You can have your spaetzle and eat it too! For those of us who prefer to keep wheat products very  limited, and yet love an occasional excursion into the gooey-guilty-glutenous world of comfort food, I am happy to report that things are looking very good! Spaetzle, or "nókedli" in Hungarian, was as common on our plate as pasta is to an Italian. Anyu, "mom" in Hungarian, would whip up a batch regularly to sop up all the drippy sauciness of her amazing chicken or pork pörkölt (meat stew). And always, there was the snappy accompaniment

We all need a super creamy dressing recipe, a multi-tasker for slaws and salads, with enough tang to wake a humble cabbage. Here is my go to recipe for cabbage slaw, broccoli salad, or any of the heartier crunch combinations I may dream up.

Most slaw dressings call for lots of white sugar and white vinegar. I choose, instead, to use cider vinegar, for it's beneficial properties. And because we are not applying heat by cooking this dressing, all the raw goodness of the cider vinegar is retained.

And regarding sugar, we are going with agave nectar, a caramel colored syrup with a lower glycemic index. It is, however, still a sugar, and should be consumed sparingly.

No doubt you've figured out that I am into colorful food. I am not a nutritionist, but somehow, it has always seemed logical that the more saturated the color, the more saturated the nutritional value, and that's a good thing! For that reason, beets, broccoli, dark leafy greens, berries, sweet potatoes, red cabbage and every other richly pigmented produce will regularly find their flamboyant way on to my plate. Eat the rainbow, so they say. And happily, I do just that!

Red cabbage is one of the best super food bargains, for it's incredible nutritional value and it's cost effectiveness. And furthermore, eating cruciferous vegetables in their raw state is enormously more beneficial than eating them cooked! Did you know that the nutrient rich compounds in cruciferous vegetables come to life when  chopped or chewed!