Warm Winter Coleslaw with Chili-Lime Dressing

Warm winter coleslaw recipe kicked up with chili sauce, lime and mint.

Need a little kick to warm your chilled winter bones? How about a warm and slightly spicy coleslaw with crunchy cabbage, chili, lime and ginger? It's a healthy vegan side dish your body will love. And the best part is, it's easy to throw together. You can do it in no time flat. Which is why I always keep a cabbage in the fridge (don't you, Darling?). You never know when hunger pangs will strike, what with all this detoxing and sugar shunning and working out with Jane Fonda's new Prime Time DVD -- which I must confess, I love to pieces. Jane is gentle and warm and encouraging (I don't respond well to bullying and drill sergeant meanies, do you?).

Quinoa Salad with Roasted Beets, Chick Peas and Orange

Vegan quinoa salad with roasted beets, oranges and chick peas.

I sat down to write a post about a quinoa recipe. A vegan salad perfect for detox - the post holiday process of weaning ourselves off sugar and inflammatory foods. A recipe to encourage a fresh, clean start to the new year. Healthy food for a healthy body. Tasty inspiration for the soul. But writing about quinoa salad today seems trivial in the face of the weekend violence that took place in Arizona. I am heartsick. Profoundly saddened. Aching for every victim lost to us forever, and every victim wounded. I feel an almost physical pain imagining what their families, collective friends and colleagues are going through.



Then I thought about the word detox. And it hit me.



We need to detox not only from the sugary indulgences of our collective holiday sweet tooth, but from the dulling, insidious power of toxic language and inflammatory rhetoric that has gripped public discourse by the throat these past few years, infecting all media, from political talk shows to social networking. I see it everywhere.



And it frightens me.