Recipes & Food Styling

This rice salad is perfect for Native American Day and Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

I keep close tabs on this list of foods to eat and avoid to help fight off my triple negative breast cancer. Triple negative breast cancer is a type of breast cancer that does not have receptors to progesterone, estrogen or her-2 hormones. At first, I was relieved that I would not need chemotheraphy, because it wouldn’t help. However, the downside is that chemotherapy and hormone therapy don’t help. So, I made a staunch commitment to try to change my daily eating habits to include more foods that can help and avoid foods that hurt my chances to fight off the cancer.

I’ve had the most difficulty finding ways to love purple sweet potatoes. They are super dense and starchy, and they don’t provide much flavor. However, purple sweet potatoes are loaded with potassium, calcium, iron and vitamins A and C.

In this new recipe, roasted butternut squash, which tastes fantastic, makes up the difference and balances out the ingredients. Butternut squash is full of potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, and vitamins C, D, and B6.

Brown rice is a terrific triple negative breast cancer fighter. I used wild rice in this salad because I had some on hand, and I wanted to also make a new recipe for Native American Day, October 10. This salad is like the salads at Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. A “must-do” if you visit DC! Mitsitam means “Let’s Eat!” in the Native language of the Delaware and Piscataway people. A friend treated me to lunch there during my last week in DC in 2018.

In this recipe, some chopped walnuts add some crunch, and black beans for a punch of much-needed fiber.

Wild Rice Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash, Black Beans, and Purple Stokes 

2 cups wild rice, cooked and cooled

1 cup butternut squash, cubed and roasted

1 cup purple stokes (sweet potatoes), baked and cubed

2 Tablespoons canned black beans, rinsed and drained

1 Tablespoon walnuts, chopped  

3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon pink Himalayan sea salt

1/2 teaspoon crushed multi-color pepper

In a large bowl, fold dry ingredients together until thoroughly mixed.

Using a salad dressing shaker, shake salad dressing ingredients together until combined well, for about 30 revolutions. Pour over salad and mix dressing into salad ingredients gently, until the dressing coats all of the ingredients.