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It’s Jan. 1, peeps! (Or Jan. 2 for many of you who might not be eyeballing our site on a holiday.) If you’re visiting this blog in the new year because you’ve decided you’d eat more whole, fresh foods, you’ve come to the right place. Well, at least I think so.

I really do try to keep this blog as healthy as possible. To me “healthy” means a few things:

1. Whole ingredients — I like to use foods in their natural state, as unprocessed as possible. This isn’t always the case, or sometimes I use something out of convenience (case in point: the can of beans below, rather than beans from scratch). But, most of the time, my meals feature whole fruits and vegetables supported by a few condiments.

2. Good fats — I prefer to focus on fats that are good for the body: seeds and nuts with essential fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids (like the kind in avocados) and medium chain fatty acids (like the kind in virgin coconut oil). Extra virgin olive and grapeseed oils are great too, but don’t provide as many anti-inflammatory benefits as the other fats I’ve mentioned.

3. No refined sugar — I like to use alternatives to white or brown sugar when possible. Most of the time, I’ll tend to use dates, maple syrup and honey.

The salad I’m featuring today is a great example of a healthy dinner that meets all of my guidelines. It contains good fats, plenty of whole foods, unrefined sugar and isn’t difficult to prepare.

Note: The picture above also contains mashed sweet potatoes. I’m not including a potato recipe because we were too heavy-handed on the spices and they ended up tasting like a high-end pumpkin pie candle. Not our best experiment.

Portobello Salad with Spicy Mustard Dressing

Dressing

1/4 cup prepared spicy, smooth mustard

3 tablespoons grapeseed oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

Salad

8 cups mixed greens

1 avocado, peeled, halved, pitted and sliced thin

1 small red onion, sliced into very thin half-moons

1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 recipe roasted portobellos (below)

Dressing: Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl. Done.

Salad: Throw together all the ingredients except the portobellos in a large mixing bowl. Pour on the dressing and use tongs to toss. When ready to serve, place the dressed greens on plate and add the sliced, warm portobellos. Serves 4.

Roasted Portobellos

1/2 cup cooking wine

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 large portobello caps

Combine all ingredients for the marinade in a glass pie plate or small casserole. Place the mushrooms upside down in the marinade into each cap to form a small pool. Preheat the oven to 400 F and marinate for about 20 minutes.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, use tongs to flip the caps over, and cook, uncovered, for another 10 minutes. Let it cool a bit and then slice the mushrooms very thinly on the diagonal and make nice meaty slices.

(Recipe from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero)