Greek Yogurt and Tahini Dip

Feb 9

The Ray Peat Carrot Salad - Lazy Girl edition. a.k.a carrot sticks and dip.

For when you want a great dip for your veggies, but don’t want to make hummus… turn to this hummus substitute! Or maybe you’ve heard of the famous Ray Peat carrot salad? Maybe not. It requires a lot of prep and shredding of carrots, which honestly, I can’t be bothered with a lot of the time. I’m lazy, and I don’t have a lot of free time these days. We have teeth for a reason. You’re going to chew it either way, and those carrot fibers are going to get shredded by your teeth (I hope) before they reach your intestines. Let’s not get so technical about fiber that we get overwhelmed. If you don’t know what I’m talking about - great!

Either way, eating raw carrots on the regular has many benefits for your hormones and detox pathways. The fiber in the carrots makes a great “net” to capture junk in the large intestines so it can be properly flushed out of the body. Some of that junk can include estrogens and endotoxins that without a “net” to be captured in, can often end up recirculating in the body, making the liver work overtime (no one likes that!)

Carrots also help with this process as they naturally contain phytoestrogens… now some people might get in a tizzy about that, screaming “excess estrogens!!!” which they have a right to in other cases, like those nasty xenoestrogens… but phytoestrogens can be really beneficial, as they have a weak action on the body and can actually help modulate innate estrogen production — meaning if you have too much estrogen, it can help bring it down, and if you have too little, it can help bring it up. Bonus to phytoestrogens? They can also knock out xenoestrogens before they have a chance to attach to your estrogen receptors, by getting there first, which means a reduction in the risks of developing things like breast cancer. Win!

I don’t know about you, but I personally love carrots - especially locally grown, spray free ones. They have such a wide variety of flavours from sweet to quite zesty, and come in a range of colours, white, orange yellow, purple, or a mix. So fun! I recommend that you get real, organic or spray-free carrots from somewhere — even Costco organic carrots can be a great option if you don’t have access to local ones.

I’d stay away from baby carrots though, which are heavily processed from full size carrots and often take a nice little chlorine bath before being packaged. It’s not that hard to just peel and chop some carrots into sticks, with a handy veggie peeler and sharp knife :) If you want to get really zen with your food prep you could shape them into the familiar baby carrot shape, but this is a article about lazy girl meal prep — which means less steps.

Anyway, enough about carrots.

Tahini - and old world food with new world benefits

This dip has become my new go-to for when I want something but am feeling super lazy. It comes together in minutes, and true to form, I don’t follow a recipe (I almost never cook with recipes — but I do my best to write them for you!)

This dip features a high protein Greek yogurt as the base, beneficial for adding more good gut bacteria into your system, and of course, upping your protein intake at snack time. Then we’re going to add some tahini, which is a sesame seed paste. Maybe you have a little alarm bell going off at that, “but Shay, what about the seed oils?”

Tahini is an unrefined product, and has been a staple food item in India and Middle Eastern cuisine since… 4000 years ago!

Hail to ancient Babylon for making this delicious paste! Although, exact origins are not clear… anyway I digress.

Tahini is a wonderful, traditional food.

It’s not a heavily processed seed oil, but whole seeds ground up, and kept fresh, ideally in the fridge. Plus, it’s a great source of the plant sterols β-sitosterol, stigmasterol, and sampesterol, which help lower blood cholesterol, and it provides beneficial lignans, sesamin and sesamolin, as well as one of the eight forms of vitamin E, which means it can be a really protective food to add into your diet and help reduce damage that can lead to premature aging and cancer. [source]. It also contains those phytoestrogens we talked about earlier.

But like other nut and seed butters, you don’t want to eat it all the time or rely on it.

Very calorie dense!

Okay so those are the two superstar ingredients, followed by some raw local honey, a bit of Dijon mustard, a bit of apple cider vinegar, a tiny bit of MCT oil (to circle back to the Ray Peat salad which is carrots, coconut oil and salt - the coconut oil provides antimicrobial benefits to help clear out the intestines). Add some salt, some Italian seasoning, maybe a few shakes of garlic powder, some black pepper… and you have a delicious dip.

The fun part? Once you have the base, you can play around with seasonings. I also like to use curry powder instead of Italian seasoning to shake things up. Or maybe you want a spicy dip? Use chili seasoning instead. The combinations are endless!

Without further ado, here is the recipe: