Vegannosaurus Rex

My take on simple and quick Tabbouleh.

• 1/2 cup hulled hemp seeds
• 1 head of parsley, chopped
• 2 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 4-5 green onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
• 2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
• juice from 1 lemon
• 1 cucumber, seeded and chopped

put it all in a bowl, mix, eat. Flavors integrate very nicely overnight.

I have a minor hemp seed obsession (maybe ‘addiction’ would be more appropriate in this case), i’ve been finding ways to include hemp seeds as an ingredient in almost everything. Hemp seeds work especially well as a substitute for bulgur wheat in tabbouleh.

Just like everyone else, there are times when I am just too busy, or lazy, to prepare a meal for myself. Or, more accurate perhaps, I simply enjoy having someone else do the work for me from time to time. Beyond that, i really enjoy experiencing the creativity of others. It’s inspiring.

When I’m between trips to the farmers market, or simply feeling lazy, i call Living Food Delights, a mere 2.5 miles from my house. If I time it right I can call in my order, get in my car and drive to Living Food Delights, and walk in the front door before they have hung up the phone.

Great people and great food, in a non-descript storefront in Grant Park. I only have two complaints, there hours are short, the close at 8, but my attempts to call in an order at 7:30 in the past have been met with grunting and mumbling sounds until i have offered to call back another day, and they only make 4 of each entree each day, so if you try to catch them later in the day your options can be severely limited, as in you have 2 options out of the usual 10. Neither of those are reasons to stay away, and they aren’t really complaints to be honest, they’re observations. I understand limiting the amount of orders, its far to expensive to throw it away and the end of the day, and I trust they know their business far better than I do.

To get a taste of what their wares, take a tour of my most recent visit:

(You can see detailed notes on the flickr version of this picture.)

What you see here is the three course dinner, $17.50.

Choice of entree:

• Barbeque Mushrooms
• Lasagna
• Lentil Patties
• Marinated Kush with Topping
• Spaghetti
• Stuffed Tomatoes
• Sun Burger Patties
• Tempura Vegetables
• Walnut Steak
• Wild Rice Medley

Choice of side dish:

• hummus
• wild rice
• cracked wheat

I have found that almost never have the cracked wheat, but always have a more interesting special side dish.

Choice of green/salad:

• Spring Mix Salad
• Collard Greens
• Seaweed Salad
• Romaine Cesar Salad
• Spinach Cesar Salad

It’s truly a delight to have someone else prepare such a delicious living food meal for me.  If you’re in the are definitely pay them a visit.

I really have nothing poignant to say in this post, except that i have ‘discovered’ another great recipe.  I’ve been super busy with moving and work related BS and have been sitting on this one for a few weeks, while i had a second to breathe i thought i would get it out there in the ether for all to enjoy.

I found a great ’snack’ at a local health food/co-op grocery here in town. Sevananda carries some prepared raw dishes from a local catering company that i have been giving a try lately. The stand-out of the bunch is curried cabbage. At $4.99 for what amounts to about a cup or two of curried cabbage, i set out to reverse engineer this dish.

Curried Cabbage:

1/3 head cabbage
1/4 cup sprouted lentils
4 green onions
2 cloves garlic
4 Tablespoons olive oil
1/4 red bell pepper
2 teaspoons curry powder
juice from 1.5 lemons
1 serrano chile
salt to taste

Directions: blend until desired consistency. Serve on green leaf lettuce, or just dig in with a spoon.

I’ve been craving comfort foods lately, i’m blaming it on the holidays. I decided to attempt a macaroni salad substitute. My craving was extremely pleased with the results of this experiment.

The recipe

• 2 zucchini’s worth of elbow noodles (preparation notes below)
• 1 cup raw mayonnaise (preparation notes below)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard
  (mix 2 1/2 tablespoons of mustard powder with apple cider vinegar until it forms the consistency of mustard paste)
• 1/4 cup (approx) apple cider vinegar (to taste)
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 5-6 green onions, chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 carrot, grated
• dash of cayenne

The preparation

First I made the mayonnaise, borrowed from RAW by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein:

• 1/2 cup pinenuts (soaked for at least 6 hours in water)
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
• sea salt

blend pinenuts, water, olive oil and lemon juice in a blender until you achieve the desired consistency, then add salt to taste.

Next I made the noodles:

Start by peeling two zucchini

cut the peeled zucchini into quarters

cut out the seeds so the remaining zucchini quarters form the shape of a ‘u’

slice the zucchini with seeds removed into small pieces that mimic macaroni elbow noodles

And last i assembled all the ingredients:

chopped red bell pepper

chopped 2 stalks of celery

1 grated carrot, prepared mustard, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, raw mayonnaise, agave nectar, cayenne and green onions. Voila, rawcaroni salad:

Raw Vegan Stuffing, borrowed from a recipe on goneraw.com.

• 1 cup raw walnuts, finely ground
• 1 cup raw sunflower seeds, finely ground
• 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds, finely ground
• ½ cup green onion (4-6 onions), chopped
• ½ cup celery (two stalks), chopped
• 1 cup crimini mushrooms, diced and briefly marinated in Soy or Name Shoyu
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 1½ teaspoons kelp, crumbled or chopped if needed
• 1½ teaspoons thyme
• 1½ teaspoon rosemary
• 1 cup dried exotic mushrooms (variety or shitake), reconstituted in warm water and patted dry

1. finely ground the walnuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in a spice grinder. It’s a little bit of a challenge with the walnuts, they have enough oil in them to not want to cooperate with the spice grinder. They kinda turn into mush. I left the walnuts slightly chunky, hoping it would add texture to the stuffing.

2. chop the celery and green onion

3. dice crimini mushrooms and marinate in nama shoyu for 20 mins or so

4. reconstitute, in warm water, the dried shitake mushrooms

5 mix all ingredients together

As I sit down on Thanksgiving morning to write this post I’m forced to smile a little at the irony of my intended blog post subject. My plan, even before realizing the irony, was to comment on my inability to post in the last few weeks due to an extremely hectic work schedule. Well, I think I’ll turn that around, and note how thankful I am for the time and peace of mind to sit down and comment on my culinary exploits.

Not only has my busy schedule caused me to neglect my blog, but I haven’t really had the time to do a lot of experimentation lately, with a few minor exceptions. I’ve learned A LOT about sprouting, or attempting to, in the last few weeks. I’ve mastered sunflower seeds, developed a great system that works quite quickly, and miserably failed at chickpeas, and soybeans. The one constant I have found in sprouting is that there are no standards. You can read every how-to, from every ‘expert’ on the internet, and still find that their method doesn’t work perfectly for you. I’ve been led to believe that weather, humidity, elevation, etc. play a fairly large role in the process of sprouting, so experimentation and patience are necessary until you master the process that works best for you. I would assume that the variety and quality of the nuts or beans you have access to has an affect as well. Just like everything else in life, you have to find what works best for you. I’ll comment on my experiences in a later post or two.

The night before Thanksgiving

I started the day by heading to the farmer’s market with my sister. Thank whatever-you-choose-to-consider-a-higher -being we had short shopping lists, the farmer’s market was a zoo. I was a little lost as to what i was going to do for thanksgiving food prep, so i kinda randomly assembled ingredients to get me through the week. All of the brainstorming hit me when i got home. These ‘brainstorms’ necessitated a second trip to the store, but this time i cut it short and went to the local co-op natural food store to fill in the gaps in my recipes. Have i put you to sleep yet? Rest of my day went something like this:

The necessary

• Started sprouting 1 cup of sunflower seeds, not so exciting.
• Made a batch of curried kale, which is a staple i try to keep around as much as possible. It never gets old (on the palate) and it never gets old, quite literally, it lasts forever in the fridge.
• Juiced 2lbs of lemons by hand. That’s a labor of love for sure. I’ve found that its almost impossible to maintain a raw diet without lemon juice on hand at all times, i buy 2lbs a week under the assumption I’ll use it all, and I always do.
• Made spinach hummus.

The fun

I really wanted to make a raw/vegan stuffing. As with most experimentation’s i head over to goneraw.com to get an idea of what other people have done with the same idea. From there I take some combination of a few recipes i find, add a little of my own ‘flavor’ and fine tune the ingredients and quantities. Short story long, my first stop was goneraw.com when i decided to make raw/vegan stuffing. Due to the length of this blog post, and the lengthy process to create the stuffing, i have decided to dedicate an entire post to the stuffing.

Next stop, brown gravy. This turned out great, but i think i would add a little garlic next time, so i added it to the recipe below, although it was not added to my concoction.

• 1.5 cups crimini mushrooms
• 1 Tablespoon nama shoyu
• 3/4 stick of celery
• 2 green onions
• 1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast
• dash salt
• dash pepper
• 1 small clove of garlic
• add waluts to thicken as you blend all ingredients

This recipe doesn’t yield a whole lot, probably enough for two people depending on how you like your gravy ( i smother), so you may want to increase the recipe for events like Thanksgiving. AND!!! due to the primary ingredient being mushrooms, if you let this gravy sit it gets a dark brown layer on top, just like when ‘traditional’ gravy crusts over if left out, its brilliant!

I, honestly, have no idea why i decided to work on my own ‘mock tuna’ recipe. A quick search around the internet has found that this is a pursuit in which many engage. What is so alluring about tuna salad? I ate tuna salad as a kid, and every now and then as an adult, but I don’t remember any aspect of it particularly spectacular. Quite the contrary, tuna was something you knew you always had in the cabinet when you were in college, it was the insurance policy meal. If all else fails make a tuna sandwich. Yet again, i digress.

So……I decided to attempt to make my version of phoney fish, and here it is:

• 3 green onions
• 1.5-2 celery stick
• 1 cup sprouted sunflower seeds
• 3 teaspoon nama shoyu
• 1/8 cup lemon juice (or 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar)
• dash (or two) salt
• dash pepper
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup soaked Dulse
• cayenne to taste (i use quite a bit, i like it spicy)

I make two different versions, you can either use 1/8 cup of lemon juice (1-1.5 lemons) or 1 Tablespoon of Apple Vinegar, both equally good. I’m not sure i would fully commit to saying that this recipe is a ‘dead ringer’ for tuna salad, but i don’t really care, i was out to make something that taste good, and this tastes pretty tasty. AND, its semi-photogenic.

I stumbled across a great recipe for raw vegan falafel on goneraw.com that is delicious as is, but also leaves a lot of room to amend and adjust to your liking, and its also very quick and easy to make.

• 2 cups sunflower seeds, unsoaked
• 1 cup corriander, chopped
• ½ teaspoon ground cumin
• couple pieces onion
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• squeeze of lemon
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 pinch sea salt

Blend the sunflower seeds to a fine powder first, then blend all the other ingredients into the sunflower seeds. So many ways to modify this recipe to make it your own. I added a bit more cilantro than was called for, and added a little dill and some cayenne. I’m going to make a version with sprouted sunflower seeds this week, and attempt a sprouted chickpea version as well. If either of them work it’ll be posted here.

Raw vegan sushi (or nori if you want to be 100% correct) is sooo simple, and sooo good. I crave it on almost a weekly basis, a close second to my cravings for tacos.

Start with some simple ingredients:

• tomato
• chopped spinach
• cucumber
• avocado
• shitake mushroom

That just happened to be what i had in the fridge this week. You can use anything that you find appealing, i usually put some orange bell pepper in mine as well.

I line my nori with a raw pate made with:

• walnuts- washed, soaked 8-10 hours, and drained
• tahini
• garlic
• nama shoyu
• pine nuts- soaked for 6 hours and drained

[the recipe is yet another that i 'borrowed' from Katie. I'd be happy to pass it on to anyone that agrees not to publish it, email me if you'd like the recipe]