Guilt-Free, Good-for-You Green Dip Recipe

Recipe From Doug Kaufmann of Know the Cause

The possibilities are endless when you’re making a tasty homemade dip that’ll pair well with your favorite foods. A homemade blend using fresh and organic produce won’t just guarantee that it contains no artificial ingredients, but also allow you to control how much seasoning and spice goes into it.

This Guilt-Free, Good-for-You Green Dip by Doug Kaufmann of Know the Cause can set the benchmark for delicious and nutritious dips that will go well with different finger foods. It has everything you want in a dip: flavorful herbs, creamy cheddar cheese and tangy Greek yogurt and sour cream.

Guilt-Free, Good-for-You Green Dip Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup parsley leaves
  • 1/3 cup fresh dill fronds
  • 1/3 cup chives
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • 1 clove garlic (smashed)
  • 2 tablespoons mayonnaise*
  • 1/2 cup Organic Greek yogurt
  • 1/2 cup Organic sour cream
  • 1/3 cup organic goat cheesee
  • Salt and black pepper to taste

Procedure

  1. Rinse the herbs and dry in a salad spinner. Put in a food processor and pulse until minced.
  2. Add lemon juice, garlic, mayonnaise, yogurt, sour cream and goat cheese to processor and pulse until blended well, scraping down sides of processor bowl as you go.
  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Serve in cups with dip on bottom and veggies on top.

*For mayonnaise: Combine 2 pastured egg yolks, 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard, a couple of pinches of sea salt and 1 cup of olive or avocado oil in a blender. Be sure to only add a couple of tablespoons of oil at a time and blend until thickened. Do not add 1 full cup of oil at once.

Why This Guilt-Free, Good-for-You Green Dip Recipe Is Absolutely Great

Lackluster flavor won’t be a problem with this Green Dip recipe. The dip’s main stars – parsley, chives and dill – are delicious herbs that not only livens up a meal, but can boost your health too. Plus, a combination of healthy homemade mayonnaise, sour cream, Greek yogurt and cheddar cheese make this dip extra creamy.

Whether you like pairing your dips with organically grown vegetables or bite-sized pieces of grass fed meats, this Green Dip may be your family’s new favorite in no time.

Chives Are a Clever Choice

There’s more to chives than their pleasantly subtle onion-garlic flavor. For starters, chives were proven to have anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antimicrobial properties.

Did you know that chives are also highly abundant in vitamin K? This vitamin helps form and strengthen bones, and assist with limiting neuronal damage in the brain. You can also find vitamin A in chives, alongside carotenes like zeaxanthin and lutein, which are vital flavonoid antioxidants. It has vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5 and B6, too.

There are also other antioxidants in chives that can potentially kill free radicals. Thiosulfinites like allyl propyl disulfide and diallyl disulfide have enzymes that convert to allicin when the leaves are cut.

Research showed that allicin, in turn, may decrease cholesterol production by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme responsible for producing cholesterol in liver cells, while reducing blood pressure levels, blocking platelet clot formation and reducing the risk for heart disease and stroke.

Chives are also a potent mineral source, containing calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, copper, manganese, zinc and phosphorus. Furthermore, don’t forget these two potential minerals as well:

  • Fiber: It acts as a laxative, assists with colon clean-up and shortens the amount of time that foods reside in that organ.
  • Folate: This is vital to DNA synthesis, cell division and potential prevention of neuronal tube defects among newborns.

Plus, phytochemicals in chives can help promote digestion, ease an upset stomach, prevent bad breath and prompt a diuretic effect that can reduce high blood pressure levels.

Dill: What Benefits Does This Herb Deliver?

The fact that dill was considered one of the Bible’s ancient herbs and was mentioned in 5,000-year-old Egyptian manuscripts because of its medicinal use shows its potential in improving health. Dill was used in traditional medicine to soothe infants with colic, calm nerves, heal upset stomachs and induce sleep.

Aside from being a good source of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6 and C , dill’s mineral content is also worth noticing. A tablespoon of dill seed is said to contain more calcium than a one-third cup of milk.

Other minerals in dill include manganese, folate, iron, fiber, phosphorus, copper and magnesium. Important concentrated compounds like the flavonoids kaempferol and vicenin, and monoterpenes carvone, limonene and anethofuran in dill can positively impact your body, too. These positive effects of dill to various parts of the body make it a worthy herb to add to your favorite dishes:1

Improving bone health: Dill’s high calcium content can help protect against bone loss and loss of bone mineral density, repair injured bones and facilitate proper bone growth and development.

Reducing excess gas build-up: Dill is a carminative that may help prevent excessive gas by forcing it downward through the digestive tract, so it leaves the body in a safe manner.

Preventing microbial infections: Research has shown that dill’s antimicrobial activity can help prevent microbial infections.

Lessening arthritis-caused pain: Because of dill’s anti-inflammatory properties, patients can use the herb to help lessen pain caused by conditions like arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gout.

Relieve hiccups: This herb helps expel gases and inhibit gas formation.

Meanwhile, dill’s sedative properties assist with calming down hiccups triggered by allergies, hyperactivity or nervous disorders.

Enhancing oral health: Dill seeds and leaves are known to be good mouth and breath fresheners, while the herb’s essential oils are germicidal, antioxidant and disinfectant in nature.

Push Your Health to New Heights With Parsley

A popular herb used in Italian cuisine, parsley, just like chives, has unparalleled vitamin K content, which can help improve bone strength and limit neuronal damage in the brain that may be beneficial against Alzheimer’s disease. Parsley’s mineral content is remarkable too, and can offer these positive effects:

  • Iron: With twice as much iron compared to spinach, parsley’s iron content is crucial in the production of heme, an important oxygen-carrying component in red blood cells.
  • Copper: This mineral is required by the body for normal metabolic processes, and parsley is a good food source that’ll help increase the body’s copper levels.
  • Manganese: It contains a super-antioxidant called superoxide dismutase that’s responsible for neutralizing a specific oxygen-derived free radical called superoxide.2
  • Folate: It assists with forming red blood cells and developing genetic material.
  • Fiber: You can utilize parsley as a digestive aid because of its high fiber content. Parsley aids with moving foods through the digestive system, functions as a diuretic and helps with controlling blood cholesterol levels.

Parsley can also be useful in detoxifying the body by eliminating harmful compounds like mercury, which is usually found in dental fillings and contaminated seafood like tuna. The herb itself can purify the blood too, and tea made from parsley was utilized as a traditional remedy for colic, indigestion and intestinal gas.

Don’t Settle for Conventional Yogurt and Sour Cream

Organic Greek yogurt and sour cream make this Green Dip recipe extra creamy and appetizing. Although it may seem easy to randomly pick these ingredients on a whim, you may want to spend more time checking these items’ ingredients lists.

Conventional yogurt (Greek or otherwise) is often made with pasteurized milk, contains high amounts of sugar and artificial ingredients like coloring, flavors and sweeteners and most likely has traces of genetically engineered corn and/or soy. Meanwhile, sour cream sold nowadays contains fillers and preservatives, and even rBGH, a dangerous genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

With these risks taken into consideration, make your own yogurt and/or sour cream at home instead by using raw, healthy and good bacteria-loaded grass fed milk and a high-quality starter culture. This way, you can reap the various nutrients from the milk and the byproducts of the fermentation process that occurs when you make yogurt.

About the Blog

Doug  Kaufmann hosts the daily national television show, Know The Cause.   The show has enjoyed tremendous success for 18 years, based on one simple fact; fungal infections cause or mimic many autoimmune diseases, including cancer.  Couple that fact with another fact, that physicians do not learn of systemic fungal infections during their medical education and the foundation for this popular and educational TV show, that helps thousands of viewers, was formed.

Doug was a US Navy Corpsman attached to the 7th Marine Division in Vietnam in 1970 and has become outspoken on fungal diseases.  In 2014, the cancer journal, Oncology News, published his paper, Fungi and Their Mycotoxins: an Underappreciated Role in Cancers, scientifically linking fungus to cancer.  He has authored 10 books on the fungus link to health problems and lectures often to lay and physician audiences alike.

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