Sweet summer strawberries pair with spinach, toasted nuts, hemp seeds and balsamic for an extremely EASY, flavorful strawberry spinach salad.
This recipe was created in partnership with Now Foods. All opinions are my own – thanks for your support!
This recipe was partly inspired by Annessa Chumbley, a local dietitian who creates and shares AMAZING recipes. Last week, I was lucky enough to shadow her while teaching a cooking class. She started her fun, motivating, and delicious class with a salad that had juicy summertime strawberries and I was instantly reminded of my love for the strawberry and spinach combo.
The strawberries and spinach really are a winning pair – spinach is a good source of nonheme iron (that means it comes from plants rather than animals), and strawberries are filled with vitamin C. Vitamin C helps the body absorb iron…so it totally makes sense to top your spinach salad with the sweet strawberries of summer!
To give the salad some crunch and omega 3 fatty acids, which are healthy fats for your heart, I added Walnuts. To really bring out the flavor of the nuts, I made sure to toast them. It takes the flavor to the next level and only adds about 5 minutes to your prep time. I also added Hemp Hearts for another omega 3 boost as well as plant protein.
So, not only does this salad taste like sweet summertime, it is literally packed with vitamins, minerals and nutrients that your body needs to get from food.
Here in Indiana, the end of spring and start of summer signals strawberry season. I remember heading out to local you-pick strawberry farms as a kid and ALWAYS going home with a stomach ache from munching on strawberries all day long. We would joke that instead of weighing the bucket of strawberries, they should weigh each kid before and after they go picking to truly get the amount we need to pay for 😉
If you are looking for a new side dish to add to your weekly rotation, take advantage of the season and make this salad. You won’t regret it!
For those with dietary concerns, this salad is low FODMAP, gluten free, dairy free, and vegan.
Do strawberries naturally pair with hemp? I am seeing so many recipes putting them together but I have never tried hemp hearts or hemp seeds…hemp anything! This is a beautiful looking salad and I can’t wait to try it. I have some extra berries so I will probably mix some cashew filled strawberries (https://www.californiastrawberries.com/whits-nutrition-tips/) in the salad or on the side. This makes me all so excited for spring/summer!
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Do strawberries naturally pair with hemp? I am seeing so many recipes putting them together but I have never tried hemp hearts or hemp seeds…hemp anything! This is a beautiful looking salad and I can’t wait to try it. I have some extra berries so I will probably mix some cashew filled strawberries (https://www.californiastrawberries.com/whits-nutrition-tips/) in the salad or on the side. This makes me all so excited for spring/summer!
This is a perfect warm weather salad!! And the hemp hearts are perfect in this salad 🙂
What beautiful colors!
This looks so delicious! I need to pick up more hemp seeds now that smoothie season has arrived!
Yes!! Loving hemp seeds everywhere lately!