Vegannosaurus Rex

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 spent a good portion of my day being productive, I added an interactive map of local raw and vegan business’s to the blog. I would really appreciate feedback, especially businesses that need to be added to the map, leave any suggestions you may have as a comment or feel free to email me directly. My goal is to make the map a comprehensive representation of the raw/vegan community in Atlanta. Thanks for your help!

I purchased a small bag of flax seed crackers from a vendor (name escapes me) at the EAV Farmer’s Market 2-3 weeks ago. My intention was to attempt to make some type of flax seed cracker, but had assumed I needed a dehydrator to do that, so i kinda just considered this purchase as an easy way to throw a couple dollars to a good cause- a local organic grower. I stumbled across a fellow local vegan blogger the other night, and her most recent post was a very simple recipe for flax seed crackers made in the oven. An added bonus, on this first truly chilly day of the fall season, the garam masala i blended with the cracker mix made my apartment smell extra delicious, and very autumnal (and, yes, i’m quite proud of myself for working the word ‘autumnal’ into a blog post). I attempted to set my oven to a temperature at or less than 118 degrees, in an attempt to simulate a dehydrator, and thus maintain the cracker’s ‘rawness.’ In the absence of a thermometer, there is no telling what actually happened. I think its time to get a dehydrator.

If you have a dehydrator, and are looking for a true-raw preparation, try this one over at Hi-Rawkus.

Whew, big food preparation night. I got home from the gym around 5:30-5:45, and didn’t stop until 11pm. I did take a break to eat, and drink a few beers, but otherwise did a lot of food preparation. A lot. I tend to plan meals for the week, sometimes longer, then do all of my shopping at the Dekalb Farmers Market on Monday afternoons, then doing as much of the preparation on Monday or Tuesday as possible. The rest of the week, if not longer, is a breeze as all I am doing is assembling meals or snacks. As much as I like playing around in the kitchen, i also like making it easy on myself by getting a lion share of the work done in one…errr…standing.

First off, i made the quinoa tabouli from ‘RAW FOOD real world’ cookbook. I am in love with this recipe. It’s simple, and delicious, plus it yields quite a bit, so you can snack off it for many days.

I also made a new version of rawcotta. I plan to try it out in an heirloom tomato raw lasagna later in the week. This rawcotta is sunflower seed based.

[i'll provide the recipe as soon as i receive approval from the creator]

I also made the sun-dried tomato ravioli recipe provided by Hi-Rawkus for dinner tonight. As i mentioned in a comment on the Hi-Rawkus MySpace page ’twas delicious’.

I only had one zucchini to make the ‘noodles’ for the ravioli, and due to some technique experimentation, it didn’t yield enough noodles to satisfy my hunger. This is where I decided to freestyle. I didn’t have a second zucchini, but i did have a squash, as well as some organic grape tomatoes I bought from the East Atlanta Farmer’s Market about 10 days ago. The tomatoes were slightly under ripe when i bought them, but perfect tonight. I made a little platter of finger food, almost like passed hors d’oeuvres. I sliced thin ‘crackers’ of squash, topped them with a small dollop of the sun dried tomato rawcotta cheese, then some Italian parsley, a piece of the grape tomato and sprinkled with olive oil. Turned out great, and was super simple.

Today was a great food day. I went to the Dekalb Farmer’s Market to load up for the week. I did some prep work for the week’s menu. First on the agenda was hummus, I decided to throw a little spinach in the processor for some color…it worked, i’m digging the color:

I have often purchased items with ’spinach’ flavor in the past, tortillas, hummus, whatever. For the most part i find that it adds absolutely nothing to the flavor. I love spinach as much as the next person, but i don’t think it has a strong enough flavor to really add anything extraordinary to a tortilla. Enough commentary. This hummus was actually really good, best i’ve made yet. Hummus is so easy, and so rewarding. I make it at least once a week. Try some combination of the following:

[i neglected to give credit where due when i first published this blog post, that would go to Erlene Zierke, Thanks!]

• 15oz can of organic garbanzo beans (strained)
• olive oil (1/8 cup-ish)
• sea salt (3/4 tbsp)
• cumin
• white pepper (to taste)
• spinach (your call)
• garlic (one or two cloves)
• tahini (1/8 to 1/4 cup)
• paprika (to taste)
• cayenne (to taste)
• 1/2 lemon
• water (to texture)

Honestly, just wing it. Put some garbonzo beans, garlic, and tahini to a food processor then go to work on the rest. I have yet to find two people that have the exact same taste in hummus. Its as if hummus had some kind of unique fingerprint, no two are alike. Anyway, play around with it and have fun. I managed a really good combination of ingredients tonight. The above is only a rough outline, i have no idea what my final mix contained, i was throwing ingredients in left and right, tasting often.

I also made the cashew based ‘ricotta’:

[pre-prcoessing]

[post-processing]

from the Hi-Rawkus Raw Food Blog’s sun dried tomato ravioli recipe, I’ll be eating that for dinner tomorrow.

For lunch/dinner today i had sushi. I used a raw pate recipe that was generously given to me by Katie. I have a sushi experiment planned for later in the week. I’m going to make a quinoa tabouli, the raw pate mentioned above, and the jicama ‘rice’ recipe from the ‘RAW FOOD real world’ cookbook, and use each as the base for raw/vegan sushi. I’ll report findings here.

Thanks for tuning in.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dulce Vegan at the East Atlanta Farmers Market this past Thursday (9/20/07). Dulce Vegan makes delicious vegan desserts available at Inman Perk coffee shop (280 Elizabeth St./ Atlanta, GA 30307), the East Atlanta Farmers Market, or ordered directly from the source. I can attest to the deliciousness of the cupcakes if nothing else: