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
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I’ve stressed a lot recently that presentation impacts taste by leaps and bounds. That’s why fancy restaurants serve small portions of perfectly curated food with tasteful drizzles of sauce, why cafés dress up smoothie bowls with fun patterns and bright colors, and why I and so many others like to eat out of upcycled coconut bowls. People even make careers out of just taking pictures of food! So far this summer, I’ve spent all my time in the Appalachians of North Carolina and Kentucky. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mountains for all the backpacking opportunities and beautiful vistas, but I miss the beach. I miss listening to Jimmy Buffett and falling asleep under the hot sun. I miss swimming in the ocean with friends, SCUBA diving on coral reefs, and taking long walks and runs on the shoreline. I miss going out at night, having the entire beach to myself, and listening to the waves crashing down while stargazing (what a meditative experience that is). The closest I can come to visiting the beach right now, though, is making a beach-themed meal and listening to a lot of Jimmy Buffett and the Zac Brown Band. So, at the grocery store earlier this week, I bought a pineapple and two coconuts on a whim. Thus, a pineapple boat was born. This recipe combines some of my favorite ingredients (raisins, peanuts, pineapple, and tempeh) for a healthy dish with the perfect combination of salty and sweet. I love how it brings together whole grains, fruit, proteins, and vegetables for a well-rounded meal that leaves nothing for the wanting. It’s easy to make adjustments to this recipe; I was originally going to lightly fry some rice with turmeric, but decided to work with what we had in the pantry instead (quinoa). Cashews are also a tasty substitution for the peanuts, and carrots are a good addition to up the veggie content of the dish. When I initially made this, I did not marinate the tempeh or soak the raisins. While you can absolutely skip these steps and still get good results, I find that the marination virtually doubles the tempeh’s savory taste and that soaking the raisins to expand them highlights their flavor and adds some juicy texture to the dish. Enjoy! Pineapple Quinoa Boats
Serves 4 Active Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 2 ½ hours Ingredients: For the marinated tempeh:
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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:
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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! Veggie burgers are among the easiest vegan recipes and, if made with real vegetables and not overly-processed soy products, are usually excellent sources of complete proteins and nutrients. If you work out in the afternoon, they are great ways to get your carbs in while still sneaking in some vegetables that are in a more easily digestible form (salads just aren’t the best pre-workout snack!). Make sure to check the nutrition labels of burgers you buy at the grocery store. Some burgers, like MorningStar’s Garden Veggie Burgers, contain egg and calcium caseinate, textured vegetable protein (TVP), autolyzed yeast extract (a hidden source of gluten and MSG), and ambiguous “natural flavors.” Highly processed soy, indicated by ingredients like TVP, soy protein isolate, and soy protein concentrate, not only lack the nutritional benefits of unprocessed soy, but also carry the risk of being produced with hexane. The exact effects of hexane consumption are unknown, but the chemical is unregulated and may cause headaches, fatigue, blurred vision, etc. I wouldn’t worry too much about hexane, but I would rather reap the nutritional benefits of unprocessed soy! Cheap burgers especially aren’t made with whole, nutritious ingredients. I wouldn’t even call Boca burgers veggie burgers with this list of ingredients: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Wheat Gluten, contains less than 2% of Methylcellulose, Salt, Caramel Color, Dried Onions, Yeast Extract, Sesame Oil, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Natural and Artificial Flavor (Non-Meat), Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate They’re about as veggie as a pepperoni pizza with a thin layer of tomato sauce. These burgers tend to attract people with their low calorie count (70 per patty), but remember that they have such a low calorie count because they are devoid of nutritious vegetables you need to fuel your body! You’re going to experience better taste and health with brands like Amy’s and Dr. Praeger’s. You can find either or both of these brands at most well-rounded grocery stores. Veggie burgers at restaurants are tricky to evaluate. Many fast food restaurants serve name brand burgers. While Denny’s serves Amy’s brand veggie burgers, Burger King serves MorningStar (non-vegan). Most chain restaurants’ burgers’ nutrition facts are posted online. However, smaller restaurants are often not required or expected to provide nutritional information. Don’t be afraid to ask your server what is in the burgers. If they can’t tell you, this probably isn’t the best sign! If you are vegan, make sure that the burger and the bun do not contain egg (a common binding agent and often brushed on buns for that glossy finish). And then you can just make your own patties. Doing so is your best bet of being able to chow down on a nutritious, safe, and delicious burger. There is a lot more room for play when making your own burgers. You can make beet burgers, black bean burgers, thai peanut burgers, kale burgers, mushroom burgers, lentil burgers, walnut burgers...and as the title of this post suggests, falafel burgers! I adapted this recipe from the cookbook Isa Does It. These burgers taste just like falafels. But they’re not deep-fried and err on the lighter end of falafeldom. Of course, they have different toppings than your usual burger to fit in with the Mediterranean theme; hummus takes the place of ketchup and cucumber takes the place of pickle. While Isa gives some great recipes for both a miso tahini dressing and a tahini hummus, we’ll keep it simple and let you decide how much work you want to put in (if you buy your hummus, I highly suggest Hope’s Thai Coconut Curry Hummus!). And while the recipe originally calls for them to be served on pita buns, I like them on toasted naan. Really, you can use whatever you have on hand. As you can see, I also had a little fun with the shapes of the burgers! If you want perfectly round burgers, pancakes, biscuits, cookies, you name it, then a cookie cutter is your friend. Shuffling through our big baskets of cookie cutters, I found a large heart shape and thought, why not? Thus, heart-shaped veggie burgers. And now for the recipe:
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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
Cooking food for other people is my #1 way of showing them love and appreciation. It's something in which I can take pride and something that inevitably makes friends and family happy, barring a failed recipe here and there. Yes, a little blood, a lot of sweat, and a ton of tears are involved (the last courtesy of onions), but that is exactly what makes the gift so special. The motto in my family, "Don't give a gift you can't use yourself," also holds true; being in the kitchen provides me the opportunity to be creative, and I always get a taste of what I'm cooking. Food is also a practical gift. When I was little, my mom told me to avoid gifting food because food doesn't last. In an age where we are all weighed down with clutter, though, I have realized that food is an awesome gift for a minimalist to both give and receive. And if the food is consumed alongside the person receiving it, allowing for good conversation and communion? Even better. I cooked a three-course picnic dinner for my Robertson family today: chips & homemade pineapple salsa, chipotle-mushroom tacos, and peanut-raisin-chocolate chip oat cookies. It took three hours to make, but I enjoyed every moment. True, the food didn't last; it rarely does when you have twenty college kids swarm around it at once. But the laughter, the dancing, the conviviality--all the positivity that sourced from a simple meal--will have a lasting impact on our relationships with each other. To my fellow Robbies, thank you for an amazing past eight months (and I can't wait to get to know the five of you who just joined us!). Thank you for simply existing and inspiring me with your dedication to youth education, refugee resettlement, environmental sustainability, and beyond. Thank you for being in my dorm room at the drop of a hat as I struggled with homesickness and an eating disorder. Thank you for the kind words you so generously shower on me, and thank you for allowing me--and believing me--when I do the same for you. Before college, I had been excluded from several social groups, and the fact that you recognize my existence and say "hi" to me and smile when you walk in the room...it means more than you know. I am not lying when I say that you are the best, most reliable and sincere group of friends I have ever been blessed to know. I love each and every one of you. And of course, this post would be incomplete if I didn't thank my friend Thomas for taking all these amazing photos. He spent two hours in a hot kitchen with me staging the photos, adjusting the lighting, and attempting to explain highly technical terms to my inexperienced mind. It was because of him I finally bought a book on food photography and am going to learn a skill I have wanted to learn for years. It will take me a long, long time and many, many cooking sessions to get to be anywhere near as good as him! Check out more of his photography here. A little bit about the food itself, because I really appreciate it too :) The chipotle-mushroom tacos and cookies were modeled after recipes from my vegan bible, the Isa Does It cookbook. I wrote about this cookbook several months ago, and I am still working my way through cooking every single recipe in the book. The salsa came from The No Meat Athlete Cookbook, another great resource. The pineapple combined with mint gave it a unique, fresh flavor.
I would gladly cook for any of you reading this; much appreciation and love for all! Eating healthy food is so much more appetizing when it just looks good. If presentation played no role in taste, then restaurants would not take the time to carefully crumple the cloth napkins in your bread baskets, to serve your pasta in perfect mounds, to expertly drizzle raspberry sauce over your cheesecake. So it makes sense that by likewise taking a little extra time to prepare and present our food, we will enhance our enjoyment of it. And it doesn't take your great-grandparents' expensive silverware to do the trick; if you have the inclination and a little bit of money, go get yourself a coconut bowl ($12.95 for a standard bowl). If you're reading this before Earth Day, 2018, you can literally get one for free (keep reading!). They are great for oatmeal, for smoothies, for noodles, for rice, for basically anything that is not an extreme temperature or too liquidy (aka no soup). Coconutbowls.com is doing a fantastic giveaway in honor of Earth Day. Not only have they donated 100 coconut bowls each to 5 restaurants, but they are giving $20 vouchers to each person who posts a picture on Instagram of themselves holding a coconut bowl or reusable container in front of a local café. This initiative is meant to combat the use of single-use plastic containers. Learn more here. Now that the weather is heating up and local fruits are about to come into season (got my eyes on Scooterbug's Strawberries!), I just want to constantly eat smoothie bowls. You'll probably be seeing more creations soon :)
About three weeks ago, I realized that my aversion to coffee and habit of cooking on my own has left me with an abundance of food points…I had $280 worth to spend on one meal a day, each day, for the next twenty-eight days. And because I always go for a $5 special or cook that one meal myself, the food at our student store became free reign. I took the opportunity to try out a few products I had never eaten before, including Maya Kaimal’s Madras Curry Indian Simmer Sauce. The ingredients are wholesome and simple: Onion, coconut cream, tomato paste, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chili, urad dal lentils, and curry leaves combine to create a creamy and perfectly spicy sauce in which to simmer vegetables. The producer also recommends pouring it over noodles, adding it to tacos and quesadillas, and using it as a pizza sauce (I'm definitely trying that last one out ASAP!). I used it for simmering vegetables. I started by sautéing onions and a can of jackfruit from Trader Joe's in coconut oil for a few minutes before adding corn, peas, sweet potato, bell pepper, and carrots. After the veggies began to ever so slightly soften, I added the curry sauce, covered the pan, and let it cook for another twenty minutes (until the sweet potatoes were tender). I paired it with some black rice, and dinner was ready to go! As convenient as those yellow Tasty Bite microwaveable packages are, this sauce is ten times better than any variation of instant curry. No complaints whatsoever. I would definitely include jackfruit in your dish, as it gave the meal texture and a slight sweetness to balance out the spice.
You can find the sauce in a store near you using this locator. Get cooking! 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
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