Vegannosaurus Rex

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.

In retrospect, after looking at the photos, this recipe wasn’t as much of a failure as I had once thought. I attempted a rather ambitious undertaking. My version falls under the category ‘looks better in the cookbook’ but the flavor, texture, aesthetics in general, were all spot on. I made this recipe for raw vegan meatloaf from The Daily Raw Cafe.

Start with a sun-dried tomato ketchup:

• 1 cup sun-dried tomato, soaked, 1/4 c reserved water
• 1/4 cup raisins, soaked
• 1 tablespoon Italian Seasonings
• 1/4 tablespoon chopped onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced

chop 2-4 cups (recipe calls for 2 cups, i found that to be far less than i actually needed) of spinach and place in a Ziploc bag with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, juice from half a lemon, and 1 teaspoon of sea salt for an hour. This gets the spinach tender and juicy.

blend 2 cups walnuts (soaked for 4-6 hours), 1 cup almonds (soaked 4-6 hours), 1 cup soaked sun-dried tomatoes, 1/2 cup reserved tomato water, 2 tablespoons parsley, 4 chopped green onions, 1 clove garlic and 2 stalks of celery. Add the remaining 1/2 cup water one tablespoon at a time to moisten the meat loaf. This can’t be understated, be careful when adding the water, it is very easy to over moisten the ‘meat’.

blended meat should look something like below, mine was a little too moist. Blend with 2 teaspoons of sea salt and 1 teaspoon of black pepper.

spread the meatloaf mixture on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Form the mixture in the shape of multiple rectangles approximately 2 inches my 8 inches. Cover the top of the spread meatloaf mixture with marinated spinach and roll. The result should look something similar to the picture below. Two notes about this step of the process.

#1: my mixture was too moist, which made it a little difficult to roll, if you monitor the moisture closely the rolling shouldn’t be a problem.

#2: the original recipe calls for a dehydrator, which i do not own. I try to compensate for this shortcoming by setting my oven to 100 degrees and use that as my version of a dehydrator. In theory as long as it doesn’t get above 118 degrees then the food remains raw. I had the oven set a little too high in this case, as you can see from the results…

cover rolls with sun-dried tomato ketchup.

slice and cover with more sun-dried tomato ketchup. As i stated earlier, i had my oven temp set a little too high (it was a mistake on my part) and the result looks a little ‘cooked’, although it didn’t taste that way. As long as the temp of the over stays around 100 degrees i think this recipe will turn out as expected. If nothing else it was delicious.

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]

Its been a long week of experimenting (if not writing). Experimenting doesn’t always make for compelling writing, or photography, except when you succeed or fail brilliantly. I’ve done a little of both.

I started experimenting with a mock tuna recipe this week. I have no idea, except maybe hubris, that i am experimenting with a mock tuna recipe considering i have found about 10 that all seem perfectly acceptable. Well, i proved both of those points this week. I attempted my own recipe with the following ingredients:

• 1 cup sprouted sunflower seeds
• 3 green onions
• 1 celery stick
• 1/4 cup soaked Dulse
• 2 tablespoon nama shoyu
• 1/8 cup lemon juice
• dash salt
• dash pepper
• tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 carrot
• parsley
• cayenne
• garlic
• half red bell pepper

I feel like i have the ingredients correct, it was in the process. I didn’t have this recipe as well thought out as i probably should have. I ended up blending the sprouted sunflower seeds, celery, nama shoyu, celery, green onions, carrot, and dulse. Everything was going fine, i liked the consistency, then added the parsley and garlic and blended again, but it was missing that one ingredient, which turned out to be red bell pepper. Unfortunately i had to blend yet again when i added the pepper, and the consistency was a little paste-y for me. It was actually, to be honest, quite unappealing. I’m going back to the drawing board.

To salvage my appetite for mock tuna, i made this recipe from goneraw.com (the recipe below includes my modifications):

• cups raw, germinated walnuts, soaked in water (the longer the better)
• 1/4 cup dulse (red seaweed), soaked for 10 minutes and drained
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup cold-pressed olive oil
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2½ celery stalks, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded, cored, and chopped
• 3 green onions

Chop the onion, celery and red bell pepper and set aside. Blend all other ingredients in a food processor. Combine the blended mixture with the onion, celery and red bell pepper. I didn’t have fresh dill so i used dried dill weed, the proportions aren’t the same as if you use fresh dill. The dried dill gave my version of the this recipe somewhat un-photogenic, although the taste was great.

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!

In my pursuit of the perfect taco, i tinkered with the raw spicy walnut taco meat recipe yet again last night. My only complaint, and its a minor one, is that this recipe is slightly dry. The texture is great, the flavor is great, but dry is a pet peeve of mine. So, i set out to solve that problem. I’ve tried two different methods, neither to perfection. Adding olive oil is an option, this method is the easiest to control, but didn’t add as much moisture as i was hoping, at least not without adding a lot more olive oil that i desired. Last night i tried a new method, soaking the walnuts i water for about 30 minutes. The result was an obviously lighter color, and a texture that i could only describe as ‘paste’. Not exactly ideal either. I’m going to keep working on it, the perfect taco is out there somewhere, i just have to find it.

For dinner i made pizza. Tacos and pizza. Yup, i’m an American. Aren’t Pizza Hut and Taco Bell both owned by Pepsi? I’m an effin cliche, and i just realized it while typing this blog post…

Pizza. I spread a layer of pesto on the tortilla (no, the Food for Life tortillas aren’t raw, but they’re made out of sprouted grains instead of flour), topped the pesto with a little raw marinara, some shitake mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and ‘marinated’ spinach. I laid the spinach leaves flat and stacked them on top of each other, rolled em up and chopped. I placed the spinach in a bowl with some olive oil and rubbed the oil into the spinach, making sure all of the spinach was covered. I let it marinate for about 30 minutes, ideally you would let it marinate for an hour or so. I have also seen a suggestion to marniate the spinach in a combination of lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt. I used this method for another recipe i made and it works great; nice, tender, juicy spinach, almost as if it were wilted.

the combination of the marinated spinach and pesto was awesome, this was by far the best pizza i have made yet.