Entries Tagged 'Raw' ↓

As Mark mentioned I am currently at a residency at the Philadelphia Art Hotel, run by two amazing people, artists Krista Peel and Zak Starer. I am all set up in a the top floor of a row-house in the East Kensington neighborhood in a studio room adjacent to a kitchenette where, thankfully, I can once again prepare all of my own food. My fellow resident, Danielle Rante, and I are becoming fast friends, along with our other roomie, her dog Kanga.

Lo and behold, Danielle is vegan and Zak and Krista are vegetarian, so it was easy for us all to agree on a local eatery the other evening–the Memphis Taproom–which is in our neighborhood. They serve local beers on tap and have a great selection of vegan food on the menu, as the lady half of their operation is vegan. Danielle and I each got the yummy Smoked (Tofu) Coconut Club with fries.

As great as that meal was, it’s not really representative of how I’m eating here. I love getting to see how other (foodie) vegans prepare food for themselves, and Danielle is teaching me a lot in the health realm. At our house, we tend to eat a lot of starches- regular noodles and breads and decent quantities of them. I think of starch as one of my small indulgences. However, since Danielle and I have prepared some simple meals together–of mostly fresh produce and whole wheat pasta, for example–I realized how great (and how much better for me) whole wheat pasta, or sprouted grain bread can be.  One of my favorite new snacks I’ve learned from her is simply lightly toasted sprouted grain bread with part of an avocado smooshed on top, drizzled with some honey (we’re honey eaters) with a sprinkle of salt.

The (Mostly) Raw Kale Salad above was my lunch today.  I learned from Danielle to rub the kale with a bit of olive oil and salt and let it sit to soften it a bit while preparing the other veggies. This makes it easier to eat. This salad also has an herbed salad mix stirred in with the kale, chickpeas (the not-raw part), diced green onions, blueberries, shredded purple cabbage, half an avocado- chopped, carrots and some hummus on the side. In addition to the oil and salt, it has a dash of balsamic vinegar and some cranks from a pepper mill. It was perfect!

I don’t know where I first came across this recipe (if you can call it that; it’s so simple), but grapefruit and avocado has been one of my favorite hot weather treats for a while now.  Chop a chilled ripe grapefruit and chilled avocado half (I like it when it’s still slightly firm) and mix them together.  I top them with seasalt and pepper because I put salt and pepper on everything.  I find that duo actually brings out the sweetness in the grapefruit.  Enjoy!

I’m curious what everyone else’s favorite hot weather snack is?  I know there are a bunch of good ones out there, so let’s share the wealth.  If you have a foodie blog, you could link to your vegan recipes in the comments.  Thanks everybody…and stay cool!

A couple years ago, after eating a delicious dinner with our friends Bei Li and Blue, Blue treated us to a fantastic frozen, creamy, berry-laden dessert. It was a lot like ice cream, but subtly different. Blue challenged us to figure out what was in it. Title of this post notwithstanding, what would you make of something like this:

Or perhaps this:

Most of the way through finishing this delicious treat, we established that the secret ingredient was bananas; Blue used frozen bananas in his juicer to make a frozen dessert.

For those of you lucky enough to have a juicer (we have the Omega 8005), this is a deceptively easy treat, and a great way to use up those bananas that are about to go bad. When your bananas are just starting to brown, peel them and put them in a sealed container or bag in the freezer. On a hot summer morning, run the bananas through your juicer–with its non-juicing/grinding attachment–in thirds. Drop a strawberry and/or a couple of blueberries/raspberries/small-edible-berries-of-some-sort into the juicer before each piece of banana. Freeze the berries ahead of time (and be sure to cut the stems off the strawberries!) for a smoother, cooler yumyum.

Alternatively, on a hot summer night, this makes a great dessert. Try the same method as above, subbing almonds or peanuts, along with some chocolate chips, for the berries. Again, this will be smoother if you freeze all of the ingredients ahead of time. This is perfect if you want to steer clear of store-bought ice cream and don’t have the time make your own or are eating raw.

We found this power-packed smoothie recipe at Beauty That Moves.  We modified it a bit based on what we had on hand and what would fit in the blender.

Green Smoothie

• 1 apple, sliced (we used a big crispy Fugi)
• 1 banana, halved (since we didn’t have any pear on hand)
• frozen strawberries to taste (we used half a bag- about 5 oz.)
• about 3 cups fresh spinach
• 2 tsp honey (or agave nectar)
• 2 cups filtered water

Plop everything in the blender except for the spinach.  Blend ingredients until smooth, feeding in spinach slowly through the lid opening of the blender.  This makes one FULL blender’s-worth, enough for two people. Delicious and nutrient rich!

Since we’re just babies at raw, we’re still soliciting help. Our friends Danielle and Becky came to the rescue this week with info on raw sushi. This isn’t to be confused with eating raw fish, of course; rather, it’s about subbing (in this case) an almond carrot puree for the rice in standard sushi. In theory, you should really plan ahead and soak the almonds for 8 – 10 hours. Or, you can cheat like we did, as outlined below. We rounded the meal out with the Siamese Dream soup stolen from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? , in turn stolen from RAWvolution. Stealing from our favorite thieves.

Raw Sushi

We stayed pretty true to the sushi recipe, except I only soaked the almonds for about 30 minutes. To make up for this, you’ll want to add about 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup of olive oil. I’d recommend soaking…but that takes more foreknowledge than I usually have. You might also consider peeling the almonds, as that’s supposed to make them even tastier.

For veggies, we used spinach, cucumber, beet, and yellow pepper.

You’ll notice that we cut it like a wrap, rather than standard nori-roll style. These are quite a bit softer than rice-based sushi, so they’re a lot tougher to cut small. For the sake of your sushi’s dignity, stick with the deli cut.

Siamese Dream Soup

This was very much like a raw Tom Khai, and almost mindlessly simple to make. The recipe calls for coconut water, which we didn’t have handy, so we used 1 can of coconut milk and 1 cup of water. The recipe also calls for 3 cloves of garlic–which is way too much. We tend to double the garlic in most recipes, so don’t write this off. One clove of garlic will suffice.

What’s really interesting about this soup, is that you almost don’t notice it’s raw. Cooking only tends to mellow the flavor in garlic, ginger, and coconut milk. So you can get away with using less, without losing any flavor. In a lot of ways, this is one of the key points of eating raw. Humans picked up cooking largely as a way of killing the harmful bacteria in meat. As vegans, we don’t really need to cook…though now that we’ve picked up the habit, it would be a tough one to kick without major motivation.

Since cats don’t cook, Wobbly Bob (AKA The Beast) decided he had some useful skills to lend:

Amy decreed yesterday that today would be Raw Food Tuesday (stolen shamelessly from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway), which probably means that we shouldn’t have had that Chik’n Club Sammich for lunch…we did, however blaze a new trail in raw food dinners. Well, a new trail for us: rawsage & pesto-laden zucchini-based pasta with mushrooms.

Eating raw is something you hear about or read about and know that it has to be awesome, that you’d feel like a new person if could get over your need for hot things; if you didn’t love cooking; if bread weren’t so tasty. You even know that you don’t have to always eat raw, just that now and again it’d probably be really good for you. But when it comes time to dig in, you give in to the temptation of cooking. Well, if you’re anything like us you do.

Not that we’ve never eaten raw–just had a big ol’ salad for dinner or gone to a raw restaurant–we just don’t tend to “cook” raw.

This recipe is from The Complete Book of Raw Food, a book we’ve owned for years and scarcely cracked open. The results from our first foray were largely good, with a few minor caveats. The rawsage, while delicious, was pretty much just a zesty pesto. It wasn’t at all solid and tasted closer to pesto than to sausage. The zucchini turned out pretty tasty, and worked fairly well just using a grater. It probably would have been fluffier–and thus more enjoyable–if we had one of those spiral-y duders. I halved both recipes (since they were supposed to serve 4) and was surprised at how little there was. I thought we’d be scavenging for more food within minutes of completing the meal, but it was astonishingly filling. One small plateful and we were both very satisfied. In general, I hear that raw food is more filling (since none of the nutrients have been cooked out), so you typically don’t need to eat as much of it.

We made a few modifications, so check it:

Pesto Pasta & Rawsage

Rawsage (aka Zesty Pesto…errr…Zesto!)

• 3/4 cup raw, shelled pumpkin seeds
• small handful of fresh basil
• 1/4 head of lettuce
• 2 – 3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1/4 cup olive oil (less if you’re going for something more solid)
• 1.5 tsp dried sage
• 1/2 tsp fennel or caraway seed
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Grind everything together in a food processor. Try it without the olive oil if you want to get these into proper patties. Just add it little by little to get the desired consistency. For this recipe, you’ll use half of it in the pasta; so if you’re going for patties, start with no olive oil and use half of ground mix to make patties. Then add 1/8 cup of olive oil and grind some more for the pesto part.

Raw Pesto Pasta

• 1 medium-sized zucchini, spiraled or grated
• ~ 6 small-medium-sized mushrooms, sliced very thinly (optional)
• sun-dried tomatoes, soaked until soft and sliced (optional; we didn’t use these this time)
• 2 large handfuls of spinach
• Zesto! from above, or perhaps a few frozen pesto cubes
• olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper to dress

In a medium-large-ish bowl, mix the zucchini, mushrooms, and Zesto!/pesto. When the zucchini-noodles are nicely coated, toss a handful of spinach into a plate, bowl, or, ideally, bowlplate. Spread the pesto pasta over the spinach. Garnish with sun-dried tomato strips, rawsage patties, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper. Be forewarned: this is really filling!