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Mama Smothered It with Some Vegan Gravy

27 Aug

That’s right, I smothered my Vegan Biscuits and Sunflower Sausage Crumbles with Some Gravy. It was delicious.

Vegan Gravy 2

Just blend and simmer till it thickens. Big on flavor and no added fats. So simple.

Vegan Gravy 3

Easy Vegan Gravy

Place all in a blender and mix well:

  • 2 c your choice of Vegan milks, I have been using Rice Milk
  • 1/4 c unbleached flour
  • 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
  • 1 tsp sage
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1/2 tsp thyme
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 -1 tsp sea salt, to taste
  • pepper or hot sauce, spice it up if you want to

Place in a pot and heat until it thickens. Smother whatever you want with the gravy. Serve.

Vegan Gravy

This refrigerates well too. Just heat it up when needed. In fact, I think it was even better the next day.

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The Easiest Vegan Pulled BBQ Sandwich Even Meat Lovers Will Love

12 Jul

Just take a look at this scrumptious looking BBQ sandwich. You won’t believe how easy it is to make nor how delicious. Please read on.

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A few years ago, raw vegan me wouldn’t have thought I would be posting about cooked food, much less something from a can. But never say never. This year, I’ve started adding cooked vegan foods back into my daily diet in a big way.

What I’ve learned during this transition:

  • my body took a while to adjust to different foods: I don’t have sensitivities to certain foods (like wheat) like I once thought. My body just needed time to adjust.
  • I didn’t gain weight. I actually lost weight because my daily raw vegan diet contained too much fats. Although of the good kind, fats are high in calories and are still… fats. I didn’t realise how much of it I was consuming (50% to be exact) until I started using a diet tracking app.
  • I didn’t break out or get sick. I’ve been just fine.
  • I’ve been craving all kinds of crazy foods lately… like this:

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My husband and I really enjoyed this meal last night and today for lunch. In fact, I inhaled my first sandwich and couldn’t get a good photo due to too much yumminess, very sticky fingers, and hunger to finish it off.

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So here’s the easy yummy recipe.

 

The Easiest Vegan Pulled BBQ:

3 ingredients only

Cook in ¼ c water until soft:

2 onions, thinly sliced

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Add and combine together with:

3 cans 14 oz young jackfruit in brine, drained and rinsed well (I used the one above)

¾ c your favourite bbq sauce, more at the table

Mash with cooking spoon or use a potato masher to create a pulled meat effect.

Choose 1 of 3 different cooking methods:

Slow Cooker – place all ingredients in the slow cooker and cook on low for 5 hours.

Stove Top – place all ingredients in a pot and heat up. You can cook until heated through or longer so that some parts cook to a crisp.

Bake/Broil – place all ingredients in a cookie sheet and bake/broil. The former heats it up, the latter burns parts of the jackfruit to a crisp to give the ‘meat’ a crunchy.

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The Whole Wheat Burger Buns:

Place the following ingredients in your bread machine and set for dough stage:

1 T flax seed meal mixed with 3 T water

4 ½ T olive oil

3 T sucanat or your choice of sweetener

¾ t sea salt

1 ½ c whole wheat flour

1 ½ c bread flour

1 T yeast

Divide into 9 pieces. Form into round balls and flatten to make the buns. Cover and set aside in a warm place for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F. Bake buns for about 13 minutes.

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Now to serve:

Serve about 1/3 c cooked jackfruit BBQ in a whole wheat burger buns with slices of avocado and additional bbq sauce, if needed. Serves 4-6 hungry people.

ENJOY!

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Raw Nacho Cheeze Dip

22 Jul

Raw Nacho Cheese Dip

Smooth, ooey-gooey and it never hardens!  Rich in B12 and omega 3 fatty acids, this is the perfect raw cheese dip for Tortilla/Corn Chips, along with Pico de Gallo and Guacamole! My hubby finishes half of it everytime I make it (ahem… when there is the very rare chance of store bought organic tortilla chips in our house…)!  Till I create a better dehydrated corn chip recipe, I thought I’d share this dip with you!  Enjoy!

Puree together in a blender:

1/8 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tbspn maple syrup (or sweetener of your choice)
1 tbspn raw almond butter
1 1/2 tbspns unpasteurized mellow white miso
6 tbspns flax meal (I grind my own and have used both whole flax seeds or golden flax seeds with fantastic results)
1/2 cup nutritional yeast (I use Bragg’s)
7/8 cup water

Wait for a few minutes to allow the flax seeds to thicken the mixture.  Serve!

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Half Raw and Half Cooked: Curried Apple and Quinoa Salad

3 Jun

Curried Apple and Quinoa Salad

Sometimes it’s easier to incorporate more RAW food into my family’s diet by mixing it with COOKED food. For families still in transition, adding RAW foods to COOKED not only increases the quantity of unprocessed foods into the family’s diet, but also simplifies the process of serving up unpretentious raw foods.

Here is a Curried Apple and Quinoa Salad recipe.  Instead of using processed mayonnaise, I use nutritious coconut to create the creamy sauce and to enhance the flavor of curry.  I did serve up a pure raw version (using sprouted raw quinoa) and this half-cooked version for lunch today.  Well, I guess you can guess which one my family preferred and ate.

The Cooked Half

Heat with a medium flame:

2 tbspns coconut oil

Lightly saute for 5 minutes or until tender:

1 sweet onion, chopped

Add and saute for a minute or 2:

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp mild curry (more or less, depending on your family’s taste)

Add to the pot:

1 tsp sea salt, or to taste

2 cups quinoa

3 cups of water

Bring to a boil and lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.  Fluff and set aside.

 

The Raw Half

Prepare:

raisins

apples, diced

Coconut Curry Sauce

 

Half and Half

Per serving, mix together in a bowl:

sea salt, to taste

1/4 cup raisins

1/2 cup apple, diced

1 cup of cooked quinoa (as above)

enough Coconut Curry Sauce

Enjoy!

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Raw Broccoli Melt

19 May

Raw Broccoli and Cheese

When my mother came to visit us one day more than 5 years ago, she was invited to a Potluck and bought a big bag of frozen broccoli and cheese.  It was a huge success at the party and she came home with an empty dish.  How frozen foods can sometimes tastes so good, I don’t know. Somehow seeing an abudance of broccoli at our local farm this Spring has reminded me of that dish.

My son and husband are not big on raw crunchy cruciferous vegetables – but maybe marinating the broccoli would soften it and perhaps a sauce on top would help?  Well, they both finished their servings of Raw Broccoli Melt.  So did I.

This raw version is truly unprocessed and nutritious: raw broccoli supports stomach health and helps fight cancer, pumpkin and sunflower seeds are rich in minerals and miso and nutritional yeast rich in vitamin B12.

The Broccoli

Marinate for at least 10 minutes or overnight:

2 tsp sea salt
juice of 1 lime, around 2 tbspns
2 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
6 cups of broccoli florets, cut into small pieces

The Melt

Soak for 6 hours or overnight:

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds

Drain and rinse.

Puree the ‘Cheese Melt’ in the blender:

1 garlic clove
1 tbspn lime juice
1 1/2 tbspns unpasteurized white miso
1 1/2 tbspns nutritional yeast
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
all the drained and rinsed pumpkin and sunflower seeds

Add about 1/4 cup of water if needed.  Pour over marinated broccoli.

Enjoy!

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Raw Asparagus is Delicious!

20 Apr

Raw Asparagus from the Garden

I said in one of my previous posts that I don’t like to eat asparagus raw… I have to take that back! My friend Victoria and her husband gave us fresh asparagus from their garden. It was tender, sweet and almost creamy – so unlike the woodsy, fibrous ones I buy.

Cashew Dip

Raw Asparagus with Cashew Dip

Serve with this Easy Cashew Mayo or Dip

Puree all together:

1 lemon, juiced
2 stalks celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
2 tbspns water
1/2 cup raw cashew butter
1 1/2 tsp sea salt or to taste
choice of herbs and spices, according to taste

An easy and healthy appetizer in 5 minutes! Gotta love that!

Enjoy!

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Our Hair Tells All… and we eat better because of it

26 Oct
Even if we eat well and exercise regularly, we wanted to know if we are doing a good job at maintaining our health.  Our naturopath suggested we take a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis.  It was easy and simple.  We filled in the form, enclosed a bit of hair from the nape of our necks, mailed the test in and in 2 weeks, got our results.  
We discovered that we all needed to increase our Magnesium, Phosphorus, Chromium, Zinc and Iron intakes to ideal levels. I immediately decided to feed my family the minerals our bodies so needed.  So, I came up with our Healthy Vegan Pesto.  When my son looked at it, he said: “YUCK! Green pasta!”  But after the first bite, he said “Yum!” with a surprised smile on his face and ate everything up. 
I love that we use food as medicine!  Here is our Healthy Vegan Pesto packed with minerals.  It makes 2 cups.

Process in the blender and serve with pasta, veggie noodles or raw crackers:
2 cups of lightly packed basil
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbspn salt
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup Nutritional Yeast (we need vitamin Bs too!)
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

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My Boys will eat up their RAW Avocado, Tomato and Corn

19 Oct

One of the easiest ways to get my husband and son to eat raw is by serving up raw corn and guacamole!

My local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program has sent me fresh corn for the pass few weeks.  My son will eat the fresh raw corn on the cobb.  My husband likes his raw off the cobb with garlic. 

Mix together:
corn off the cobb
garlic powder
sea salt
extra virgin olive oil
cilantro, optional

Fresh corn eaten in moderate quantities balances all constitutional types according to Ayurveda. It is a warming food that strengthens the body and aids in kidney and bladder functions.

At the same meal, I will serve a simple guacamole with homemade raw chips.  It is a great way to get younger kids active in the kitchen – especially when they get to mash avocado with a mortar and pestle!
Have your child mash with mortar and pestle:
1 garlic clove, first then
2 avocados
Chop and add:
1 tomato, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
1 lime, juiced
1 small bunch of cilantro, chopped 
salt, to taste
scallions, to garnish

Serve with homemade flax seed chips.

Avocados strengthen the body and restore the liver, lungs, plasma and skin.  They are considered a heavy food, however, and therefore must be eaten in small amounts.

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