Beans and Polenta

This is a dish I like to make a lot in the cooler months, and it's quick and easy, so it's good for an after work dinner. I cup up a tube of pre-made polenta and grilled the pieces on the stovetop. In another pan I cooked peppers, onions and tomatoes and then added a can of black beans. I sprinkled a little bit of Daiya cheese on top once it was all cooked. Delicious!

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Raw Sunflower Seed Tacos

These tacos are pretty much identical to the raw burritos I made a few months ago, except that I served them with "taco shell" lettuce leaves instead cabbage wraps.

The taco shells are stuffed with sunflower seed "meat", red pepper and corn salsa, guacamole and cashew cheese. These tacos are really delicious, and I will be teaching the recipes at my Montclair Vegans Raw Junk Food Class next weekend. The class filled up really quickly! I'm really looking forward to it - it's going to be a lot of fun!

I used the leftovers to make a yummy taco salad!

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Raw Favorites

Yes, yes, I've made these dishes before. But they're favorites of mine, and even though September has arrived, it's still really hot here in NJ, and raw food is a nice treat in the heat.

First, I made zucchini linguine and topped it with spinach pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and heirloom cherry tomatoes.

I found these little heirloom cherry tomatoes at Trader Joes. Aren't they cute? They look like little pieces of candy.

What's cuter than a container of heirloom cherry tomatoes? A little cat trying to play with that container of heirloom cherry tomatoes! This is my kitty Clementine, who really likes to inspect anything new that's brought into the house.

Then I made raw sandwiches. I topped them with cashew cheese, the leftovers of the spinach pesto, more mini heirloom tomatoes and diced avocado. I also made raw zucchini sticks and onion rings from Ani's Raw Food Essentials. The sticks and rings were breaded with buckwheat flour. First I soaked raw buckwheat, then dehydrated it, then ground it in my Vitamix until it was a fine flour. I dipped the zucchini and sliced onion in olive oil and water and then into the buckwheat flour. Then everything was dehydrated for a few hours. I will have to admit that I wasn't very crazy about either. They tasted raw and floury, which makes sense, because that's what they were. So I actually put them in the oven for a little bit. Gasp! Don't tell anyone!


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Kale and Quinoa

It's really rare that kale enters my house and doesn't get made into chips these days. But somehow I had a bunch in the fridge that wasn't chipped and was ready to be sautéed instead. I cooked it with summer squash, peppers, chickpeas and cashews and served it over quinoa.

Lately I haven't been making as many raw dishes as I was when summer first started. Instead I've been making light and easy cooked dishes with things like zucchini, peppers and chickpeas. I have been making a lot of kale chips, raw sandwiches and salads lately, and since I've eaten them many times before they haven't seemed worth blogging about. However, I just bought Ani's Raw Food Essentials, and I'm really looking forward to digging in and trying new recipes! Stay tuned...

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Zucchini, Tomato and Eggplant Casserole

This dish is a new version of the Zucchini Tomato Gratin I made a few months ago. It's been a unseasonably good and rainy here in NJ and I felt the need to make some comfort food. I had a cute little eggplant, some pretty green heirloom tomatoes and an interesting looking flying saucer squash. I sliced everything up, layered them in a casserole dish, covered everything with Daiya cheese and olives and baked it in the oven until the cheese was gooey and the veggies were soft. This meal was perfect for a cool rainy evening.

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Roasted Farmers' Market Veggies

Dennis and I missed the Montclair Farmers' Market last weekend because we were being lazy and didn't feel like going out. But fortunately there's another farmers' market a few towns in Nutley over that runs every other Sunday. It's small, but it's growing, and I think it will be larger and run every weekend next year. We were able to find all the produce we needed there, so the size didn't matter. What I really love about buying directly from the farmer is the different varieties that I never see in a grocery store. We found purple bell peppers, mini confetti eggplants, multicolored zucchini, orange tomatoes and round summer squash.

I wasn't sure what to do with all the veggies we bought, and somehow I decided to chop them all up and roast them. In retrospect, that wasn't the greatest idea, because it was super hot and the oven just made things hotter. But the veggies tasted amazing, so I guess it was worth it. I chopped up the eggplant, some peppers, zucchini, tomatoes and onion, drizzled them with olive oil and roasted them in the oven for about an hour on 400 degrees. I mixed in a can of navy beans and served them with brown rice pasta shells, and I sprinkled chopped olives on top. Yummy!

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Green Pizza

This little pizza was inspired by the mini pizzas I made last week.  Once again, I used Mini Rustic Crusts. I wanted to use pesto sauce again.  I didn't have any basil or spinach, but I did have kale. I thought it would be interesting to give kale pesto a try, so I mixed the kale up with some olive oil, nutritional yeast, garlic and cashews. It tasted great, and kale pesto is a great way to get more kale into your diet! I topped the pizza with zucchini, green zebra tomatoes, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and Daiya cheese. It was delicious - even better than last week's! (Although Dennis once again said that the crust reminded him of frozen fish sticks.)

Kale is the most nutrient dense food there is, and his many health benefits, so it's good to have it in your diet on a regular basis. I like to sautée it with olive oil and garlic, but it's also great chopped up into kale slaw, dried into kale chips, blended into smoothies or even used raw in a salad in place of lettuce. 

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California Pizza Kitchen

I'm not a big a fan of chain restaurants, but that's pretty much all there is in the area where I work. It was Vanessa's birthday on Monday, and we always go out to lunch to celebrate. We took her to California Pizza Kitchen. You'd think that there's be slim pickings for a (mostly) gluten-free vegan at a place called California Pizza Kitchen, and you'd be right! But that doesn't mean it's impossible to eat there. I had a grilled vegetable salad which consisted of lettuce, avocados, sun-dried tomatoes, grilled asparagus, corn and zucchini. It was really tasty. What I appreciate about California Pizza Kitchen is that they have vegetarian info and food allergy info for all of the dishes on on their website. With food allergies on the rise and vegetarianism and veganism becoming more popular, I think that more and more chains are doing this, which is a really great thing. If you can't find information on a restaurant's website, you can always call ahead and see if they have entrées you can eat. Most places will accommodate special dietary needs, so explain what you can and cannot eat. If they do not have something suitable on the menu, they might even make a special dish to suit your needs.

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White Chocolate Dark Chocolate Raspberry Tart

I saw this recipe on the Rawmazing website a few weeks ago and have been itching to make it. Monday was my coworker Vanessa's birthday, which was the perfect occasion! This was pretty easy to make - all you  need is a food processor and a blender. (A vitamix works wonders.)

First I made the crust of almonds and coconut oil in the food processor.

Then I made the white chocolate cashew base. I spread a little over the crust, then layered on the raspberries. 

Then I poured on the rest of the white chocolate base. Because I made it in the Vitamix, it was very smooth and creamy, but it was a little thick and it took a while to scrape it all out of the blender.

Then I made chocolate ganache and poured it over the top. I put the tart in the freezer while I was making the ganache, but I didn't give it enough time to set, so it I had to be careful not to mess up the base layer while spreading the ganache. 

It was incredibly delicious! It was so rich and creamy, that a small piece would satisfy the biggest sweet tooth. And it was a huge hit with my coworkers. Raw desserts are so amazing, it makes me wonder why anyone would want to turn the oven on!

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Sheese and Crackers

I became vegetarian for ethical reasons about 19 years ago. It was pretty easy, because I never really liked meat anyway. I remember sitting at the dining room table and being told I couldn't leave until I finished my pork chop or steak.  I decided to go vegan about 9 years ago, both for ethical reasons and because I wanted to see if removing dairy from my diet would help with my horrible allergy and sinus problems. (It did.) I won't lie, going vegan wasn't easy and I slipped up many times before veganism finally "took". I was completely addicted to cheese, and there weren't any dairy free cheeses on the market at all back then. 

The protein in cows' milk is called casein, and when digested, it  breaks down into substances called casomorphins. They are addictive and have an opioid effect, hence the "morphin" suffix on the word. Their function is probably to help form a positive bond between a mother cow and her baby calf. These casomorphins become highly concentrated in the production of cheese, which is why cheese is so much more addicting than other dairy products. Casein is also a carcinogen and an allergen and has a molecular structure close to that of gluten, so I think it's best to avoid it entirely. (There are many other reasons to avoid dairy products, and I will talk about them in other posts.) Strangely, quite a lot of diary-free cheeses contain casein, so always read labels. 

When "fake" cheeses started to come out, I was really excited and I tried them all. Some are kind of on the nasty side but others are pretty good. One of my favorites is Sheese, which is made in Scotland. When I get a hankering for it, I usually order it from VeganEssentials.com and I order several types at a time to justify the shipping cost. It comes in both block and spread form. I've never tried to melt it, so I don't know how well it does in the oven, but it's really good sliced on rice crackers or shredded on salads. I was quite excited when I saw my friend Jenna's Facebook post stating that the local Whole Foods was now carrying Sheese a few days ago, and I ran right over and picked up some Blue Sheese and Strong Cheddar Sheese.

Sheese is mainly water, oil, soy and salt, so it hardly fits into the health food category. I always tell people to eat these sorts of foods in moderation. (The soy is non-gmo which is a good thing, because genetically modified foods can cause all sorts of health problems.) Sheese is a good every-once-in-a-while snack, and it's also a good appetizer to serve at parties. I had a few different flavors at my holiday party last year and it didn't last very long!

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