5 Healthy Recipe Ideas for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Five moringa recipes built for a day of service — things that scale up, travel well, and are good enough to share.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed on the third Monday of January, honors a leader who organized for racial equality and economic justice. Since 1994 it has also been designated a national day of service — the only federal holiday framed that way. The usual phrase is "a day on, not a day off."

Which makes it a cooking holiday, if you want it to be. Community kitchens, food banks and neighborhood meal programs run at their thinnest in January, and a tray of something warm carried three doors down counts too. The five recipes below were chosen with that in mind: they scale, they hold, they travel, and none of them needs you to stand at the stove while people are arriving.

Each uses moringa. It is a leaf — from a fast-growing, drought-tolerant tree, dried whole for tea and milled fine for powder — and it behaves like a concentrated leafy green, carrying plant protein with all nine essential amino acids, dietary fiber, calcium, potassium, iron, vitamin C and beta-carotene. It tastes grassy and faintly peppery, and the single most useful thing to know is that you add it off the heat. Boiling turns it khaki and bitter.

1. Moringa hot chai

Serves 2. About 10 minutes. Scales to a pot for a crowd.

• 1 cup water
• 2 moringa tea bags
• 3 whole cloves
• 2 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch grated nutmeg
• 1 cup milk of your choice
• Honey to taste

1. Bring the water to a boil, then take it off the heat and drop in the tea bags and whole spices. Steep five minutes.
2. Add the milk and warm gently to just below a simmer — do not boil it, which flattens both the spices and the tea.
3. Strain, sweeten with honey, and serve hot.

Crushing the cardamom pods rather than using ground cardamom is the difference between chai that smells like something and chai that does not. For a crowd, make it in a saucepan at four times the quantity and keep it warm on the lowest setting.

2. Moringa blueberry smoothie

Serves 2. About 5 minutes.

• 1 cup blueberries, frozen
• 1 cup strawberries, hulled and chopped
• 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
• ¼ cup milk of your choice
• 1 tsp Miracle Tree Organic Moringa Powder
• 1 tbsp honey

Blend the yogurt and milk first, then add everything else and blend for 30 seconds until thick. Frozen fruit rather than ice keeps it cold without watering it down, and the yogurt's fat and acidity are what round off moringa's grassy edge. The berries' vitamin C also helps with absorption of the plant-form iron in the leaf, which is a small, real reason the pairing works as well as it tastes.

3. Moringa oat pancakes

Makes about 8 pancakes. About 20 minutes.

• 1 cup rolled oats, blitzed to a coarse flour
• ½ cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp Miracle Tree Organic Moringa Powder
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 4 tbsp Greek yogurt
• 1 ripe banana, mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp honey
• Milk, to a thick pouring consistency

1. Whisk the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet in another, then combine with as few strokes as you can manage. Lumps are fine; overmixing is what makes a pancake rubbery.
2. Rest the batter 10 minutes. The oat flour needs it to hydrate.
3. Cook on a lightly oiled pan over medium-low — lower than you think — until bubbles form and set at the edges, then flip once.

Medium-low matters here: the baking soda and the banana both brown fast, and a hot pan gives you a dark outside and a raw middle. These reheat well in a toaster, which makes them a good thing to make the night before.

4. Moringa avocado salad with a green dressing

Serves 4. About 15 minutes. Travels well if you dress it on arrival.

For the dressing

• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1½ tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp Miracle Tree Organic Moringa Powder
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• ½ cup crumbled feta
• Salt and black pepper

For the salad

• 4 cups baby spinach
• 1 avocado, chopped
• 1 cucumber, sliced
• ¼ cup red onion, diced

1. Whisk the oil, lemon juice, mustard, garlic and moringa powder until emulsified and evenly green. The mustard is the emulsifier — add it early, not late.
2. Stir in the mayonnaise and feta, and season.
3. Toss the salad ingredients together and dress just before serving, or carry the dressing separately in a jar.

The dressing keeps for four days in the refrigerator and is worth making in double quantity; it is excellent on roasted vegetables and on grain bowls.

5. Moringa chia pudding

Serves 4. 10 minutes, plus setting time.

• 6 tbsp chia seeds
• 3 cups unsweetened almond milk
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp Miracle Tree Organic Moringa Powder
• 1 tbsp maple syrup or honey, to taste
• 2 bananas and a few strawberries, sliced, to layer

1. Whisk the chia seeds, milk, cinnamon, moringa and sweetener together thoroughly.
2. Wait ten minutes and whisk again. This second whisk is the one everyone skips, and it is what stops the seeds clumping at the bottom.
3. Refrigerate at least two hours, ideally overnight, until set.
4. Layer into glasses or jars with the sliced fruit.

Made in jars the night before, this is close to the ideal thing to carry somewhere: it sets while you sleep, it needs no reheating, and it holds three days.

Cooking as the point, not the garnish

If you are looking for somewhere to take any of this, the AmeriCorps MLK Day of Service directory lists organized projects by ZIP code, and most local food banks post their January needs on their own sites. A tray of pancakes and a thermos of chai is a small thing. So is a day off. One of them is better.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult a licensed healthcare professional before starting any new supplement or dietary program.