Kelp Noodles...

...are my latest obsession.

If you're a health freak like me, you know how beneficial adding sea vegetables to your diet is. If you aren't, get this: sea veggies like kelp, nori, wakame, and arame are high in iodine (which can also come from salt but beware: most iodized salt has dextrose, a corn sweetener, added in), iron and vitamin C, and are highly alkalizing in the body. Adding sea veggies to your dishes also reduces the need for excess salt, which is pretty awful for you if you weren't aware!

I've been a big fan of nori (the seaweed used in sushi) for awhile now; I mean shoot, I literally eat it in sheets right out of the bag. My boyfriend called me out on it yesterday ("I don't think normal people eat it like that..." to which I respond "when have I ever been considered normal?"), and my friend Jennifer calls it my sloth food. But my world has been shifted with the addition of another sea vegetable, kelp, in the form of noodles!

The noodles, made by Sea Tangle Noodle Company are made of kelp and sodium alginate (which is extracted from brown seaweed) and water. I've found them at multiple Portland Whole Foods as well as Chuck's Produce here in Vancouver (Vancouver Whole Foods doesn't appear to carry them yet). They are really jiggly and kind of translucent; I'd compare them to like a cooked rice noodle (those ones you find in salad rolls and stuff). But they are so much more nutritious than rice noodles with much fewer calories! I haven't experimented much with cooking them (they are recommended in stir fries and such), but hot damn are they good in salad!

Here's my favorite recipe so far:

Kelp Noodle Salad with Almond Butter/Miso Dressing

1/3 pkg kelp noodles
2 c. fresh spinach, or 1 c spinach and 1 c. romaine lettuce
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
handful of snap peas, chopped

Dressing:

1 tbsp. Almond Butter
1 tsp. unpasteurized brown rice miso paste
1/2 tsp. maple syrup

Whisk dressing ingredients together, adding water until it reaches a salad dressing consistency. Toss veggies and kelp noodles in dressing and enjoy!

Serves 1.