Broccoli, Pineapple, Cashew and Seitan Stir-Fry, Jasmine Rice

Dinner 4/30

Broccoli, Pineapple, Cashew and Seitan Stir-Fry

Jasmine Rice

What? A stir-fry snuck in? Looks like a couple of grilled ramps in there as well. All right, I’ll let it slide this time…

Popularity: 5% [?]

YAY! FOOD!

Don’t fret people – I have been cooking and eating fantastic vegan food during The Big Move and I promise I have not withered away to nothingness (haha as if!).
I am thoroughly enjoying my new kitchen – there is just soooo much room it’s AWESOME!
So as you know exactly what I’m talking about and appreciate my elation without thinking I’ve lost the plot completely – here is a photo of my old kitchen

You see that thing under the yellow toaster? That was my oven!!
It was smaller than a small thing and it always amazed me that I managed for so long with that heap of shite. The two small work surface areas you can see were THE ONLY work surfaces! And to think I rustled out Christmas dinner with all the trimmings in that tiny space!

Now…..behold my lovely new kitchen

Isn’t it AWESOME!!!
I can dance around when the notion takes me, heck – I can do the freaking can can AND have room for my friends to join in too!
And can you see my lovely new MAHOOSIVE oven?
I frequently stroke it.

Now “ONTO THE FOOD” I hear you cry.
What with the gorgeous hot weather here on The Costa Blanca, Salads have been playing a big role in our evening meals. I quite happily eat Salad all day every day when the sun is shining so I’m always concocting up new ways and ideas to eat it. My latest creation is Curried Rice and let me tell you – it’s GOOOOOOOD!

Curried Rice Salad
serves 4

Ingredients

1 Cup Brown Rice cooked in 3 cups water for 20 minutes, drained and left to cool
+/- 1 teaspoon Cumin
+/- 1 teaspoon Curry Powder
+/- 1 teaspoon Salt
half teaspoon Black Pepper
Sprinkling of Turmeric
Sprinkling of Garam Masala
Sprinkling of Garlic Powder
4 Dried Apricotes, diced
Handful Sultanas
Handful Roasted Cashews

Method
Fork the Rice (giggles) regularly whilst it’s cooling to prevent it from sticking. When it’s cooled completely add all the ingredients mixing really well after each addition and Bob’s yer uncle!
How easy is that!
Don’t be shy to add more of the Spices and taste it regularly to check how it’s coming along and just season it to your taste really. This is so versatile and the possibilities are endless so don’t be scared – experiment with it. This will keep in the fridge a few days and is even better the next day too.

Here it is served with a green Salad, Chickpea Cutlets, grilled Asparagus, New Potatoes and homemade Mayo. YUM!

Other meals in the treehugger household this week have been

Seitan Satay – recipe can be found here

Here it is served with a green Salad and more Curried Rice Salad. Über YUM!

Tofu Breast served with Caeser Salad and grilled Asparagus! Über Über YUM!

Asparagus is in season here and is super cheap so we do tend to eat a lot of it at this time of year because we can actually afford it. It is one of my favourite vegetables and my favourite way to cook it is drizzled in Olive Oil, sprinkled with Salt and Black Pepper with some Fresh Lemon squeezed over the top and grilled for 5 mins.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Deceitful Vegan

In a continued effort to make healthy meals for the fam, I borrowed The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious from the library. If you didn’t already know, the ‘trick’ behind these two books is to puree healthy fruits and veggies and add them into regular-looking meals so no one notices that they are eating ‘healthy’. Now the only part of this that I think is a little silly is that often only one tablespoon of puree is in one serving but whatever…it’s something I guess! Of course I had to veganize the recipes to make them truly veg-friendly.

My fave has been the Unbelieveable Chocolate Chip Cookies (link is slightly different than the recipe I used). Chock full of wheat germ, whole wheat flour and pureed white beans, these are awesome! I definitely didn’t feel so bad eating them. The author noted that she couldn’t make these any healthier, but by omitting the eggs and replacing with ground flaxseed, I did it!

Magic Meatballs – I used the Green Puree, tomato paste and a package of Yves Original Ground Round. Easy and simple! I followed her suggestion and added some White Puree and Orange Puree to a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce.

Covert Quesadillas – Comprised of White Bean Puree and soy cheese. I guess if you liked the taste of cheese you would like this, but this again confirmed that I don’t like the taste of cheese. Even though I said it before, I won’t try soy cheese again.

Breakfast Ice Cream – banana, avocado, cocoa, agave nectar and probably something else I’m forgetting. Who cares – frozen, it was delicious and tasted like Jello Pudding Pops that I remember from being a kid.

Stuffed Potatoes – Vegan soy sour cream, white puree and veggie bacon made these pretty darn good.

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies – I thought it was weird to have crushed cereal flakes, and I was right. Although when they came out of the oven they tasted normal, when they cooled the texture of the cereal was really odd. Maybe I didn’t crush them enough? Folks were amazed to find out there was sweet potato and carrots in these.

And now for the really not so great stuff. Brainy Brownies with spinach and blueberries would have been great if I had added some baking powder when omitting the eggs. They had nothing in them to help rise!

I can’t remember the exact name, but I’ll guess Roasted Chickpeas. I guess they are supposed to taste like cinnamon sugar treats, they weren’t great. For comparison, I made the same thing from the Vegan Lunch Box with nooch. I actually liked the quicker version of these, and just sprinkling some nooch on chickpeas right out of the can rather than roasting them. A great sub for popcorn!

The only thing I made from Deceptively Delicious was the Chocolate Pudding with avocado. Made with icing sugar, it turned out like frosting. It was supposed to serve like 6 people, but it barely made enough for Kyle and I. Unless we are complete pigs.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Spicy Coconut Noodles

Popularity: unranked [?]

A 100% WHOLE WHEAT PIZZA CRUST THAT WE ACTUALLY LIKED!

COMMENTS ARE WORKING AGAIN!

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO JOIN THE DISCUSSIONS ON MY VEGAN FEAST OPEN COOKING FORUM!

As you may know, if you have read my other blog posts on pizza, I have not really cared for whole wheat pizza crust. I have been using about 1/3 whole wheat flour in my dough, with good results, but the whole wheat doughs i have tried have been awful! Until yesterday.

I have owned a copy of my baking hero Peter Reinhart’s book, Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads (in addition to his classic The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread) for some time now, but I had not had the nerve to try his 100% whole wheat pizza dough recipe.

However, DH and I are following the Weight Watcher’s Core Plan and so we are trying to eat whole grain products for the most part. After a month without pizza, we decided to use our remaining extra points for a pizza blow-out for lunch! I planned it a day ahead and made Peter’s whole wheat dough.

The recipe calls for two pre-doughs, a biga (Italian bread starter), which has to be refrigerated overnight, and a soaker, which is some of the flour (in this case– it can also be whole grains) with liquid and sometimes a little salt.

Biga on the left, soaker on the right. I used my home-ground hard red wheat flour, so the dough looked fairly dark. If you used white whole wheat, it would be more golden.

You probably have some idea of what a starter is (this one is started with yeast, not sourdough), but why use a soaker? Well, for one thing, flour soaks in liquid for several hours (12-24 hours, in this case), the gluten gets a head start in development. The two proteins that make up gluten begin to join together, which makes the dough more malleable and cohesive. For another, soaking hydrates the bran and germ, which are the harder particles that can cut the gluten strands and sometimes prevent whole grain doughs from rising properly. And, very importantly, soaking flour initiates enzymatic activity. Enzymes convert complex starches into simple sugars, which feed the yeast, which rises the bread. The soaker gives a head start to this process. The enzymic action develops the umami flavor compounds in wheat flour to “ripen” the dough and develop its flavor.

When you are ready to make the final dough, you turn out the soaker on a floured board and cut it into 12 pieces;

Then you get out the refrigerated biga, which has fermented for at least 8 hours,

and cut it into 12 pieces, too.

(NOTE: Peter Reinhart says: “… The surface of the soakers and bigas will sometimes darken due to oxidation–no harm but if you want to avoid it, lay some plastic wrap directly on the surface of the dough to keep it from reacting to the air…”

Then you place them in your stand mixer with the other ingredients for the final dough (yeast [he uses instant yeast added with the flour-- I didn't have any, so I used ordinary dry active baking yeast dissolved in 1 tablespoon warm water-- you have to use about 1/3 more regular yeast than instant], salt, a little more whole wheat flour, olive oil, sweetener of your choice):

and knead it. The dough, once risen, can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours before use, and it can be frozen, too.

The dough was moist and easy to handle. (See an alternative way to stretch the dough at this post.) Although the instructions said to divide the dough into 5 parts, I divided it into 4, so that we could each have a good-sized individual pizza, and then freeze enough for 2 more.

I added the topping just before I baked each pizza. If you have a pretty moist dough and you are making a thin crust pizza, letting it sit too long with the toppings on it may the dough soggy and very difficult to get it off the peel! (As you can see, it is already on my Mini SuperPeel.) NOTE: Make sure to flour your peel and then sprinkle with plenty of cornmeal to make sure the dough will slide off nicely. Some people place a piece of parchment over the peel and dust that with cornmeal, but I haven’t tried that with my metal peel, and you don’t need to do that with the SuperPeel.

The verdict?

We liked it! It puffed up nicely on the edges and it had a nice flavor– not “muddy”, which is the only way I can describe some whole wheat crusts. I found the rim of the first pizza crust I baked a bit dry, so I sprayed the rim of the second pizza crust with a little oil from my pump-sprayer during the last few minutes of baking, and that really improved it (also in terms of how it looked– more golden).

Reservations? It was still a bit coarse for my taste, though, but that might have been our home-ground flour. I want to try it with white whole wheat flour and see if that makes a difference. I would probably also add a bit more salt.

One whole pizza crust (1/4 of the dough) was 9.7 points. It was worth it (we had saved up points)! I didn’t want a measly 2 little slices– I wanted it to be my whole meal! I figured that if I try the recipe again with a white biga dough, and the rest whole wheat (maybe white whole wheat), it might come up to my expectations better. If I use 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil in the dough, instead of 2 tablespoons, then the points will be pretty much the same as the a 100% crust (actually, slightly less– 9.2).

So, stay tuned for updates!

BTW, I can’t reproduce the recipe here, since it’s not online anywhere, so I don’t think he wants it posted all over the ‘Net. The book is worth buying (both of them, actually), anyway, if you are a serious baker, and not bad prices on amazon even for the hardcover versions.

Enjoy!

Bryanna Clark Grogan, author of 8 published vegan cookbooks and The Vegan Feast quarterly cooking newsletter. Moderator of the beginners’ vegetarian forum on vegsource.com.

Popularity: unranked [?]

What does a vegan eat anyway?

“What does a vegan eat anyway?”

How many times have we vegans heard that query? It appears that the globe at big thinks that all we consume is salad, salad, salad! Hardly! A vegan kitchen can produce some really beautiful points! On this website you are able to find a wide variety of definitely non-salad dishes like: pancakes, curry, cheesecakes, pizza, dhal, carrot-cake cupcakes, shawarmas, swedish ‘meat’balls and much, much more!

“It must take an awful lot of planning to be vegan!”

No much more so than being an omnivore! Both vegans and omnivores must strategy and consume a nutritious mix of vitamins and vitamins, we all need to take care of our wellness. It’s a myth that vegans have to combine particular foods or do something crazy to get complete proteins or vitamins. Just like omnivores have to make sure they obtain a varied diet, vegans have to make certain they obtain a varied diet plan. No difference! And there is really a reason why vegans have lower rates of all sorts of illnesses from cancer to diabetes, along with a longer existence span than the typical omnivore – becoming vegan is fabulous for your health!

“But you must have to buy all sorts of special ingredients to be vegan.”

Not at all! Every grocery shop I’ve actually been to all around this beautiful world carries beans, grains, veggies and fruits and that is all it requires to be a pleased, healthy vegan! If you want the ‘special ingredients’ that is completely up to you. I buy points like nutritional yeast and TVP simply because I wish to, not because I need to. A vegan diet plan without any of these ‘special ingredients’ is completely healthy, rewarding and sustainable.

So, in order to solution these very frequent issues I decided that I would start a new series right here at TVV called “Everyday Nums”. (In my loved ones we call food nums! Silly!) It will profile each day in the existence of my stomach, breakfast via dinner, snacks included!

I really wish to show how extremely rich, bountiful and diverse the vegan diet can be. Not only will you see a wide range of fresh, wholesome, healthful meals, you’ll also get to see an ample quantity of decadent desserts and gluttonous feasts! But, on the whole, because what I consume is usually extremely healthy, that’s exactly where the concentrate will probably be.

Breakfast

This is a extremely typical breakfast for me, I usually consume it a few occasions per week. The smoothie is icy cold and extremely delicious, it contains blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, flax seeds and a bit of spinach. Yum! And the whole grain toast is topped with vegan butter, sliced avocados and a few dashes of hot sauce. Have I mentioned that avocados are just my favored thing ever? Wow, I cannot get enough. Creamy and rich and SO good! And several times a week throughout breakfast is usually when I take my vitamins, when I remember that’s.

Lunch

An ideal midday meal. The tofu is frozen, thawed, pressed and then dipped inside a mixture of ready horseradish and vegan mayo, then dredged inside a combination of flour, nooch and cornmeal, salt and pepper. (The dredging mixture is completely random and I throw in whatever I have on hand.) Then I fry it in drizzle of olive oil. Served on the side is sauted bell peppers and wilted spinach, dressed with a bit of balsamic vinegar. A basic and fast lunch, filled with lots of amazing flavors.

Afternoon Snack

My standard daily schedule is wake up, consume breakfast, get to operate on my computer reading, researching and writing, maybe a meeting or two. After I get some operate done I hop on the treadmill, grab my weights and get inside a operate out. Then I’ve lunch with my darling vegan hubby and we generally take the dogs for a quick stroll. Then I head to the stables and play with my buddy Ender, which is a whole other training! Once I get home I am quite wiped out from working with my horse and being out in the heat so I really need a light, nutritious snack and this one is perfect. A bowl of pistachios, banana, cherry tomatoes, and a juicy plum. After this delicious spread I’m prepared to get back on my computer and finish my work for the day. Oh, and walk my crazy dogs – Once again!

Dinner

This is really a typical instance of the kinds of dinners we eat here in Voracious Vegan headquarters and there’s a great cause for that; not just is this meal scrumptious, but it’s filled with healthy, replenishing ingredients. Oh, also this meal is super fast and simple to prepare. I tossed a few cans of chickpeas in a casserole dish and doused them with some smoky barbecue sauce and tossed them in the oven till they were brown and crispy, having a bit of scrumptious caramelization heading on. Then I additional some chopped up baby spinach leaves and stirred it around till they wilted. I served it with a side of nooch and garlic filled polenta (which I cooked in the microwave, something I have just recently discovered is speedy and failsafe with regards to cooking points like polenta, oatmeal and cous cous) along with a generous assisting of sauted onion, squash, zucchini and garlic. YUM!

*Only thing not pictured is the continuous chunks of dark chocolate I eat!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Chocolate Gogi Bites

This is a recipe I developed last Spring. I thought I posted it about it already, but apparently not! (preggo brain strikes again… well, that’s my excuse!)

Popularity: unranked [?]

Tiella

A riff on Lidia Bastianich’s Tiella — a thin crusted deep-dish pizza from Naples, stuffed with different combinations of vegetables — in this case, escarole, olives, capers and beautiful lion’s mane and maitake mushrooms.

Putting the top crust on…

..and just out of the oven.

A little slice of heaven.

The dough is 2 tsp. yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water and left to sit for a few minutes. In a mixer, add 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1 1/2 cups of semolina flour along with 1 tsp. of salt and 1 1/2 tsp. of sugar. Run the machine to blend.

Stir in 3 tbs. of olive oil to the yeast, run the mixer and drizzle the mixture in, processing for 30 seconds. You can add additional flour if the dough seems a little loose, or water if it seems stiff.

Remove the dough and knead by hand into a smooth round, place it in an oiled bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let sit for an hour until doubled. Punch down, shape it again, let rise a second time and stick it in the fridge (sealed airtight) if you want wait until later to use it.

Punch it down again when ready to use. Let it relax if you’ve taken it out of the fridge. Brush the bottom and sides of the baking dish with olive oil. Cut off 2/3 of the dough for the base, roll it into a 14″ round and transfer to the baking dish and trim to fit.

Add your filling and slightly compress.

Roll the smaller piece of dough into a 12″ round and place on top, pinch to seal, trim the excess. Pierce about 12 holes on the top and bake at 375F for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let the tiella cool on a rack for about an hour. You can invert the tiella and remove it to serve, or leave it in for serving. Serve slightly warm or at room temp.

Popularity: unranked [?]

FANTASTIC JAPANESE GOBO TASTING DINNER!

Our Host, Matsuki (pronounced “Matski”) Masutani, surveying the feast.

Our friends (here on Denman Is.), Matsuki and Jane Masutani invited us to dinner last night. I had been discussing gobo (burdock root) with Matsuki a few days before, and told him I had heard of it, and maybe had eaten it, but didn’t really know that much about it. He explained that this root vegetable is an integral part of Japanese cuisine and also has medicinal qualities. (In North America it is often regarded as an invasive weed! Here is a history of burdock root.)

Burdock plant

Here’s a great description of an introduction to gobo from Tom at blisstree.com:
“Before I moved to Japan, I had never seen, tasted or even heard of burdock. Now I know why. It would have to be one of the strangest vegetables I have ever seen in a shop anywhere. To the untrained eye it looks like a dirty old stick, about a metre long and maybe as thick as your thumb at the thick end. It is covered with dirty brown “bark” and it really looks very unappetising. Talk about Cinderella!

Gobo (burdock roots)

When it makes it to you plate, it is hard to believe that you are eating the same thing that you would previously have used to play “fetch” with your dog. You see burdock isn’t a dirty old stick at all. It is actually a root or tuber and within it’s ugly duckling appearance is actually a beautiful vegetable.

The Japanese call Burdock Gobo and the Chinese use it as a medicinal herb, but Australians really don’t use it at all. So I was a loss as to how to cook this bizarre thing. Having, up until now, tried it cooked by others, I gave it a stab myself the other night. And I failed. There is a fine balance between cooking it enough to make it edible and plain old burning it. I lost the balance and the burnt burdock ended up in the compost. I haven’t given up yet and so will give it another go soon. It is definitely worth the trouble and so I will persist.

Burdock root is usually scraped, rather than peeled, and either shaved or julienned thinly. Its most popular recipe seems to be burdock kinpira, where it is sauteed with carrots, chilli, and the usual suspects of sake, mirin, soy and sugar.”

Matsuki and Jane were hosting an old friend from Japan, Kazuko (pronounced Kah-zukoh, with the accent on the Kah), who is a wonderful musician, storyteller and actress– and, apparently, a great cook, too! So, they invited us for a gobo tasting dinner last night. They provided the convivial atmosphere, music (a beautiful recording of the Dalai Lama “chanting”, but it was actually more like singing and it was very enjoyable), salad, the brown rice, and the beverages. Kazuko; our mutual friends Yoshi and Susan-Marie Yoshihara (who make the greatest miso here on Denman Is.– Shinmeido Miso); and Norie (pronounced Noree-ay), a young professional Japanese chef and cooking teacher (specializing in macrobiotics and sushi), all cooked traditional Japanese gobo dishes for us to sample (actually, we feasted!). They very kindly made everything vegetarian. (Also present was Norie’s young son and the Masutani’s lovely daughter-in-law, Nobue (pronounced Nohbu-ay.)

I wait for DH to finish taking pictures of the food before we can sit down and eat!

Susan-Marie grows gobo (burdock root) in her wonderful garden. She uses a Lee Valley Dandelion Digger to dig out the slim roots without breaking them! If you are interested in growing burdock, it’s hard to find info because of it’s bad reputation as a weed in North America, but I found some good information here.

Anyway, on to the dinner! What a treat! What a delight to the senses! I don’t have their recipes, but they did give me some of the ingredients, and I am including online recipes to investigate.

Norie brought the dishes above, some beautiful Soba-Sushi and Shikai-Sushi, along with some Kaki-Age (Julienned Vegetable Tempura) and Maze-Gohan (Japanese Rice Pilaf) wrapped in a banana leaf.

Norie is famous for her sushi here on Denman Is. (and rightly so!). Look at that beautiful Shikai-Sushi– the square ones– which translates to “Four oceans Sushi”, Kazuko told me, because it looks like four waves closing in)! The tempura (on the bottom) was delicious, too. Here are some online instructions for making Shikai-Sushi. And here’s another page. (But neither tell you how to get the purple effect that Norie did– I’ll have to ask her about that!)

Here is a page on how to make Soba-Sushi (Norie made two kinds– one with buckwheat soba [Japanese noodles] and one with spinach soba).

Norie also brought a type of salad, Classic Kinpira Gobo, made with burdock and carrot. It was delightful! Here is a recipe for it. And here is another.

Yoshi also brought a dish of Maze-Gohan (Japanese Rice Pilaf), but it was a bit different from Norie’s (I don’t know what she put in hers). Yoshi’s was Yuba-Maze-Gohan, containing strips of simmered yuba, hijiki seaweed,ginger pickle, soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil. He instructed us to roll spoonful of it in squares of nori seaweed– it was delicious that way! Here’s a basic recipe for Maze-Gohan, but you can use all sorts of ingredients in it. I really liked the yuba in it! Yoshi said you could add a dash of hot sauce, such as Thai hot sauce, also known as Sriracha or “rooster sauce”, if you like.

Yoshi’s second dish was Kiriboshi-Daikon, a salad made with shredded carrot, strips of fried tofu (atsuage), onion, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and dried daikon radish. The dried daikon has a more intense flavor than the fresh radish, giving a pleasant “bite” to the salad. There is a recipe for this here and another one here.

Kazuko made a delicious “Chinese-Style” Oden, or stew (I forgot to ask her why it was considered “Chinese-style”). It contained daikon radish, potato, burdock root, fried tofu (atsuage), seaweed, ginger, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, green onion, garlic, soy sauce, star anise, 5-spice powder (maybe that’s the “Chinese-style” part?), sake, and sugar. There are many types of oden, but here is one recipe.

Kazuko also made a delicious appetizer, which we failed to photograph. She steamed carrots lightly (the Japanese prefer their root vegetables cooked) and cut them into pieces, and served them with a dip made of miso, crushed black sesame seeds, white wine, and sesame oil, if I remember rightly. It was absolutely scrumptious! She just made it up on the spot, so I have no idea of amounts, but I’m going to try to replicate it.

Susan-Marie provided the dessert, with two things from her garden– it was a sort of crustless rhubarb custard “pie” (or pudding, I guess you could call it), made with only half of the usual sugar, due to the addition of the herb Sweet Cicily, which, according to Brenda Hyde, “It can be added to some dishes to reduce the sweetener, but it’s not actually a sugar substitute.”

It was really delicious! Unfortunately it got served and eaten before I could take a photo! Susan-Marie said she got the recipe from her friend and fellow Denman Is. Gardener, Phyllis Fabbi, but I found a similar recipe, for a Rhubarb and Sweet Cicely Pudding Recipe from Yorkshire (not vegan, of course). I have a vegan recipe for Sour Creme Rhubarb-Orange Pie which might be a good place to try Sweet Cicely. Go to this link and scroll down to almost the end of this section for the recipe.

Kampai!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Raw Food Wednesday: Red Bell Pepper Empanadas, White Asparagus, Gazpacho Shooter with Baby Cucumbers, Mixed Micro Greens Salad, Strawberry Pie

Raw Food Wednesday 4/22

Red Bell Pepper Empanadas

White Asparagus

Gazpacho Shooter with Baby Cucumbers

Mixed Micro Greens Salad

Strawberry Pie

Utilizing more of the bounty from Farmer Lee Jones…

The red bell pepper empanadas use the tortilla recipe (below), stuffed with greens, cashew cheese, scallions, walnut taco filling and diced tomatoes. The white asparagus was trimmed, peeled, tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and dehydrated for 2 hours @ 105F. They retain some of the crunch, but are very tasty…

Red Pepper Tortillas
(makes approximately 8 tortillas)

1/2 cup flax seeds
1/2 cup water
1 cup red bell pepper, diced
1 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. nama shoyu
1 jalapeño, diced
1 tsp. Mexican oregano
1 tsp. fresh ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Soak the flax seeds with the water and let sit for 15 minutes. Put the flax seeds and the rest of the ingredients into the Vita-Mix and process on high until smooth — this will tax the machine, but that’s why you bought it in the first place.

Spread out the mixture into 7″ rounds with an offset spatula and dehydrate around an hour on 105F. Carefully flip the tortillas and dehydrate for an additional 30 minutes or so. Take a peak at this point to make sure they’re not too dry — you want them flexible enough so you can roll them later. You can make these a day in advance and store in the fridge if needed.

The gazpacho shooters (tomato, red bell pepper, cucumber, onion, garlic, nama shoyu, lime juice, olive oil) were brightened by the addition of the colorful baby cucumbers. They were almost too cute to eat. Almost

If the shooters aren’t enough to quench your thirst, we also made a larger bowl, adorned with a cucumber slice and a popcorn shoot. The best way to describe the popcorn shoot is that it tastes mildly like corn for the first 5-7 seconds, and then you’re hit with an almost candy-like sweetness… really unique and fun!

The baby radishes were served as a crudite with a little sea salt to dip them in and then they were eaten whole — the green tops were extremely tender with just a hint of radish bite.

The strawberry pie used a quick almond/cashew/brazil nut/salt/agave crust pressed into a tart mold, layered with sliced strawberries and a little extra raw agave, which was then chilled for a few hours.

Popularity: unranked [?]