever you have in your garden.
But you will need: plain yoghurt, olive oil, two lemons, garlic, a dried (or fresh) thai chili, honey (and some other stuff) plus piles of green herbs from your windowsill.
🦋 Trust your tastebuds.
Step One. Make the Lemony Oil dressing.
For this you need a whole lemon. Including the peel. Organic will be best but if you have to buy one scrub the wax off it with a vege brush.
🐞 Slice one whole un-peeled well-scrubbed lemon as thin as you can. Paper thin. (Pick out the seeds). Stack the slices into a jar with a sprig or two of rosemary and cover in good local virgin olive oil and one tiny whole (halved down the middle) dried chili. (If you do not like chili omit or remove the seeds) Allow this to sit for the day to exchange flavours.
Store in refrigerator up to a week. (this is great with EVERYTHING) – pour through a straining lid. This is a great dressing on its own! For everything.
Step Two – Construct the green yoghurt dressing.
In a larger jar:
- 🐞 One cup plain Greek Yoghurt
- 1/4 cup strained lemon oil (above)
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice or cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon good local honey
- A dash of whole seed mustard
- A pinch of freshly ground pepper
- Salt to taste
- 1 cup (loosely packed) finely chopped fresh herbs from the garden (finely chopped with a knife not a food processor – the taste is brighter)
🐞 🦋 use your favourite herbs – today I used:
Oregano, basil, thyme, spring onion, mint, parsley. More parsley the better. (Parsley is very high in iron and tons of Vit C – the perfect pairing- eat parsley every day).
Throw this all together, stir well and allow to sit in the fridge for a few hours to exchange flavours.
I made a jar full of dressing this morning to eat with zuchinni fritters with feta and butter-browned sage this evening.
I have a jar of this dressing in my fridge all the time in the summer so feel free to double the ingredients.
This recipe is also high in magnesium. Muesli. 🐞
Here is a reel for fun.
Because I don’t have a lot of pictures today.
Have a great day.
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
24 responses to “Take your Magnesium in a Salad Dressing”
Yum! That salad dressing looks awesome. And we have lemons in abundance here in Spain. Thanks. I also enjoyed the reel.
Oh – I envy you those lemons!! We cannot grow them here which is miserable. I bring them back in my suitcase from CA when I am travelling.
Thanks for the suggestions & Good Feelings from all our Friends on the Farmy.
It is so mice to see Ton, right? He only really comes out when I make him walk down the drive in the evening.
That looks like a delicious dressing.
I’m just making elderflower wine/champagne. There are masses of elderflowers this year.
Oh that sounds like something I would like to drink!
Elder trees are fantastic – you can make wine or cordial from the flowers and later in the year, you can make wine fro the berries! They smell amazing and if you plant a tree near your house it will keep the devil away!
“It is said that a witch can turn herself into an elder tree and its wood is used for the making of magic wands.”
https://theresagreen.me/tag/elder-tree-mythology-and-folklore/
We trimmed the lemon tree back last year and have only a very small crop, like a dozen lemons, this year. But I can hardly wait to make the lemon oil and your dressing. I’m very mindful of eating foods with magnesium. Read a small book about how good it is for you and have been mindful ever since. I do take vitamin D as a supplement but that is all. I just can’t take much sun and D is important for calcium absorption which gives you strong bones so I take it. Like you I believe Whole Foods in healthy amounts are the best nourishment. xx
Salad dressing sounds wonderful. When looking at the list, I feel good knowing I eat a lot of magnesium as a regular part of my diet
Yup! It is right there in a regular diet.
At first, I thought Boo was dancing to the music. I enjoyed the clip. A glimpse of life on the farmy!
Oh yes! It does look like he might be about to dance!
Perfect! I strongly believe in eating our vitamins, except of course Vitamin D. This has the added benefit of sounding delicious!
it s! And I eat it with just about everything!
Then I’ll make sure to invite you to my house!
Yes please!!
Lemony oil. Oh! It’s lemon season here as well as winter leafy greens. GG dressing happens a lot… if you have an avocado to add in, makes it extra creamy.
I love the idea of salmon but not easy to get good wild-caught Alaskan salmon here unless it’s tinned. So much salmon is Atlantic, farmed and controversial. Mackerel and sardines (tinned) are good too plus local oily fresh fish similarly if available, sadly less so than they should be.
Amen! For thirty years I’ve been telling folks vitamins and supplements are no substitute for proper nutrition. The vitamins and minerals in food are often better absorbed and come along with other lovelies.
Yes! Parsley ( my fav) comes with built in vit c for absorbing the iron. Years ago I had a pamphlet that described companion foods in really simple terms so I could learn it. I would like to check my memory. Do you know of any writings like that? Simple.
I totally agree that a well-balanced, wholesome diet is so much better than supplements through pills. I have to take some supplements for various reasons, but aim to get most from veggies and such like you suggest 🙂
Yes! And a dependence on imported pills is just not sustainable. Though not everyone has access to good food so we are the lucky ones.
How nice to know that I’m keeping my magnesium levels up through dietary sources! I think my diet must be OK in general as my bloods are always good and I don’t take any supplements except Acetyl L-Carnitine, which has been recommended to delay any further deterioration of my neuropathy. And it’s made in Australia and comes as a powder which you dose out yourself, instead of hundreds of tiny capsules. Sadly the container’s plastic, but it is at least recyclable.
I don’t always have what I need for magnesium around so I have a product called “Calm” that I make a tea with each night. It keeps the leg cramps under control and helps me sleep better. I gave up even sips of soda 20 years ago because the carbonation left me with leg cramps immediately. Today, I had most of those ingredients in a salad for my linner. (lunch and dinner combined) Can’t get local grown stuff here so a lot of nutrients are lost during shipping time. Magnesium is critical.
I eat Linner too!! I hates a big dinner at night.( unless there was waiters!).
Minerals don’t break down as fast as vitamins so frozen will do too!