recent eats

I enjoyed one of my favorite flavors of kombucha this week, Divine Grape. 



and of course some green smoothie!  unsweetened almond milk, banana, frozen strawberries, maca, dates and spinach along with a gorgeous Glass Dharma straw.



a yummy wrap in a collard leaf and a sprouted grain tortilla that we had left in the freezer (I'm trying to clean our freezer up of some space as we're planning to start ordering our nuts in bulk from the co-op).  What items do any of you buy in bulk?  Lots of fresh veggies and cheezy hemp nacho sauce that I made here.  I LOVE wraps, next is to try a collard and nori wrap with Ani Phyo's garden pate inside, I haven't used nori before at home!



chopped salad of spinach, romaine, cauliflower, red pepper, cucumber, celery, zucchini, red onion (the usual suspects :)  and some fresh raisins.  We had gotten this great deal on organic raisins at Costco a couple years ago, 2 giant bags, that we just finished.  Now I remember how soft fresher ones are ;) 



tossed with Sesame Miso Dressing from Get It Ripe.  Great dressing, I really like to change up dressings for our salads about once a week we'll make a new batch.  Get It Ripe has many options!



a warm Mushroom Quinoa Pilaf  from Get It Ripe as well.



and my wintertime favorite, what else? a big bowl of oats!  The Quick Apple Date Oats from The Kind Diet.  If you haven't checked out Alicia Silverstone's online community I encourage you too, click on that previous link to get there.

mini PB and AB cups, mmmmm!

ok, so between the valentine's day chocolate commercials and reading all the chocolate lovin going on at LoveVeggiesandYoga I couldn't help but make another batch of cups ;) 
This time I wanted to make them more of a two biter size.  I found these silicone cups at Williams Sonoma. 



bonus, they're even made in the US. 

these are the chocolate bars I used.  They're from Trader Joe's and are $1.99 each.  One is fair trade and one is organic.  After I was at TJ that day I stopped into the co-op and all kinds of choc. bars were on sale so I stocked up on some Equal Exchange and Endangered Species bars for future cup making, oh wow, how good will mint cups be???



I also wanted to make half of them with almond butter, so the FP whipped up a new batch of homemade raw almond butter



for the AB cups I added a few dribbles of raw agave, dash of vanilla powder, and a tsp of maca powder.



AB on the left, PB on the right.  For the PB filling I again used Averie's recipe.  The PB was a little on the soft side (it is a new jar and I don't always get it stirred completely well, so we enjoy extra oily PB on top and less on the bottom : / )  delicious none the less.



ok, so here they are.  Adorable right?  The silicone cups worked perfect, Dave walks over after eating one and says these get thrown away, right?  and then winks, he loves to harrass me and truth be told I love it too, haha!



inside of an AB cup



shared dessert last night



wonder if any of these will last until valentine's day??? it's alright if they don't, we don't celebrate it anyway ;)
everybody getting their fill of chocolate lately or is it just me?
I just read some exciting news that Ani Phyo is having a new book out this spring (April 1st)  Ani's Raw Food Essentials.  If you're on Facebook, she has her Garden Pate recipe as her status update, it's one of my favorite recipes in her Raw Food Kitchen book. 

who dat? it's chia day ;) congrats New Orleans!

first things first...dessert last night while we were watching the end of an exciting Super Bowl was raw cherry banana soft serve.  I got this idea from Gena's Banana SoftSoftserve.  Our bag of frozen ripe bananas was nearing over flow so it was time for some softserve.  I had just picked up some frozen cherries and put them in at the end after the bananas were whipped, yummmm.  I do add some vanilla extract to ours.  So the ingredients here are bananas, cherries, vanilla, how can you beat that?



the bananas pre cherry, looks like taffy!



before bed I prepped my bfast of chia mango overnight oats from Averie. 



we enjoyed butternut squash, brown rice, collards and Miso Gravy from Get It Ripe.  This gravy is really good, I've eaten the leftovers cold out of the fridge ;)  The collards were cooked up in a skillet with a bit of olive oil and ume plum vinegar. 





the delicious gravy that is loaded with leeks.  Have you had them?  We just bought them for the first time this summer at the farmer's market, love their flavor!



For dessert that night we had Kristen's Raw Holiday Chia Pudding (click for recipe) 


the mixture in the blender smells like nog, yum!

can you tell I'm enjoying chias??? I am, I really enjoy that gelatinous texture.  The pudding is sooo good and smells and tastes like the holidays!  We both enjoyed it, I polished the rest off while I was out grocery shopping yesterday in between stores ( I packed a lunch ;) 

going into the fridge





I was pretty darn hungry when I got back from hitting up Costco, Trader Joe's, the food co-op, and Whole Foods, and a quick run into Williams Sonoma that I wrapped and gobbled this up before unloading groceries.



it hit the spot!  brown rice tortilla, collard green, zucchini, red pepper, shredded broc stems, lil flax oil, parma, and unfortunately the last of the Sunflower seed pate.
 


I've been wanting to make Kristen's Cheezy Hemp Nacho Sauce, she has a video making it here, I thought SuperBowl night would be a perfect time.  It's super quick to make in your blender, the flavor is delish!



I dressed a big plate of salad and some roasted red skin potatoes with it.  We'll be using the leftovers as a dip for something today I'm sure =)



Happy Monday to you all, the sun's shining today here in Michigan =)

happy friday, it's maca time!

received an order from iherb today of maca and lucuma powders and our flax oil.  This was our first time ordering from them, I was shopping around for maca when Averie made a post with a coupon for iherb, they actually had the best price anyway so I was glad to try it out =)  You can read her post and find the same coupon here. 



I have so missed our flax drizzle!  I think I jinxed myself when I posted about ordering from WF, because we've been out now for like a month, they think the supplier is backordered.  Oh well, when it comes in we'll be stocked up! 

it was time for my first maca smoothie, yea!
almond milk, frozen raspberries, banana, hemp seeds, maca, lucuma



I was curious about the taste I've heard a lot of people say it smells like feet?  It wasn't bad, I'm sure I'll end up liking it a lot, but today I added a date and a little stevia and it was good.



lunch today was my favorite Gena's sunflower seed and carrot pate in romaine leaves with parma sprinkle!



We had far less than a whole carrot left so I used about 3/4 a big organic red bell pepper instead.  This recipe is so easy and delicious I think you should try it :)



lunch yesterday was delish too, a brown rice tortilla, remains of Living Caesar Dressing from EDBV, julienned carrot and zucchini, red onion, Bubbie's pickle topped with a southwest Sunshine burger. 



I had just used up the rest of our spinach in this smoothie along with raspberries, banana, hempseeds and dates so there were no leafy greens for my wrap, at least I drank them ;)





yesterday I did some veggie prepping, this is the kind of stuff that nerds me out guys!, crazy I know.  anybody else like that???

romaine boats ready for pate and quick salads



I was cleaning broccoli for last night's soup, I shredded the stems in FP to add to salads and wrapped sandwiches.  Food processors rock!



the soup recipe is from Get It Ripe  Broccoli Creem Soup



and the Molasses Cornbread was as well.  Ok, this bread is awesome, tastes so much like the super anadama bread that the Depot Town Sourdough bakery makes that Dave and I just love. 



I obviously dig Get It Ripe, so if you go pick up this book make sure you make the Portobello Soup right away not like a year later like I did, you'll be missing out if you don't ;) 

I got to see a couple of my girl friends and cutie pie niece today, and I'll be getting a visit from my Dad here shortly, fun day!  Hope everyone has a fun superbowl weekend. 

world peace begins in the kitchen

World Peace begins in the kitchen =)

 

First off, I just finished a SUPER yummy breakfast that I wanted to share.  It started last night with Averie's recipe for chia coconut mango soaked oats (click to get to recipe).  Most of my life I haven't been much of a breakfast eater, now I look forward to what's for breakfast each day, and this was a winner! 

Here's what the finished bowl looked like this morning.



This recipe calls for both chia seed and stevia, both of which I used for the first time.  Ok, I tried stevia once and I did not enjoy that taste, I think now that I used too much, because this morning it was the perfect sweetness with a great taste.  I borrowed some of this organic green leaf stevia from Mom's pantry.  She found it at Claudia's if you're local to the Toledo, OH area.  I ordered our organic chia from The Raw Food World store. 

chia seed on right, stevia on left



all the ingredients, I used a fresh mango because we had one and it worked out just great.



you'll notice that I have store bought almond milk again.  I've made another batch of almond milk with soaked almonds this time (I have read that almond skins contain enzyme inhibitors that ideally should be soaked away), but have decided that we would enjoy the milk more if we could strain it better with a nut milk bag.  I tried using our strainer, but didn't quite do the job.  Until I can find a bag...I remember looking at them here at ChocolaTree when we were in Sedona, wish I would've picked it up then, but it was a couple yrs ago and I thought to myself I won't really make nut milk ;)



getting mixed up, I then added the mango and let it set overnight in the fridge.





it was totally DELICIOUS!  I used an 1/8 tsp of dried stevia leaf, and a few drops of vanilla extract.

dinner last night turned out well.  We had marinated and grilled (stovetop cast iron grill pan) portobello mushroom wraps.  I used the Portobello Burger recipe from Get It Ripe. 

big organic portos marinating



we then wrapped them up



in these tortillas



a closer up, smear of Vegenaise, yellow mustard, red onion, Bubbie's pickle, lots of spinach with the warm mushrooms, yumola!



dinner a couple nights ago was vegan caesar salad with Sunshine burgers on top. 

dressing recipe is from Eat, Drink, and be Vegan by Dreena Burton.  Living Caesar Dressing.  My husband loves traditional Caesar dress, and he totally eats this live vegan one up.  We have our glorious Vita-Mix now, but I made this recipe tons while we lived in Vegas with a normal blender, it wasn't smooth, but still worked just fine. 



big salads





the leftover dressing is also great on raw veggies.



dessert for this week has been the Super Charge Me Cookies from the same cookbook (EDBV).  Great treats!  Dreena has the recipe posted online here.



So yesterday I started something that's been a little goal of mine, no-pooing my hair.  I'm curious to see how it will go...  I'm going by the instructions on this site, and so far so good.  I will continue to use organic unrefined coconut oil as a moisturizer for the ends to keep them tame, but would like to forgo the shampoo and conditioner.  I'm mostly trying to save money, we've been using Hugo Naturals for the last couple of years with some Aveda splurges here and there, it's a pretty innocuous product, but if that's another thing that we don't need to use than all the better I think.  Plus, I'm curious to see what my hair should naturally look like, if it will be any different, we'll see...

so here's what I took into the shower, a paste of baking soda/water, and a cup of apple cider vinegar and water.



anybody have experience with this method???  thoughts about it???   A green smoothie is calling, I'm hungry, until next time have a wonderful wonderful day and thanks so much for reading!