Lately, I've been eating a ton of granola. Seriously. It's half my diet. But the costs are adding up; a bag of my favorite granola (Purely Elizabeth) costs $5-$6 on average and only lasts me a week at most. Plus, I've been wanting a granola with less (or no) added sugar. So I did what we used to do when I was kid and we never even bought granola in the first place- I made my own. Making your own granola is simple and quick, and the hardest part is making sure it doesn't burn in the oven. But this means that you have control! You can make it as crispy, as chunky, as spicy as you want. Heating coconut oil, maple syrup, and pumpkin puree over the stove and then pouring it over the oats and spices enables you to create as large of granola chunks as you desire. For chunkier granola, don't stir halfway through its baking time; simply rotate the pans. I recently received the suggestion to try practicing the guidelines Ayurveda lays out on seasonal eating to deal with my food anxieties. The ideology behind this practice rests on the concept that there are three seasons with which the doshas (biological energies) correspond: Vata--late fall to early winter; Kapha--late winter to early spring, and Pitta--late spring to early fall. Our cravings naturally conform to these seasons; we crave light salads in the summer, heavy stews in the winter, and spices in the fall. You don't even have to prescribe to Ayurvedic ideology to admit this is true...how often do you want watermelon when it is twenty degrees outside or butternut squash soup when it is ninety? The temperatures, the taste profiles, and the heaviness of our diets change with the seasons. Want science? This landmark study demonstrates how cooler temperatures stimulate brown fat production. It is highly possible that our cravings adjust accordingly. Read this article for the layman's interpretation of the study. As we are entering Vata season, warmer, heavier, spicier, and more grounding foods are on our mind. They are also seasonal; pumpkins patches are overflowing, warm drinks offer comfort from the cold, and we would traditionally begin to cook dried beans at this time of year as our gardens and farms go relatively bare. Eating heavier foods can be difficult and anxiety-inducing for those who struggle with disordered eating, but resisting them can be dangerous. Our bodies' cravings can indicate important deficiencies or needs for nutrients, and (for the most part) it is important to listen! This is an awesome guide to implementing specific dietary and lifestyle practices during Vata season. Back to the granola! I made this recipe for a vegan bake sale yesterday benefiting Hope Animal Rescue in Durham. Collectively, we raised over $1600, which is pretty awesome! I used Minimalist Baker's recipe, which you can find here, simply omitting the sugar. If you're up for the challenge or are trying to use seasonal and minimally processed ingredients, ditch the canned pumpkin and follow my guide for producing fresh pumpkin puree instead.
Enjoy! xx
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Breakfast. For me, it really is the most important meal of the day because it sets the mood. I started waking up earlier to cook breakfast for myself every morning in December of 2015, and I haven't looked back since. I'm not a fan of sweet things in the morning; sugary pastries just make me feel gross and crave sugar the rest of the day (for this reason, I usually reserve dessert solely for my last meal). But I would eat these oats for dessert any night without hesitation. They are just that good. You can tell the difference between artificially sweet and naturally sweet and these oats are almost entirely naturally sweet. I use steel cut oats in this recipe for a nuttier flavor and chewier texture. You can, of course, use old fashioned oats (and probably instant oats for that matter), but I really think steel cut oats make a world of difference. As for the granola, you can choose your favorite variety (I love Purely Elizabeth granolas because they are chock-full of wholesome seeds and grains, low in sugar, and come in perfect clumps). Same goes for the nut butter; you can have this same oatmeal every day of the week, but each nut butter combination will produce a completely new experience. Enjoy! Nutty Cocoa Berry Overnight Oats
Ingredients: Base:
Instructions:
Last Saturday was my first day working at the farmers market here in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and it was idyllic. Though it is still early in the season and produce is nowhere near peak production, the farmers filled their stalls with heaps of fresh fruits, veggies, baked goods, and specialty items. I was put to work bagging sweet potato slips (which we were giving away for free!) beside a couple who were selling huge, gorgeous stalks of rhubarb. Those stalks called to me for hours, and I ended up buying eight. I had no idea what I would do with them; I had never cooked with rhubarb before and hardly knew what it tastes like! It turns out that rhubarb is tart when raw (but apparently tastes great salted!) and sweeter when cooked with sugar or a sweet fruit like strawberry. You can use the entire stalk of rhubarb, even the green section, but do NOT eat the leaves; they are poisonous! I took my eight stalks of rhubarb, a bunch each of kale and bok choy, a bundle of green onions, a pound of potatoes, and a basket of peas home and haphazardly stuffed them all on a shelf in the fridge. The produce lasted me all week! As it was my first time cooking with rhubarb, I searched for a simple recipe in case I completely screwed up or hated the taste. A few days later, after flipping through my cookbooks and delving into the internet, I found two easy vegan rhubarb recipes: a strawberry rhubarb compote and strawberry rhubarb muffins. The compote has minimal added sugar and is perfect for topping pancakes, waffles, or a vegan french toast. It also paired very nicely with the muffins and functioned as a sweetener for a hearty bowl of oats. So versatile! What’s more, the sugar in the compote is unrefined (I used bourbon-infused honey for my second batch!). As for the muffins, they are awesome as they are, with a spread of jam or compote, and as an addition to oatmeal. With a low sugar content and a well-rounded set of ingredients that help balance blood sugar levels, these muffins are great snacks any time of the day. I modified this original recipe of Rachel Conners (the Bakerita). Enjoy! Strawberry Rhubarb Compote Serves 4 Ingredients:
Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins Makes 12 muffins Ingredients:
Instructions:
Strawberries from the farmers market made these muffins taste even more fresh and delectable! I love how strawberries and rhubarb, two spring produce items, pair so well! Additionally, the almonds added the perfect amount of texture and crunch to the muffins. I would slice your own almonds, as slivered almonds might be too soft to capture this texture! Senior year of high school, I had one of five things for breakfast each morning: Greek yogurt with banana and muesli (when I was not yet vegan), overnight oats, avocado toast, toast with peanut butter and banana, or French toast. I loved making toast in the morning and starting off my day with something warm. Actually cooking something for breakfast allowed me to set the morning intention of being creative and active for the rest of the day. When I became vegan in March of 2017, I still made French toast using local eggs. But now that I’m at college, I have not had French toast in months! Fortunately, there are vegan ways of making French toast. Admittedly, they don’t quite capture the egginess of real French toast, but they nevertheless allow us to produce a warm, comforting morning meal.
So, the French toast! What a wholesome way to start my Monday morning. I developed this recipe myself, and it is super fun to make! Drink the leftover REBBL straight out of the bottle, or use it in another recipe (try this Cauliflower Matcha Mint Smoothie Bowl or this Matcha Mango Soaked Muesli). If you don’t have a banana, peaches and berries also go really well with matcha! I usually turn to French toast when I have stale bread on my hands. My mom dumped 3 ½ loaves of homemade sourdough on me last weekend, and while I love that stuff, I can’t possibly go through it all before it starts to harden. But when it’s used in French toast, you really can’t tell the difference. I also topped this toast with a healthy caramelized banana, which is a LOT easier to make than it sounds. Seriously. Vegan REBBL Matcha Latte French Toast (serves 1)
Ingredients: For the “egg” wash
Some of my favorite food bloggers (Rachel Mansfield and Lee Tilghman to name a few) have recently been posting pictures of toast with all the usual condiments (nut butter, fruit, seeds, etc.). The kicker? They frequently spread on a layer of vegan yogurt and top it all with granola. It’s a gamechanger! Because I have issues digesting peanut butter, I have been primarily eating sunflower seed butter for the past year. Since I eat soooooooo much during training season, though, I have been getting a little tired of it. And a $5 off cashew butter deal at the Fresh Market became that much more enticing. A lot of people don’t know about all the different types of nut and seed butters out there. You have peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter, walnut butter, coconut butter, sunflower seed butter, pistachio butter, soy butter, pecan butter, hazelnut butter, pumpkin seed butter, and more…not to mention all the variations (simply adding cocoa powder or cinnamon can transform the spread). This recipe uses a combination of cashew butter and Lavva yogurt. The yogurt adds a distinct creaminess and tang to the toast, a flavor that I haven’t tasted since eating Old Chinese Yogurt in Shanghai last summer. You can use any kind of vegan yogurt (another favorite of mine is SoDelicious’ coconut-based yogurt). If you’re vegetarian, of course, you can use regular dairy-based yogurt. Enjoy! Cashew Butter Banana Yogurt Toast (makes one healthy serving) Ingredients:
A few weeks ago, we thought our lavender plant had died. Its beautiful purple flowers had dried up, and we realized that we may or may not have properly pruned it. A little research, though, reassured us that it was simply dormant for the winter. And the best part? Even though its flowers have dried, we can still use them for cooking and freshening up rooms (I'm thinking about putting a sprig in each of my nasty running shoes). But let's get back to the cooking. I had never seen lavender used as a culinary ingredient until visiting the Purple Bowl in Chapel Hill in February. The Purple Bowl is my new favorite smoothie bowl shop, as well as my new favorite eatery on Franklin Street. Their Appalachian Trail Bowl, an acai bowl blend with bananas, strawberries, and hemp milk, is topped with sliced bananas, raspberries, hemp hearts, cacao nibs, flax seeds, granola, cinnamon, and LAVENDER. Best. Smoothie bowl. Ever. The lavender was so rich in flavor and transformed the dish. So, naturally, the next time I visited home, I filled a bag to the brim with dried lavender and have been experimenting ever since. Lavender is a great addition to vegetables, but a lesser known fact is that it is a great addition to avocado toast. More specifically, avocado toast with mango and balsamic vinegar. And it tastes even better than it looks. I whipped this up in about ten minutes. I have also replaced the mango with green apple and strawberries with great success, but mango remains my favorite choice of fruit. Use the recipe below to try your hand at it!
Mango Avocado Toast with Lavender Ingredients
Recently, I have been trying to eat more of a whole foods diet. That is, one not loaded with processed food of questionable origins and long trails to follow from farm to plate. Eating a diet based on whole foods is often more nutritious and more sustainable than eating processed foods (ex. bread, granola bars, chips, cookies, etc.) off of grocery store shelves. Of course, it is far easier to incorporate whole foods into your diet if you have access to fresh (and preferably local) produce. It should be noted that I don’t fully subscribe to, or wish to advise you to subscribe to, any particular diet; dietary needs are unique to every individual, and this fact cannot be emphasized enough. That being said, many diets, like the raw foods diet, whole foods diet, and ketogenic diet, offer good practices that can be cherry picked and modified to suit our needs.
In an effort to eat more locally and healthily, I recently tried my hand at sweet potato toast...and it was perhaps even more satisfying than regular toast! Filling, fun to make, and pretty to look at, sweet potato toast is a new favorite. Using locally grown sweet potatoes, nut butter, a banana, and a variety of toppings, I arrived at a unique and delicious breakfast; follow the recipe below to try it out for yourself! Ingredients:
Welcome to the last post of the four-part series on blueberries! In my opinion, this is the most enjoyable post to apply to your life because it involves cooking! Here’s what you gotta do: pick your own blueberries (as described in Thursday’s post), cook or bake something with them (possibly drawing inspiration from a recipe below), understand why you are doing your body a great service by eating them (as described in Friday’s post), and then mindfully chow down on whatever you have created (perhaps by using a mindfulness technique like the one described on Wednesday). Good luck!
Recipe #1: Blueberry Soba Noodles (Serves about 6) Blueberries and noodles? Do they really go together? I was also skeptical when my friend tossed them into the pan during a cooking session unguided by recipes, but, man, was that a fortunate leap of faith; the sweet juiciness of blueberries pairs perfectly with noodles and a creamy sauce! Bananas and strawberries were also stars of his dish. Sadly, the fourth course of cocoa noodles did not turn out quite as well as the fruit noodles. I adapted this recipe from one found here, mainly by tinkering with the spices, proportions, and cooking directions, and swapping out some of the ingredients. Ingredients: 16 oz soba noodles 3 cups blueberries ½ cup hoisin sauce 4 tbsp rice vinegar 4 tbsp lime juice 2 tsp sriracha 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp cornstarch 16 oz extra firm tofu Coconut oil for frying 5 cloves garlic 3 tbsp fresh ginger, minced (or ¾ tsp if using powdered) 1 tsp salt 1 cup fresh basil, chopped ¼ cup pine nuts, toasted Shredded coconut for topping Instructions:
Recipe #2: Blueberry, Coconut, & Peach Smoothie Bowl (Serves 1) Mmmm coconut goes so well in such a wide variety of dishes...from curries to smoothies, it lends a creaminess that cannot be matched. Pair it with blueberries and peaches, and we have a holy trinity. Ingredients: 1 peach, pitted and sliced 1 cup blueberries ¼ cup coconut cream ¾ cup coconut or almond milk ¼ tsp cardamom ¼ tsp vanilla 1 handful of ice cubes Extra toppings (cacao nibs, shredded coconut, pumpkin seeds, toasted walnuts, granola, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, hemp seeds, etc.) Instructions:
10 days. Where have I been? Sorry, guys...life has been crazy lately. Since I last posted, I went to the beach for four days over spring break, implemented a make-up prom with my boyfriend (I missed the real deal for an interview), and now I am in sunny California. What a life. Anyways, I have had to eat out quite a bit lately, and I am missing home-cooked goodness and fresh, healthy snacks. Times like this have me dreaming about smoothie bowls. Smoothie bowls made their way into mainstream food culture two or three years ago, and they continue to captivate the imaginations and taste buds of foodies all over the world. Why? There are endless possibilities concerning both their ingredients and their presentation. For example, you can choose a green base (including ingredients like spinach, celery, carrot, and beet) or you can choose a fruity base (the bananas, strawberries, and blueberries we traditionally associate with smoothies). As for toppings, you can include sliced fruit, dried fruit, granola, nuts, seeds, powders, and more. And then comes the presentation, which possibly has even more opportunity for variation and creativity. Whether you pour your smoothie into a ceramic bowl or hollowed coconut, or you strew the ingredients in stripes, zigzags, or mounds, it is sure to look beautiful. A modern trend is to put natural ingredients into the base to add vibrancy to the dish; ground turmeric makes yellows pop, chlorophyll and matcha powder bring out the greens, and freeze-dried blueberry powder adds some purple flare. After you craft and add your artistic flare to your smoothie bowl, it comes time to eat it...which may be the very best part. Try one of the combinations below next time you crave a delicious and nutritious treat; smoothie bowls are perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack. Fruit Explosion Base: any fruit you have, 1-2 tbsp of nut butter (almond butter works especially well), and a dash of juice or almond milk (the amount of liquid depends on how thick you like your smoothies) Note: 1-2 fruits should be frozen; reserve ½ of each fruit for topping Toppings: the fruit you saved from the previous step (sliced if needed), handful of granola or muesli, seeds (chia, flax, hemp, sunflower, etc.), unsweetened coconut shreds Plant Power Base: 1 banana, 2 handfuls of berries (strawberries, raspberries, cherries, etc.), 2 handfuls of spinach, 1 small handful arugula, 1-2 tbsp of nut butter, juice or almond milk (adjust amount to desired consistency) Note: 1 fruit should be frozen; reserve ½ of each fruit for topping Toppings: the same as you would in Fruit Explosion (fruit, granola, seeds, coconut, etc.) This morning, I woke up at 7:30. School starts at 7:50.
I got there in time. 4:10 came around, and I stepped out of my car to walk into an optic appointment. I left my lights on. I came back outside at 4:50. My car battery didn't die. 7:30 PM, twelve hours after initially waking up. I walked out of work, fished my keys out of my pocket, and pressed the button to unlock my car door. I pressed it again. And again. And again. Why was it not unlocking? Oh. I left my lights on for the second time in one day. Guess my luck ran out. I had to go find someone to jumpstart my car. Life often gets jam-packed with events, both seen and unforeseen, and how I wish I had made this recipe last night to make this morning a little easier! Something simple like this oatmeal can set the tone of the day to a more relaxed, healthy, and enjoyable vibe! So, next time you foresee a busy day ahead of you, make this oatmeal the night before and enjoy. It is great hot and cold, and you can add many variations to it. I have seen carrot cake overnight oats, chocolate overnight oats, cinnamon-apple overnight oats, and more. But if you want a simple, versatile recipe for oatmeal (one for which you miraculously have all the ingredients), then this is for you. Ingredients:
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