Food · Eco-Chick

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Rachel Avalon’s Vegan Smoothie Recipe (Plus: The Good for You – and the Planet – Protein Powder)

I’ve never tried rice protein powder before, I’m going to check it out after seeing this video! I love smoothies for breakfast….

Healthy Smoothie Recipe: Holistic Secrets with Rachel Avalon from Rachel Avalon on Vimeo.

breakfast, Food, health, vegan

Superfilling Breadless High Protein Vegan Lunch Roll

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by Starre Vartan · 04/13/11

Don’t get me wrong; I have little to no problem with carbs. I don’t eschew bread when it appears on restaurant tables, and I thought that Dr. Atkins was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But some days, I want a break, a chance to veggie-up and lighten the digestive load, while still enjoying a sandwich that’s easy and filling. I came up with this sandwich, which uses collard greens instead of a wheat wrap, and whose filling has plenty of protein and flavor, making it a seriously satisfying sandwich.

To Make:

-Wash and rinse a large collard green leaf
-Spread a 1/4 cup layer of red quinoa (see nutrition details here) over the leaf, leaving a good 1/2 inch around the edge uncovered
-Dress with your favorite dressing; I like Goddess dressing by Annie’s for tang and non-dairy creaminess.
-Add tomatoes, sprouts, and grated carrots spread over quinoa and dressing, concentrating in the middle
-Lay 4-5 pieces of drained, raw tofu down the middle (about 1/2 cup or a 1/4 of a block)
-Roll up, burrito-style!

Nutrition Estimates (these are just my homemade calculations here):
Calories: 400
Protein: 17 grams
Fiber: 5 grams

Food, healthy, recipe, vegan

Ani Phyo’s Healthfully Decadent Raw Coconut Kream Recipe

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by Starre Vartan · 02/02/11

Dessert has always been my favorite part of any meal (though I do love apps!) and while I’ve managed to tame my sweet tooth in the last few years, I’ve by no means eliminated it. (By tame I mean I can get my sweet-happys from maple syrup, honey, and desserts made with fruit and less sugar.) Frankly, I’d rather carry around an extra five pounds than skip desserts, in all their toothsome glory. But I try to concoct or uncover desserts that are healthy as well as tasty. Just because it’s dessert doesn’t mean that it has to be a nutrition wasteland!

So stumbling upon Ani Phyo’s wonderful raw dessert cookbook (with 85 recipes!) was a coup. As you may already know, raw foods retain all sorts of wonderful enzymes, vitamins and minerals, plus are less ‘predigested’ (I know it’s a bit gross, but that’s basically what cooking is; partial digestion of food before you eat it). That means your body has to work a bit harder to digest, which makes you feel full longer and is actually really good for your gut. All of which means you get more nutrition and eat less when you go raw. While I’m not a raw foodist by any means, I’m going on my 19th year of vegetarianism and love the way whole foods that are minimally processed taste and make me feel. And the more I’ve read about the benefits of raw, the more I try to incorporate it into my diet.
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art, book, car, chocolate, Coconut Oil, cookbook, cooking, dessert, desserts, eating, epa, farm, filter, Food, fruit, health, healthy, Milk, natural, New York, ny, oil, raw, raw food, recipe, recipes, soda, sugar, Tea, vegan, vegetarian, vitamins, waste, water, Winter

The Homesteader’s Kitchen Recipe: Apple-Raspberry Crisp for Autumn’s Bounty

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by Starre Vartan · 09/07/10

I’m totally in love with The Homesteader’s Kitchen, and I was lucky enough to secure a fun-to-try (ad supereasy) recipe from the book. I love that the ingredients for the filling for this crisp are so simple, relying on the fresh sweetness of the apples and raspberries for flavor rather than a bunch of add-ins. Ditto for the crisp topping; I have all these ingredients in my pantry already. This is a great recipe for children or new bakers as it will be very tough to screw up!

Choose organic apples and raspberries (or pick your own) where you can, and remember, a dessert this healthy also makes a wonderful breakfast (try sheep’s milk yogurt instead of a la mode to add a shot of AM protein to the dish).

Apple-Raspberry Crisp

Serves 6-8
Topping:
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 –inch pieces
1 cup sucanat or brown sugar
½ cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon, optional

8 cups sliced firm apples (8 to 10 whole apples or 2 to 3 pounds)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour or tapioca powder
4 cups fresh raspberries
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apples, crisp, dessert, Food, local, recipe

Two Beautifully Useful Whole Foods Cookbooks

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by Starre Vartan · 08/23/10

See, I’m putting in serious effort at learning to cook!

My love of food comes from three main sources; one primal, one inculcated, the third learned as an adult. First, my natural appetite for delicious, healthy meals and snacks is fairly well-known (I think I can count on one hand the times in my life when I wasn’t hungry!), and I can eat absolutely anything, with no known food allergies or sensitivities.

Second, my grandma raised me on garden-fresh produce and a combo of Lebanese (hummous, tabouli and pilaf being staples), Armenian that she learned from her mother-in-law as a young wife (green bean and local beef stews, lentil dishes, chee kufta), Jewish (picked up through osmosis as she grew up in NYC- she made a killer matzoh ball soup for an Episcopalian!) and American food from the Joy of Cooking and the Settlement Cookbook (written in 1901 and hilariously subtitled “The Way to a Man’s Heart”). Grams was a legendary cook, and I was lucky to grow up in a home where 90% of what I ate was made from scratch (we even had our own apiary for the freshest of honey, and eggs from the chickens that roamed the woods between our house and our neighbors’. And homemade bread!).

Third, for three years, I wrote about food for The Fairfield County Weekly, a job that gave me a culinary education in my twenties I couldn’t have paid for. (Actually, I paid for it as I gained about 15 pounds during my tenure at that job! But honestly, it was kinda worth it.) I got to eat at pretty much every restaurant in Fairfield County, which is in Connecticut just north of New York City, and has a very rich combination of predominantly Italian and Greek cuisines, which has been supplemented more recently by excellent Indian and Asian, and in the last 5-7 years wonderful raw, vegetarian and health foods.

But truth be told, I’m not the world’s most accomplished cook, though I can put together a beautifully-sourced, complementary tableaux of appetizers. But when it comes to cooking a ‘real’ meal, my only saving grace is those great ingredients and some talent with baking pies and cookies (so at least I end on a good note!). The last few years, however, I’ve made a slow and determined march forward in teaching myself to cook, and recently have been enjoying the books below. While I’ve been vegetarian for 17 years, both these books are great for veg and non-veg alike (I use them regularly without problem, but there are plenty of meaty dishes in each too). What unites the two tomes is that they focus on local, healthy, seasonal, whole foods cooking, which I am naturally drawn to as it’s what I was raised on.

In the Green Kitchen, by Alice Waters

This is not a traditional cookbook, though it does contain plenty of recipes. But instead of simply a compendium of delicious food combinations, this book focuses on what kitchen pioneer Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse restaurant and Edible Schoolyard fame) has realized was missing from the aspiring conscious chef’s shelf: A technique-driven, full-of-instructions volume that includes how to’s from the prosaic to the intimidating.
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California, chefs, cookbook, cooking, Food, recipes, vegetarian