Increase your consumption of high-energy foods like this healthy and tasty Vegan Broccoli Salad. It's loaded with sunflower seeds and other tasty morsels.
Use your favorite steaming method (microwave or stove-top) to lightly steam the broccoli. I steamed mine for maybe 2 to 3 minutes. Once you've achieved the desired tenderness, remove the broccoli from heat, pour it into a strainer, and run with cold water to stop the cooking process. (Be careful when handling hot broccoli!) I like to put the chopped onion on top of the still warm broccoli. I think it helps to tenderize the onion a bit for the salad.
In a small bowl combine the vegan mayo, vinegar, agave nectar, and chia seeds. If the dressing appears a little runny, don't worry. The chia seeds will cause the dressing to thicken quite nicely (besides adding some healthy Omega-3s to the nutrient mix).
Assembling the Vegan Broccoli Salad:
Place broccoli, sunflowers, chopped onion, sunflower seeds, raisins, and peas in a large serving bowl. Add the dressing to the salad and toss all the ingredients together to thoroughly spread the dressing throughout.
Refrigerate the salad until ready to serve.
When you're ready to serve, prepare the Bacon Almond Slivers (or vegan bacon product...see note below) according to the recipe instructions.
Immediately before serving add the bacon almond slivers (or crumbled vegan bacon product) over the salad and serve.
Notes
Instead of the bacon almond slivers, you can use vegan bacon now found commercially in most stores. Simply cook a few slices according to the package instructions.We used pumpkin seeds, but you can also use sunflower seedsCalories and nutritional information is provided for the salad without almond bacon slivers.To make broccoli cashew salad, substitute cashew cream for the vegan mayo.