hot for food

A whole lot of non-food related stuff has been going on lately and I haven’t been able to blog for a while. Mainly, I started a full time job. Which is wonderful, but it means I’ve had to cut back on my leisurely cooking time. I’m all go-go-go now. At least until I adjust to this new lifestyle and figure out a balance. The whole reason I started this blog was mainly out of boredom. I was a freelancer for a couple of years. I did things on my own terms, when I wanted. And I somehow found a joyous outlet in cooking, taking photos of what I cooked and then blabbing about it to you, in my vast amounts of spare time. There was a time when I was making something inventive 3 times a day! However, everything I’ve eaten in the past 3-ish weeks has mainly been done in haste. However, this post is to show you how one vegan can still be healthy in hurry.

Luckily purchasing a Vitamix blender with my new found income has made it awesomely easy to get my fruit and veg intake in a jiffy. I’ve heard this machine is life changing, and now I know. It’s really quite incredible that it can whiz up a whole apple, 2 carrots, a 1/2 cup of berries, spinach, fresh ginger, and a shot of pure pom juice in the time it takes to sneeze. Or how about a sweet re-hydrating protein smoothie with raw almonds, rice milk, dates, banana, and coconut water.

I can also whiz up raw pesto cream in the Vitamix and store it in the fridge for the week to use as  a veggie dip, or as a tangy base for a pita pizza. I am slightly addicted to this at the moment. As a vegan I’ve missed pizza, but this is a million times better than anything I ate in my past life with cheese. The pesto is super easy: 1 cup raw sunflower seeds and almonds combined, 1/2 cup olive or sunflower oil, 2 cloves garlic, juice of one lemon, lots of basil, sea salt. I add water to make more and make it smoother, but you can also get a really dark green, chunkier pesto dip without water and run it through a food processor.

My comforting go-to is always brown rice pasta.  This is a Spicy Kung Pao Tofu dish I whipped up by just stir frying veggies and tofu and tossing with the noodles in a sauce of natural peanut butter, chilli garlic sauce, hoisin sauce, lime juice, brown rice vinegar, sunflower oil, and freshly grated ginger.

And I always have a pile of brown rice made up in the fridge so I can make stir fry and pair it with other things. If you bake up these acorn squash – I lightly coated in melted Earth Balance and a bit of maple syrup at 400 F – in advance you can stuff them with all kinds of things. In this case, it’s a simple and quick rice dish I did in a cast iron pan and just added cranberries, corn, walnuts, red pepper, and kale. I added some tahini for creaminess and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg which gave it the perfect flavor to go with the squash.  I made this up on the spot and it’s a keeper! Also the seeds of the acorn squash were SO delish lightly seasoned and baked. I was going to put them in with the rice mixture, which would have been tasty, but I ate them all before everything was complete!

So if you want to keep eating right in more hectic times, it just takes a little bit of pre-planning and time to make sauces, grains etc.  in advance. If there’s good stuff in front of you when you open the fridge, you’ll be less compelled to resort to packaged foods. And seriously, looking at these pictures don’t you want to put in that extra effort

Ice Cream equals summer, if you ask me. I used to eat ice cream… lots of it… all summer. Problem is, I wanted to die every time. That’s not a fun summer. You know, having to pre-plan my entire ice cream excursion (making sure I could get to a err uhh… bathroom). How ridiculous is that?! Now that I’m a changed woman, I no longer have to worry about such silliness. Though I still can’t have that spontaneous ice cream on a nice summer stroll, I can deal. I just go home and fulfill my cravings with my trusty food processor. No freezing required!

You know I’ve raved about frozen banana ice cream before, but I recently saw a new creation on (never home) maker. Great blog, by the way! If you want to be way jealous of someone’s house, go check out the pics of Ashley and Steven’s, here. Anyway, recently they posted a recipe for a variation of this frozen treat. Check it out…. peanut butter chocolate banana vegan ice cream… awesome!

I used natural peanut butter, so I added a bit of sea salt as well. I bet if you used the “not so good for you” PB it would be a bit tastier, or sweeter. Maybe even add a drizzle of maple syrup. I’m going to try some other versions of this too. Jennifer of sweetonveg pointed me in the direction of this Banana Caramel Pecan version just the other day. That’s next on my list of to eat’s!

Of course, I can always go for a bowl of my favorite Fruity Summer Sorbet. Probably the easiest, healthiest treat one could eat while still feeling indulgent! This is just frozen raspberries, mango and 1/4 of a banana with a drizzle of lemon juice. No added sugar! It’s SO friggin good.

I just want to point out that you don’t have to do this in a food processor. A blender works too, but it might take a bit more fiddling with a spatula to get everything well blended.

Ok, I was a bit premature to dismiss kale the other day. I learned a little bit more about the leafy greens on the internet and I’m loving them. I came across a recipe on Modern Hippie and the secret is sea salt! This Kale Avocado Salad was incredible. Natalia of Glowing Temple who posted the recipe also goes onto say, the more greens she eats the more her body craves them. Well, I’m not there yet, but I will give it a try!

The salad is also good stuffed in a whole wheat pita with other pairings like crispy tofu or homemade falafel (I’ll post that recipe next). Like this, it sort of reminds me of tabouleh. It’s a good way to get more greens, still eat healthy, but not get bored of eating ONLY salad all the time.

I also found a recipe for Kale Soup on The Hot Yam! blog site. Which means I was able to use up all that kale I had in the same cooking session! I was hoping to try Hot Yam for the first time too, but they’ve closed for the semester. This was more like a lentil soup, as the kale wasn’t really the feature ingredient, but it was still tasty and it’s a keeper!

Kale Soup

Ingredients:
2 tbsp oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup diced carrot
1 cup diced celery
6 1/2 cups vegetable broth
2 red potatoes, diced into ½-inch cubes
1 cup green lentils
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried sage
3 cups kale, chopped
salt and pepper

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Add carrots and celery, and saute for an additional 10 minutes. Add all ingredients except for kale, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chopped kale, salt, and pepper. Simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

I have never used dates in any recipe ever before. I’ve never eaten dates either, except for this one time when I sampled a date almond roll at the grocery store. And I thought… I could make these, why would I buy these expensive things?  It literally was just pureed dates rolled in ground almonds. Well this incident stuck with me. I’ve also been reading a lot of recipes containing dates since they seem to be quite a nutritious staple to raw and vegan treats. Typically I just see recipes calling for Medjool dates. But I found some honey dates and figured they would work the same. I wanted to make something sweet but healthier and more granola bar-like than my Chocolate Salty Balls. Well these balls are amazing too!

Choconut Date Balls

1 1/2 cup pitted honey dates
2 cup raw whole almonds
2 tbsp tahini
1/2 cup raw cacao powder
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup granola (optional)

I ran dates with tahini and cacao in the food processor than emptied it into a mixing bowl. I ground the almonds in the food processor by themselves until they were a fine crumble. Then I used my hands to mix the almonds with the date puree and added in the coconut and granola. The granola adds a nice crunch. And I had some vegan friendly pumpkin hemp seed granola lying around so I decided to use it up. Roll the mixture into 1 inch balls and refrigerate. Makes 30 balls.

They make a great snack, breakfast accompaniment, or pre-workout nosh. And I’m going to need to make more, fast, because they’re disappearing!

Am I weird if I want to stay at home and cook on my Saturday night? I don’t want to go out and drink at a bar with my friends and yell talk. And if I’m going to spend money on something to put in my mouth I would rather it be food and not alcohol. Tonight I made a yummy naturally sweet and raw snack (which I will post tomorrow). While those are refrigerating, I am prepping components for a vegan lasagna so that it’s all ready for tomorrow’s dinner, and I just tried Jennifer’s (Sweet On Veg) Blueberry Chocolate Frozen Treat. OK, this is the second time this girl has changed my life! The first time, if you recall, was with her Raw Chocolate Ice Cream. So my boyfriend is in heaven right now over it and I’m singing “yummy yummy I got love in my tummy”. I think it might have made us high… it’s not such a boring Saturday night after all!

Toronto continues to disappoint me when it comes to dining out. But I was excited to see Now Magazine’s list of Toronto’s best green/veggie resto’s. I still have to experience most of them, but I was really intrigued to try Cruda Cafe – a live, raw, organic cafe located in St. Lawrence Market. Ok, not the most ideal location. You would never come across it if you weren’t looking for it, as it’s tucked away in a far off corner of the lower level of the market. but I trekked there to give it a try. I’m not fully informed about eating raw, but since this vegan transition I’ve been reading more about it, so I get it, and I know what to expect.

At first glance nothing looked appetizing or appealing when I first walked up to this place. It was pretty plain-looking, like someone’s condo kitchen. Raw soup does not sound delicious as it has to be served cold in order to be raw. So I opted for a Rawrap. The “wrap” was made of corn, flax, and herbs, and it was filled with your basic salad bar veggies and a cashew pesto cream. It was tiny and it cost $8.48. While it was good it is not worth the money. The part that made it tasty, really, was the cashew pesto cream, which I now know I can just make at home.

Now this delicious looking raw chocolate raspberry tart was staring at me from the window so I decided to take a piece home. Unfortunately, it was a complete disappointment. The chocolate filling was a combination of raw chocolate and avocado, it had the consistency of pudding, and tasted like nothing. It wasn’t chocolatey or even sweet. The raw crust was soggy and chewy, and I have no idea what it was made out of, but it too, had no taste at all. $5.10 for the tart puts me at almost $14 for the raw meal, if you can call it that. I’m not convinced. Plus if you were a raw foodie, you probably already know how to make these things at home, and I would hope, make them taste better… or taste like something. There was also a couple of vegan cupcakes available, which were the only not raw thing, and I can’t believe how crappy they looked. The ones I made recently are way better!

This disappointing excursion to Cruda is just one of many depressing dining out experiences I have had in the last week or so. I wanted to try the gourmet vegan restaurant Fressen the other night, and while the website said it was open, and so did the hours on the window, it was not. I was totally looking forward to nourishing myself and eating a classy vegan meal and I was so bummed.  I also went to their other, more casual location in Kensington called Urban Herbivore, and had an over priced, small portioned bowl of Moroccan Stew with Millet and Black Beans. Not only was a I treated like an outsider, but what I was served was like a meal from a third world country. And finally after being shut out from eating at Fressen I decided to try the roti at Gandhi Cuisine, which everyone raves about in Toronto, and found myself overwhelmed by too much roti that was so incredibly spicy that I couldn’t eat it, plus it was soggy, and despite the spice would have been very bland… and all that after paying $11.00 for it.

There is nothing worse than paying for horrible food.

Ok, I can get used to this vegan thing now that I’ve made and devoured a couple of delicious staples in life. Made into vegan friendly versions in the hot for food kitchen were chocolate ice cream and macaroni & cheese. Yes, you heard me right!

I can safely say I’ll never eat real ice cream again now that I’ve tasted this creation by SweetOnVeg. Jennifer, you are a genius! Go check out her recipe after you feast your eyes on my photo (although her photo is way prettier).

It’s ridiculously easy to make this, and it’s even perfect for people who eat raw. I saw this recipe a while ago, but it took me a while to figure out what I needed to buy… RAW CACAO powder. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s not the same as COCOA powder. I found Navitas Naturals at Whole Foods, so it’s definitely around and abundant – now that we all know what a superfood REAL, RAW chocolate is.

Next up, Mac & Cheese. I was never a fan of Kraft Dinner. Unless, of course I was drunk… come on, we all do it! But I love CHEESE, and I can say with 100% satisfaction this recipe is killer. Proof… my boyfriend, who would live on KD if he could, said it was so delicious and will definitely eat it again… and again, and again. So HA!

It’s from VeganYumYum, another new fave blog that I recently mentioned. It’s in Lauren’s new cookbook (that I also mentioned), but she was kind enough to post it online, for all to make! It’s amazing. She calls it alfredo, but after looking up a number of vegan mac & cheeze recipes, this seems pretty close. I used macaroni noodles so in my books, it’s mac & cheeze. Check out the recipe here. Again, the hot for food photo is not as pretty, or should I say “hot”, as the original.