Celebrating an all-natural lifestyle

Vegan Corn and Zucchini Pancakes

It’s always nice when a recipe you like seems to “take off” with other bloggers. This has been true recently of my sweet potato and chickpea burgers, which Matt and Katie have made recently, as well as a bunch of other bloggers and readers who have emailed me or left comments on the original post. Thank you guys for trying the recipe out! I hope you’ve enjoyed the sweet, dense taste and texture as much as I did when I first made the burgers.

My experience with the sweet potato burgers got me hooked on chickpea flour. Versatile, high-protein, and possessed of a starchy texture that’s fairly unique, chickpea flour is ideal for all sorts of pancakes, burgers, and bread recipes. Just check out the Twins’ socca adventures if you’re looking to be inspired!

I’ve been enamored of chickpea flour as a burger ingredient, but this week I wondered whether or not I might extend its powers to the world of pancake making. Not sweet pancakes, but savory ones. Back before I became a vegan, I had a zucchini pancake recipe I loved, which came together with shredded zucchini, flour, and egg whites. I’ve long wanted to veganize it and amp up the color with more veggies. On Monday, with some corn and red pepper in hand (ah, summer produce!) I decided I’d give a zucchini and corn pancake a shot—made with chickpea flour as a binder, of course, and with flax as an egg replacer. The results were great!

With most of my raw recipes, I remind you guys that most substitutions and tweaks at home are just fine—they won’t do much to disturb taste or flavor. With anything involving flour and flax, however, I tend to say that it’s best to stick to instruction, because small changes might really affect texture and results. If you make these, then, try to stick to the instructions.

Corn and Zucchini Pancakes (makes 4 large pancakes)

1 small zucchini, shredded
Kernels from 1 large ear corn
1 red pepper, chopped
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
6 tbsp chickpea flour
1 tsp non-aluminum baking powder
1/4 cup flax meal + 6 tbsp water, mixed 5 min prior to making pancake batter and set aside
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp Herbamare or Spike
1/2 tsp cumin
Dash red pepper flakes (to taste)

1) Preheat a griddle or large saute pan over a medium flame. Spray or rub it with coconut oil—just enough for pancake making.

2) Mix all ingredients together.

3) As if you were making regular pancakes, drop the batter by 2-tbsp servings onto the griddle, and wait until the bottom side is nicely browned. Flip, and cook till second side is browned.

4) Serve!

These are fresh, sweet, and tasty:

And I imagine they’d be equally perfect for breakfast OR dinner. For my part, I enjoyed them over a big raw kale salad (how else?):

A few months ago, I made raw and cooked versions of homemade Sunshine burgers, which also got some nice reader feedback. You guys will be glad to know that I’m hard at work on a perfect raw version of these corn and zucchini pancakes, so stay tuned! It’s time to take advantage of the last few bushels of summer produce.

On that note, I have a long and busy Saturday ahead of me. I hope you guys have a great one—if you’re in NYC, enjoy the sun for me—and I’ll be back tomorrow.

xo

Operation Organization: Snack Chips

Hey guys!

Happy Memorial Day. It’s warm and sunny here in NYC, so I hope anyone who’s local is taking some time to enjoy the weather and soak up a little vitamin D!

Starting tomorrow, my schedule will be shifting–not, I’m afraid, for the better. Between this coming week and the end of July, I’ll be working later than usual–probably till 9:30 or 10:00 pm each night. This has some unpleasant side effects–less time with my friends, later bedtimes (because I’ll have counseling work to do when I get home), and less time to enjoy the long daylight hours. But it’s professionally important, so I’m making the best of it!

The real downside of working later will be having less time to cook. Sad face! Creating nourishing and tasty food is my favorite hobby and one of my only creative outlets; it is also, obviously, a huge part of my work as a blogger. I hope you’ll all bear with me patiently for the next two months as I work my derriere off, forgiving me when creative recipes don’t go up as often as usual. August will afford me more time for fresh and innovative food: that’s a promise!

Working past 8:00 pm means dinner at the desk (or on the go). This, in turn, means that, for the next 6-8 weeks, I’ll be packing all three meals and snacks every single weekday. Ooof! This will require

• Superhuman organization
• Weekend planning
• Efficient leftover usage
• Remembering to freeze excess food
• Keeping a checklist in my head each morning of what I’ll need for the day, so that I pack it all accordingly.

I’ve certainly gone through periods of late working hours like this before, so I know what I need to do: the trick is staying energetic and organized, so that I don’t fall into the habit of squandering money on takeout or the Whole Foods salad bar.

Packing three meals a day also means relying on more prepared foods than I usually do, which is sort of a bummer in that it quashes my love for all things spontaneous and fresh, but absolutely necessary for my schedule (and sanity). In this busy period of time–and whenever I’m away from my apartment more than usual–foods that will keep me going include:

• Nutrient dense salads, packed up the night before work
• Sprouted bread sandwiches, filled with marinated veggies, avocado and greens, hummus, or other veggie-based fillings
• PB and banana on manna bread. A comfort food fave.
• Grain salads–favorite bases for these include quinoa, millet, wheatberries (sprouted or boiled), and brown rice
• Raw collard wraps, with various nut pates and nut cheezes as fillings
• Snack plates of hummus or nut butter and raw veggies
• Kale chips
• Larabars, Wild Bars, and Flying Vegan bars (for more on my top energy bar picks, check out this recent post)
• Homemade raw trail mix
• Lydia’s raw crackers
• Soups and curries — easy to prepare on weekends and easy to freeze for future consumption
• Brown rice sushi rolls from Whole Foods when I’m feeling lazy

Naturally, other foods will make appearances in what I’m eating, but these will be the fundamentals. Stable, quick to prepare, and transportable.

Another food trend I expect in the next two months is increased use of my dehydrator. You all know how I feel about the dehydrator: it’s not an appliance I use often, and if I hadn’t been gifted with one, I wouldn’t have invested in it: since I’m not strict on the 115 degree law (or enzyme theory in general), I’d be content to bake food at a very low temperature in my oven. However, I do have a dehydrator, and it will come in handy in the coming weeks, as I work to prepare foods on the weekend that will remain shelf-stable and snackable.

This weekend, I decided to fire up the dehydrator with my first batch of portable snacks: veggie chips. In spite of the fact that I have almost no memory of eating regular potato chips (I know I did when I was little, but I don’t remember, and didn’t have much sentimental attachment to them), I do love a bit of crunch in my life, and I love it even more when it comes with some vitamins and nutrients. What could be better for this than veggie chips, which are painless to make and lack the sodium and low-quality fat content of conventional chips?

Making veggie chips is truly a cinch. Slice whatever veggies you’re using (eggplant, zucchini, yam, white potato, turnip, carrot, parsnip, etc.) very thinly–I’d say 1/8 inch is ideal–on a mandolin, in a food processor, or by hand. Toss them in a bit of olive oil or coconut oil, salt, pepper, and any spices you like (Italian spices are great; so is cumin or chili powder, especially on sweet potatoes or yams). Next, arrange all veggies on mesh dehydrator sheets (covered with Teflex if you like) and dehydrate for about 5-8 hours, or however long it takes for the chips to dry out and get crunchy. I used zucchini and sweet potato, like so:

After a night in my dehydrator, they were crispy, salty, and ready for munching! I served them as appetizers in a special lunch for my Mom yesterday:

From left to right, that’s leftover tomato tahini kale chips, sweet potato chips, and zucchini chips (which my friend Bitt has also made!).  They were a hit, and I’ve got a ton leftover to pack up for snackage this week. It’s one small item to check off my planning ahead list, and it couldn’t possibly have been easier to accomplish.

Before I sign off for the day, I wanted to share this week’s nutrient dense salad:

That’s chopped sweet potato, massaged kale, white beans, marinated and dehydrated broccoli and fennel, and zucchini dressing.

With that, I’m off to get some editing, reading, and more logistical planning done before the week begins. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, wish me luck!!

xo

Broccoli Hummus Recipe

How do I love thee, hummus? Let me count the ways:

I love my zucchini hummus. I love my digestive-friendly hummus. I love hummus in wraps, on salads, and served up with veggies for dipping. I love it almost as much as I love my guac, and sometimes more. No matter how you slice or dice it, I’m a hummus fiend.

My friend Caroline is a hummus fiend, too. And as it turns out, she’s also a lover of broccoli (in fact, that most beloved of crucifers is nestled snugly in her blog title). Recently, as I was reading Caroline’s blog, I thought, “Hmm. Broccoli+hummus. Broccoli hummus?” Heck, if I could make it out of raw zucchini, then surely I could make it out of broccoli, too?

The problem was that I worried about the bitterness of raw broccoli. Dearly though I love that veggie in any shape or form, it tends to pack a spicy (and not always pleasing) bite when we’re lovin’ it in the raw. Still, recent experiments with a broccoli-tahini pate had given me encouragement that raw broccoli can, with the right balance of flavors, be perfectly mellow. And so, with Miss Caroline in mind, I set out to concoct a recipe for a raw hummus that’s simple, tasty, and that tempers the bitterness of raw broc.

The key, it turned out, was to mix broccoli and zucchini together in equal parts. The rest was predictable: tahini, a little nooch (that’s nutritional yeast for you non-vegans), some salt, pepper, and even a squirt of mustard, and my perfect broccoli hummus–all raw and vegan–came to be. I spent the better part of my weekend doing away with the stuff, but graciously saved a photo for you all from today’s lunch, at work:

Caroline, this baby’s for you.

Gena’s (Raw) Broccoli Hummus (yields about 1 1/2 – 2 cups)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups raw broccoli, chopped
1 1/2 cups raw zucchini, chopped
1/3 cup raw sesame tahini (substitute regular tahini if that’s what you have)
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp organic mustard (totally optional)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cumin
3 tbsp lemon juice
Freshly ground pepper

Place the veggies into your processor and process till finely chopped. Add remaining ingredients, and blend till smooth. This will mean stopping a few times to scrape your bowl!

If the mix is too thick — which it may well be — add a thin stream of water or more lemon juice to thin it out. I like my hummus very thick, and the zucchini adds liquid, so I only added a few tablespoons of water as I went along.

What’s a better way to pack nutrition into your lunch than to infuse your hummus with green power? This is a great way to get kids to eat their broccoli (or, if you’re a broccoli fanatic like Caroline, to find ways to eat more of the stuff). And it’s also just a darn tasty recipe, which I think you’ll all love. It’s great on its own, but I’ve already enjoyed it in raw wraps and scooped atop salads, as pictured in this post.

So next time you whip up a batch of chickpea crack hummus, keep this variety in mind. Your body will thank you for the boost of calcium and protien, and your palate will thank you, period.

Before I go, a note to people who use Google Reader: last night, a few of you let me know that my posts were just showing up as blurbs. This was not intentional–I was fiddling with some techie stuff for the blog and changed it by accident–so no need to, um, freak out at me, as a few of you did! My settings are back to normal, and my posts should show up in full next time.

xo

Desk Lunch Zucchini Wraps

Hey all!

As I mentioned in my last post, this is a nonstop week, and next week is looking exactly the same. What does this mean? Meals on the go!

With that in mind, I thought I’d share part of yesterday’s desk lunch with you.

Some people hate to eat at their desks: I’ve never been among them! In fact, I count myself lucky when I have the chance to eat at my desk (as opposed to a mind-numbing business lunch, or lunch on the go between clients, etc.). Sure, I’d rather be eating at home, but if I can take thirty minutes to appreciate my meal, the New York Times, a blog or two, or even some email writing, I’m happy.

Yesterday, I got to appreciate a new recipe while playing a brief round of blog catch up. My raw zucchini wraps were part of Sunday’s marathon of food prep. I’ve been searching for an easy raw wrap recipe for a long for a long time. Wraps are one of my favorite lunch foods, and while I often use sprouted grain wraps to make them, they get boring after a while! Given my general fondness for zucchini, I thought that the zucchini wraps I stumbled on in this book

Would be a perfect template. A few tweaks, and my own raw zucchini wraps were born:

Raw Zucchini Wraps (yields 2-4)

1 large zucchini, chopped
1 cup water
3/4 cup flax seeds
1/3 tsp salt
Dash pepper

Blend all ingredients in a Vitamix, starting on the lowest setting and turning the dial up slowly. When the mix is smooth, spread it at about 1/4″ thickness onto two paraflex sheets and dehydrate at 110 degrees for at least four hours (I needed 5ish).

Using a knife, separate wraps from the paraflex sheet. Cut in half, and store them in an airtight container and in the fridge. They ought to keep for at least a week. The color ain’t pretty, but they’re quite tasty!

You can use these as wraps for avocado sandwiches, guac and veggies, hummus, nut pate, or any other filling you fancy! I kept it simple yesterday with julienned veggies and some creamy dressing (forgive the little tear in my wrap — I never said I was good at dehydrator recipes!):

Alongside a hefty salad, these were a tasty and fun meal.

A creative and enjoyable lunch is a lovely way to add some brightness to the start of the work week. May you all have at least a few lunches in the coming days that make you smile!

xo