Hey all! Hope your weekends were relaxing, and that you managed to avoid some of the arctic chill we’re seeing here in DC (and, from what I hear, all over the Northeast). Mine was filled with the usual melee of studying, blog work, yoga, gym, and food. Food, of course, was the main highlight!

I’ve hit that peculiar moment in the heart of winter–and it happens every year–when I start crave raw fruits and vegetables with a fervor. I’ve always wondered why this happens, and I have yet to come up with any kind of scientific answer. I suspect it’s simply my body’s way of screaming out against months of indoor heating, classrooms lit up with the sounds of winter coughs, and abbreviated outdoor walks, and begging for the fresh, crisp tastes of warmer months. Raw foods always exist in a balance with cooked ones for me, but I do love to indulge these seasonal cravings with all the blended greens and salads I can handle.

Starting here. This isn’t a salad recipe, but rather a dressing recipe–which is really like many salad recipes delivered to you at once. Dressings are one of the cornerstones of my weekly food prep routine. Why? Because a good dressing can be key to eating lots, and lots, and lots of vegetables. You can dipped steamed veggies into it if you’re craving warm food, smother your nutrient dense salads, and use it to dip raw veggies as a snack. To say nothing of how easily you can slather a dressing on a raw or cooked sandwich. The possibilities abound.

This dressing grew out of my passion for this spice:

That’s smoked paprika, which is one of my favorite spice rack staples. It’s just regular paprika that has been smoked in oak, and it takes on a very distinctive, smoky aroma and taste. I like using it in place of liquid smoke when I need to create a “smoky” flavor in vegan dishes (traditionally, of course, various meats are used to do just that). It’s not inexpensive, but you can find good deals on Amazon, and a little goes a very long way.

Take this dressing: only 1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika takes a red pepper and chickpea medley to a new place. The recipe—a creamy blend of red pepper, chickpeas, tahini, and lemon—needs very little improvement in the taste department, so the paprika is optional. But if you can manage to find some, you’ll be glad you did. Trust me on this one. You can leave the red pepper raw if you like, or roast it, which will enhance the smoky flavor.

Smoky Red Pepper, Chickpea, and Tahini Dressing (vegan, gluten free, soy free)

Makes about 2 cups

1/2 cup chickpeas
1 cup chopped red pepper (roasted red pepper would be great here, too)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup tahini
Juice of 2 small lemons
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Blend all ingredients together on high till creamy and smooth.

Serve over salad of choice. Mine was cucumber, tomato, jicama, pepper, chickpeas, and a heap of raw hemp and vegetable crackers (homemade).

So what made this salad appropriately meal sized? Well, let’s look at our macronutrient groups. Protein? Hemp and chickpeas fit the bill. Carbs? Legumes provide starch and energy. Healthy fat? Tahini and hemp step in. And since we were just talking about Omega 6’s and 3’s, it’s worth pointing out that both are present in this meal—6’s in the tahini, 3’s in the flax and hemp in my crackers. A nicely balanced plate!

And here’s another one, also from the weekend:

Sweet potato rounds over hemp bread with tahini dressing, along with a fresh vegetable and green salad topped with mashed turnips.

And the weekend also involved quite a bit of this:

My usual green lemonade recipe of:

1 green apple
1 inch knob ginger
5 large stalks celery
1 cucumber
1 large handful parsley
5 stalks kale
1/2 lemon, skin cut off

Always refreshing and delicious as an afternoon snack! Or anytime snack. The ginger and lemon tend to be just the pick me up I need when I’m tempted to hit the “on” switch on my coffee maker for the second time in a day. Committed though I may be to my morning Joe, fresh, nutrient rich juice is so much more sustaining as an energy source.

That’s about it for now, folks—biochem calls. Hope you all love this dressing as much as I instantly did, and that your Mondays get off to a good start!!

xo

Man. The funnest part of writing out raw recipe names is seeing how many things will go in quotation marks

After two days of awesome conversation, I think it’s time to turn to something we can all agree on: our love of great, raw recipes. This one was the highlight of last week’s dinners.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that student life makes it a challenge to prepare proper, homemade dinners during the week. I do, though, have weekends on which to prepare soups and stews—like my butternut squash and split pea, which many of you have tried and love already—grain dishes, pastas, and more. What I’ve had less time for, in the end, is any significant array of raw entrees. Not raw meals, per se—I have plenty of nutrient dense salad dinners, plenty of collard wraps, and plenty of raw soups. But when it comes to more elaborate raw meals—“cookbook meals,” I call them—I’ve fallen short.

It’s partly a matter of creativity: I find that constructing a raw entrée that’s not a salad takes a fair bit of creativity, and I’m a little too zapped to offer up much of it in the kitchen these days. It’s partly scheduling: many raw entrees demand time in a dehydrator or other methods of prep, and it’s time I don’t have. And it’s partly a function of weekends with M, when I tend to focus more on cooked meals we enjoy together than on the raw meals I enjoy more than he does (an interesting mini-segway into the topic of dating, eating, and relationships, right?).

So one of my goals right now is to do what I originally set out to do as a blogger, before my blog expanded and became a lot more than a raw food recipe collection: I want to share raw entrée ideas that are simple, time-saving, and that don’t demand too much fancy equipment or prep. I’ve always had a knack for this, but that knack has been tested by the hustle and bustle of school, late night labs, and weekend commuting. It shouldn’t take much to revive it.

On the list of raw entrees that never demands too much time or planning is cauliflower rice. This is exactly what it sounds like: cauliflower that’s chopped up finely to resemble rice. In some recipes, the cauliflower is mixed with nuts or seeds. I kept it simple in this one, and just used cauliflower as a base, but I often chop in cashews or pine nuts (I will probably never be able to afford the latter again).

I made this version of “rice” on an unseasonably balmy February night last week. What better way to welcome a little gasp of spring, I thought, than with some avocado? And with that avocado, I thought to mix in some Mexican flavorings. The recipe that follows is what I came up with. It’s simple, quick, flavorful, and absolutely delicious—the best kind of raw entrée.

Raw Mexican Rice Pilaf With Spicy “Cheese” Topping (Vegan, raw, gluten free if you use shoyu)

Serves 2-3

1 small head cauliflower (or 1/2 large one), loosely chopped
1/2 large red bell pepper (or 1 small), chopped
1/2 lb green string beans, raw or blanched or lightly steamed, then chopped
1/2 large avocado, chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
2-3 tsps agave (use your own taste here)
2 tsps nama shoyu or tamari
1 tsp cumin
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
Black pepper to taste (if you make the topping below, you may not need this)
1/2 tsp coriander

For the spicy “cheese topping”

1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup cashews
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
Cayenne pepper to taste

1) Place the cauliflower in a food processor…

…and process till it resembles rice, like so:

You should do this by pulsing it repeatedly, and not by turning the motor on, which may over-process the rice.

2) Empty the cauliflower into a bowl and toss it with the lime, agave, shoyu or tamari, spices, and the chopped veggies.

3) To make the spicy topping (optional), process all ingredients in a food processor till well mixed.

4) Serve the cauliflower rice alongside other veggies, on top of a salad, or to accompany a grain, bean, or soy-based entree with similar flavors. Top it with the spicy topping, and enjoy!

My rice went over kale salad. Are we surprised?

What a fabulous and easy dinner! Note that you could also throw in different vegetables: I think tomatoes, corn, and carrots would all be great.

Since it’s another goal of mine to talk about power foods lately, this is also a powerful meal: healthy fat from avocado, protein from the nutritional yeast, Vitamins C and K from the cauliflower, and any nutrient you can think of from the kale.

Like this recipe? You should also check out my chard leaves stuffed with Middle Eastern rice!

Happy almost Friday!

xo

Hey all!

So happy you liked the cheesy red pepper hemp dip. I’m happy to report that I’ve been eating it virtually nonstop this week, and not only as a dip! This versatile dip/sauce/dressing has made its way into raw pasta dishes, a few wraps, a salad or two, and more than one snack plates since Monday. I love it, and I’ll be making a double batch on Sunday when I prep for next week.

Well over a year ago, I blogged about one of my favorite raw foods: kelp noodles. If you missed that post and you’ve never heard of kelp, let alone a kelp noodle, let me recap: Kelp noodles are made from all natural, raw kelp that has been stripped of its outer skin (leaving a clear, thin interior). They’re then preserved in sodium alginate, a natural salt that’s also seaweed derived. They require no heating, prepping, or soaking (unless you want to soak them), and they keep for up to six months in the packaging they’re sent in. Best of all? They’re crunchy, fresh tasting, and, unlike other sea veggies, they’re not at all “fishy.”

They taste so neutral, in fact, that they’re a downright ideal substitute for regular pasta. Unlike conventional pasta, however, they’re raw, vegan, gluten free, and boast all of the benefits of sea veggies, including thyroid function, metabolic support, and iodine (for more on my adoration of sea vegetables and some fun facts about iodine, check out this post). They also contain a surprising 15% of your DV of calcium! They are not, however, calorically dense (we’re talking 15 kcal for a serving), so you have to be sure, if you eat them, to eat them with a sauce or other food that provides some proper caloric density, or be mindful of it at other moments of the day.

You all know that I love my zucchini pasta, and I’m also very fond of many whole grain, vegan pastas, such as the Eden brand kamut spirals or the Tinkyada brand of rice pasta. But kelp noodles really might top my list. You can’t beat them for convenience — I can literally pull them out of the package and plate them — nor for texture and neutral taste. They’re also delicious boiled — they soften up, so anyone who isn’t into their usual crunch will find that they’re more palatable that way, if no longer technically “raw.”

The problem with kelp noodles is that they’re devilishly hard to find. I really prefer the Sea Tangle brand to all others, but I rarely ever see it in stores, so I always have to order online. And if you’re about to ask me how to get your hands on some of them, I have to give you the same advice: I don’t know of many stores that carry kelp noodles, so ordering them directly from Sea Tangle is probably your best bet.

Fortunately, I did happen to find kelp noodles at High Vibe this week. Ecstatic, I bought three package — kelp noodles for weeks! (That’s a lie: given how I eat, they’ll probably last me, oh, a couple days.) Last night, still in the first flush of love with my cheesy red pepper and hemp dip, I decided to use it as a noodle sauce. The result? This deliciousness:

Kelp Noodles, dressed with cheesy red pepper and hemp dip and served with a big kale and spinach salad:

I couldn’t have asked for a tastier way to bring kelp noodles back into my life! This dinner got two big thumbs up from me, and it’s definitely what’s on the menu tonight.

Speaking of menus, I’m in the middle of a desk lunch, and itching to focus on my food. Before I go, though, I wanted to share a little Q&A from my last set of comments. Reader Teresa wrote:

Your meals always look so good. I especially love the wrap paired up with a gorgeous salad. I have a question….I am fairly new in discovering a whole new healthy way of eating…Do you ever get tierd of eating so healthy? Any cravings like something out of the way you eat on a daily basis. I’ve omitted coffee but still like the smell of fresh brewed beans—-I’ve given up eating meat —-but I still crave them when I see others eating them. Just curious on your opinion.

I wrote back,

Hey Teresa,

Well, if coffee is what you’re talking about, I’m sure you’ll have seen the many posts where I talk about being a coffee fanatic, yeah? I drink it every morning, and I don’t find that it interferes with my health.

As for “unhealthy” food, I hope it’s not too annoying to say no, I really don’t. I haven’t eaten red meat since I was little (by choice), don’t have a taste for any popular processed snack foods (like Cheetos or whatnot), and don’t have a problematic sweet tooth. So the closest I get to junk food cravings is usually cravings for carob covered rice cakes, or the rare hankering for toffuti cream cheese. And if I’m ever dying for either food, I go right ahead and have it (ok, the Toffuti is less likely, because its partially hydrogenated and thus pretty nast to me, but the carob rice cakes, or perhaps some soy chocolate pudding? Heck yes.).

I get asked this question a lot, and I think that the real answer you’re looking for is this: I don’t crave “unhealthy” food because I eat three very substantial, very nutrient rich meals a day, and I snack when I feel like it. I heed unusual food cravings when I have them (like the above–I have zero problem indulging a craving that’s a little out of the ordinary), but to be honest, it’s once in a blue moon, and that’s simply because I never feel overly starved or deprived. Most women I see who crave stimulating foods — like processed foods or too many sweets — are simply not eating enough, period. They’re eating mini meals or skimping at various moments in the day, and compensating with snacky or junky cravings as a result. Satiety with nourishing whole foods is really, really key!

Gena

PS. Teresa, I also put “unhealthy” in quotes because I really don’t like talking about food in good/bad forbidden/allowed dichotomies.

I should also have added that I never, ever feel like I’m trying to “stick to” a healthy diet. I eat exactly in accordance with my tastes: you’ll never see food on this blog that I ate only because I thought it would be good for me, or that leaves me only half-satisfied and wanting more. You’ll also never hear me talking about food I lust after that isn’t a part of my diet, because there are no such foods: it’s safe to say that I eat a whole lot of everything I really like. And I feel so lucky that I have the means to fill my fridge with foods that give me pleasure.

So, raw kale salads, collard wraps, beans, greens, veganism: these habits don’t stem from a sense of duty. Well, that’s not entirely true: I do feel an ethical imperative to live a vegan life, so in that sense I feel that veganism is my duty as a person. But what I mean is that my sense of obligation to live the way I live is never an unpleasant one, or one that I resent: it’s in keeping with my desires. And in that sense I suppose it isn’t duty at all, so much as choice.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that’s where the blog URL came from

What about you, dear readers? Where do your healthy food choices come from? And equally important: what are occasional cravings you like to heed? Does anyone else like carob covered rice cakes as much as I do?

I’ll be back later this weekend from upstate. I’ll be up there for a memorial, sadly, but with Chloe, which is wonderful no matter what the circumstance.

xo

I suppose it’s unavoidable that, when you’re been writing a food blog for a certain amount of time, you begin to forget about past recipes. Finding them is like stumbling upon a garment you bought years ago, and left to flounder in the back of your closet. You think, “Oh right! This shirt.”

That’s precisely what happened this week when I was attempting to organize my recipe tab (don’t hold your breath, friends: I didn’t get far). I saw a recipe for red pepper and hemp soup, and I though, “oh right. This soup!” At first, I wanted to make it again, right away: I love all of the flavors, and I almost always have all of the ingredients on hand from July-November (side note: organic bell peppers are a fortune, and while I’m generally chillaxed about shopping organic—which is to say that I don’t always do it—bell peppers are proud members of the dirty dozen, and so I typically say organic or nothin.’ This means I eat them like crazy in late summer and through the fall, and eat them less often in winter and spring).

But I wasn’t really feeling a soup, to be honest. Instead, I wanted a dressing/dip. Dressings and dips are vital parts of my weekly un-cooking roster: I use them on my salads, I use them as dips for veggies when I want a crunchy snack, I use them to dip wraps in, as spreads on raw or cooked sammies, or as sauce for a ‘zeke tortilla pizza. In short, dips get a lot of Choosing Raw love, and I’m always looking for more recipes.

With red peppers and hemp seeds on my mind, I decided to turn my long lost soup into a newfound dip, and the results were awesome. This dip is very cheesy (thanks to the nooch), very sweet (thanks to the pepper), and very nourishing (thanks to the healthy fat, the omega fatty acids, and the exceptional protein count). What’s not to like?

Cheesy Red Pepper Dip (yields about 2 cups)

1 extra large red bell pepper (or 2 regular sized)
1 heaping cup hemp seeds
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp nama shoyu or tamari
1/2 tsp mild curry powder
1/4 cup water

Pile ingredients in a high speed blender, and begin mixing (you’ll want to use the plunger!). You’ll note that my recipe only calls for 1/4 cup water: that’s because liquid in the dressing will vary based on the pepper you use! If you find that your dip is super thick, simply add water as you go along. If you like really thick dips, just leave it as is.

When the dip is super smooth and creamy, taste it, and add lemon and nama shoyu as needed. Next up, serve!

I’ve been loving this dip in all sorts of ways. I enjoy it as a dip (pictured with a button mushroom for a certain special client of mine who’s always looking for button mushroom dipping ideas!)

Salad in background

And tonight, with dreams of my dinner at Cafe Gratitude in mind, I served it as a dip for collard wraps. My wraps certainly weren’t as good as CG’s, but the dip was perfect:

Served up with kale salad and sweet ‘taters:

Hands down, an awesome dinner. This sauce will remind anyone who’s tried cheesy kale chips (a raw food staple) of the cheese sauce one uses to coat the kale pre-dehydration. So it’s basically like eating icing without cupcakes.

Not a bad thing, at least in my mind.

And for those of you who have protein on your mind (especially in light of Monday’s convo), you’ll be happy to know that a 2 tbsp serving of this dip has 7 grams of protein, while a 3 tbsp serving has 11 grams. Not bad for a condiment! Pair this with other high protein plant foods, and you’ll have quite a protein-rich meal. It’s also a nice way to squeeze a little protein action into otherwise lower-protein wraps, snack plates, etc. Win win!

Speaking of hemp, did you notice that Evan recently made my hemp milk? And liked it? Thanks, Evan!

What’s your favorite use for hempseeds? Would love to know.

xo

Happy weekend!

Those were some absolutely stellar responses to my post on reconciling veganism with intuitive eating! For those of you who commented early on, go back and check out some of the conversations that emerged in the comments section: really rad stuff.

Yesterday, my sweet friend Angela tweeted me to ask how my name is pronounced — like “Gina” or like “Jenna?” She was making a how-to video on her vegan overnight oats (which you should all watch) and she’d pronounced my name like “Gina.” The back and forth sent off a flurry of tweets from surprised readers; apparantly, most of you have thought of me as a “Gina” all this time! Well, I hate to break it to you, dear readers, but my name is most definitely pronounced like “Jenna.” I know the spelling is misleading–the only other Gena I know who’s pronounced like “Jenna” is Gena Rowlands–but there it is!

For the record, it’s short for Eugenia. Unfortunately. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)

However you’d like to think of me–as a Gena, a Gina, a Jenna, or even Eugenia–I hope you think of me when you see food like this:

That’s zucchini pasta served over mixed greens with bell pepper, half an avocado, red pepper marinara sauce, and leftover roast kabocha squash. In other words, heaven on a placemat.

I’d forgotten how much I love to mush avocado into my zucchini pasta and marinara sauce–it makes the bowl so much creamier and rich. Yum! I think that signature meals like this are probably easier to remember than my short, yet confusing name, no?

I hope you’re enjoying a great start to the long weekend, friends. This is my last respite before a very busy two months descend, so I’m trying to prepare for the road ahead and get a little R&R in, too. I’ll be back soon–in the meantime, happy Memorial Day weekend!

xo

Ah, fall. Season of soups.

You guys know by now that I love raw soups. Which is a little funny, since I was never a fan of cooked soups. Or rather, I was never a fan of cooked soups with lots of stuff in them: chicken noodle, minestrone, miso, vegetable barley, whatever. I could handle the blended, creamy ones: butternut squash, cream (ew) of leek, cream (ew) of mushroom, carrot—but that makes sense, since those are the soups that raw soups most closely resemble.

To make a long and not very cool story short: I like creamy soups. I really like them even better when they’re raw. The end.

Why are raw soups so great? Well, for one thing, they’re chock full of enzymes, nutrients, and fiber, but their blended texture makes them highly digestible. This means they’re great for anyone who suffers from impaired digestion, or simply for any occasion when you need to give your digestive system a little TLC (illness; pre- or post-workout; when you’re rundown). They’re also quick and easy: raw soups don’t require making a perfect roux, waiting for vegetables to soften, or spending hours watching a pot simmer. And for most of us, soups evoke sweet childhood memories of simplicity and comfort.

If the thought of eating soups cold upsets you, don’t be deterred: it’s perfectly OK to heat them gently over a very low flame until they’re room temperature. If you’re not strictly raw and don’t care to be, go ahead and warm them up as much as you’d like!

You’ll be seeing a ton of soups—probably more than you’d like to see—as the weather cools down. I’m starting my soup marathon with a new recipe I tried out last week (my friend Cassie is finishing off my leftovers!): red pepper and hemp soup.

I wasn’t sure about this one: hemp is such a distinctive flavor that I worried it might overpower the peppers. But after my success with creamy hemp basil sauce, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. And it didn’t. Quite the contrary. This soup is sweet, creamy, and a little nutty tasting, but what really makes it shine is the kick from lemon juice and turmeric. It’s quick, nourishing, and—for those of you who are hung up on that whole protein thing—rich in protein, too. Enjoy it!

Red Pepper and Hemp Soup

Ingredients:

2 extra large (or 3 regular) red peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
½ cup hemp seeds
½ tsp salt
2 tbsps lemon juice
½ tsp curry powder
¼ tsp turmeric
1 tsp Braggs liquid aminos
Black pepper to taste
2/3 cup water (or to taste – this will depend on how thick or thin you like your soup)

Procedure:

Place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth and creamy. You may want to begin with ½ cup water and adjust based on texture as you go along!

You can add garlic or onion to the soup. If you’re into that.

Of course, soup is lonely without a giant salad by its side:

Spinach, radicchio, broccoli. All together now:

Hope you all had a great weekend. I’ll be back this week with a cooked recipe, a question of the week, and more!

xo