Faux “Tuna Fish Salad” Stuffed Heirloom Tomato

This simple salad can be used in many ways. You can use it to stuff a tomato (as shown), or stalks of celery, top a salad, or serve with crackers. If you’re not trying to eat all raw food, make a sandwich on whole grain bread, slices of avocado, tomato, sprouts and a little mustard.

In the recipe, I carefully balanced the sunflower seeds and almonds (high in omega 6) and the flax seed oil (high in omega 3) to create a healthy 4:1 omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. You will find that many of the raw food recipes use a large quantity of nuts. While very heart healthy, most nuts have much more omega 6 than omega 3 (in my previous post I stated that a good balance is 4:1 or less). Unfortunately, most raw food chefs aren’t aware of this. In fact, you will not find many raw food cookbooks that list any nutritional information at all. If you are just doing a 30 day raw food cleanse, it’s not that important. But, if you are a long term raw foodist, you should pay more attention to this as a proper balance will prevent potential health issues.

So if you see me throwing in a tablespoon of cold pressed flaxseed oil here and there, you’ll know that I’m trying to get you a healthy combination of essential fatty acids. Don’t worry, it will still be delicious!

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Faux “Tuna Fish Salad” Stuffed Heirloom Tomato
2/3 cup organic sunflower seeds, soaked overnight
1/3 cup organic almonds, soaked overnight
1 tablespoon cold pressed flaxseed oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
2 teaspoons Dulse flakes
1 teaspoon sea salt and black pepper to taste
1/3 cup celery, minced
1/3 cup yellow bell pepper, minced
2 tablespoons red onion, minced
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
4 heirloom tomatoes

With your knife slanted, cut into the top of the tomatoes at an angle, remove the stem and leave an indentation for the stuffing. Place each tomato on a small serving plate.

Rinse the sunflower seeds and almonds and put them in a food processor with an S blade. Add flaxseed oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, Dulse flakes and half the sea salt and process until it forms the texture of canned tuna fish. Scrape down the sides as necessary. Put this mixture in a mixing bowl and stir in the celery, bell pepper, red onion and parsley. Add black pepper and the additional salt if needed. Stuff each tomato with the mixture and serve. Or, refrigerate the salad mixture (it actually tastes better if you allow some time for the flavors to meld) and serve it the next day.

Per serving: 276 calories, 21.4 g fat, 1.7 g saturated fat, zero g cholesterol, 9.5 g protein, 16.2 g carbohydrates, 5.7 g fiber, 1.8 g omega 3 and 7.4 g omega 6.