The Slaw of Happiness varies in its veggies but its dressing is pretty consistent. The recipe I got from my internet pal Jodie more than 20 years ago is this: to a cup of mayo, add 1 T. apple cider vinegar and 1 T. sugar. You can vary it to suit your own tastes: make it a yogurt-mayo blend, use lemon or lime juice in quantities that suit you instead of the vinegar, and change the amount and/or type of sweetener. You want a dressing that's mostly creamy, with some tang and some sweetness.
To this dressing, add a big pile of small pieces of cruciferous veggies and their friends. Shredded cabbage is fine. Finely (finely finely) minced broccoli is also good. Grated salad turnips are scrumptious. (I never use the ordinary purple-shouldered ones; salad turnips are solid ivory, sometimes called Japanese turnips. They are milder and sweeter.) You could probably use just about anything in the brassica family. Radishes that you have manhandled through the food processor and coated in slaw dressing become more pleasant, less pungent versions of themselves. If you get kohlrabi in your CSA share and you have no idea what to do with it, peel it and shred it and cover it with slaw dressing. No one at the dinner table will have any idea that you're feeding them something unfamiliar and kinda weird-looking in its natural state. It's just another bowl of slaw.
When I said "and their friends" in that previous paragraph I especially meant shredded carrots, which are sweet, colorful, familiar, and cheap. From there you can go in a variety of directions. Do you want some minced red onion? Maybe some chopped scallions? Maybe something with a little crunch, like sesame seeds or walnuts? If I am using broccoli, I will probably go with wee small bits of red onion (a habit left over from when my kids were small: strongly-flavored foods are often less objectionable if they're cut into teeny pieces), a handful of raisins, another of sunflower seeds, and some crumbled bacon. If I'm using cabbage, I might also toss in some grated apple.
Basic formula: dressing, shredded something-or-other from the brassica family, shredded carrots, plus a couple of additional ingredients that please your palate. Here's to happy microbiomes!
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