Purple Kale Slaw

This salad is refreshing and very simple to make. It's stellar ingredients offer your body a powerful combination of nutrients and delicious taste.

Ingredients:

1/2 bundle purple kale

1 small head of napa cabbage

2 handfuls of baby spinach

1 large yellow bell pepper

Dressing:

1 1/2 lemons

1 T brown rice vinegar

1 T sesame oil

salt and pepper to taste

Health Benefits:

Kale and cabbage are part of the cruciferous family of vegetables. These vegetables are known as super-veggies and are great for cancer prevention, cardiovascular disease and high in vitamin A and C. Most health agencies recommend that you eat several servings of these vegetables a week.

Sprouted Lentil Salad

This is a refreshing and filling salad. The combination of flavors is unique and the colors are very pretty to look at. It's also a good dish for making ahead of time for a party because the dish enhances it's flavor over time.

Ingredients:

1 generous handful of baby arugula

1 cup yellow lentils

1 medium cucumber

1 green pepper

1 large green apple

the juice of 3 limes

Dressing:

1 T peanut oil

2 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp ground cumin or cumin seeds

1 T dried curry leaves

Soak the yellow lentils in a large bowl filled with water several inches above the lentils for a couple hours or overnight.

Dice the cucumber, green pepper and finely dice the green apple. Combine all the ingredients in a large serving bowl and stir gently so the lime juice covers all the pieces.

Put the peanut oil in a wok and bring to a medium high heat. Add all the elements of the dressing and stir until the mustard seeds start to pop. Turn off the heat and pour over the salad. Stir the salad so the dressing mixes in thoroughly and serve or refrigerate for later.

Health Benefits:

This dish is rich in fiber and will help with weight loss. Because the salad is mostly raw, the food is loaded with nutrients and could help boost your energy.

Food Matters

Last week I rented this documentary entitled, Food Matters from my local movie spot. My mom was in town, she had a head cold and I was tired and we had about enough energy for a movie. Both of us went kinda' vegan at the same time about 3.5 years ago. We've found that if we don't cultivate our understanding of food, the body and nutrition through books, movies, trips, yoga, hikes or other means then we tend to get slack about our health. So on this weary evening, my mother and I decided that renting a movie called Food Matters, sounded like a good plan.

The documentary hits upon topics like western medicine, pharmacology, medical insurance, the importance of vitamins and whole foods in promoting health and shares many other insightful thoughts along the way. I enjoyed hearing more about these issues and feel renewed in my journey. It's a worthy hour and a half of one's day.

Avoiding Pesticides

I can't always buy organic but am still concerned with eating foods that aren't grown with pesticides. I came across this website today that ranks foods according to pesticide contamination. I didn't know that some foods tend to have more pesticides than others but according to this report they do.

http://www.foodnews.org/methodology.php

Below is the list of best and worst foods that they have ranked according to pesticide contamination.

Also, there's an interesting article that describes how large conventional farmers just received a grant from the USDA to go towards fighting this list, arguing that the list is a public health risk.

http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/tax-dollars-funding-attack-on-organic-foods/1156

Lettuce and Shiitake Sautee

Thank God, lettuce is not only for salads :)

When life tends to be colder and the days shorter, I crave steamy hot food. This is a gratifying way to prepare lettuce that will warm your insides. This dish will take you about 10-15 minutes from start to finish and is sure to satisfy.

Ingredients:

1 head of romaine or iceberg lettuce

1 very large shiitake mushroom (or 4-6 smaller)

1 T peanut oil

Sauce:

2 T Bragg's Liquid Aminos

1/2 T agave syrup

1/2 T brown rice vinegar

Wash and dry the mushroom and lettuce.

Coarsely chop the lettuce and set aside.

Add peanut oil to the wok and heat on medium high. Meanwhile, chop the mushroom into 1 inch pieces and add to the wok once it's hot. Stir constantly. Add lettuce and keep stirring. After 1 minute, turn the heat to medium and add the sauce to the wok. Keep stirring until the lettuce slightly softens and take off heat.

Ready to serve!

Health Benefits:

Lettuce

Romaine lettuce is known to have the greatest nutritional value of all the lettuce varieties. It is rich in vitamins A, B1, B2, C, folic acid, manganese and chromium. Iceberg lettuce is a good source of choline and the outer leaves may contain 50% more nutrients than the stem.

Microgreens Salad

I've been a little busy lately so I took advantage of the prepackaged greens at Trader Joe's. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, your local grocery will have similar ingredients. If they don't have microgreens then you can replace them with sprouts. This recipe is so easy and will take hardly any time to prepare.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 bag of mixed baby lettuce

1 pkg of microgreens

1 yellow bell pepper

Dressing:

the juice of 2 lemons

1 T olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Topping:

3/4 cup of roasted cashews

Chop the yellow bell pepper into bite-sized pieces. Mix all of the ingredients together into a large serving bowl.

Mix the dressing ingredients separately into a small bowl, add to the salad and mix thoroughly so that the dressing coats the salad.

Top individual salads with the cashews.

Health Benefits

Bell Peppers

Bell Peppers are high in vitamin C and A. They are good for eyesight, cardiovascular health and a protection against arthritis.

Note:

I like to buy nuts raw and roast them when I use them. This way they are fresher and more tasty. If you buy the cashews raw, set the oven to 350˚ and allow the cashews to roast for 7-9 minutes or until fragrant and lightly brown.

Also, I'm a fan of baby greens in salads, they tend to offer a subtler flavor and softer texture than more mature greens.

Sheila's Olive-Fennel Bread

Yesterday, a friend shared with me her recipe for homemade bread. The bread looks and tastes like artisan bread from a local farmer's market. So delicious!

The recipe below can be varied from olive bread to raisin walnut or garlic depending upon what you add to the mix. We made two batches, one olive-fennel and the other without the olives and with an additional touch of sesame oil.

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

1 cup soaked & cooked wheat berries

1 cup bran flakes

6 cups all purpose flour

2 cups olives (olives can be switched out with raisins, nuts, cinnamon, garlic, cheese, etc)

2 3/4 cups of liquid (water or olive juice)

heaping T of yeast

handful of fennel

handful of oat flakes

Measure yeast into a small bowl and add 1/2 cup of warm water. Stir gently and let rest for 5 minutes or until it starts to foam.

Having a Kitchen Aid for this recipe helps though it is not necessary. Place all ingredients (except for the oat flakes) into the Kitchen Aid and use the dough hook on a slow setting to mix. If not using a Kitchen Aid then stir ingredients together in a large bowl and transfer the dough to a surface sprinkled with flour and knead by hand to continue the mixing.

Add 1 T grapeseed oil to another large bowl. Once the ingredients are mixed together well then add the dough to the bowl and cover well with the oil. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag and set it aside in a warm place to let it rise. We placed the bowl on top of an oven set to 250˚ and occassionally rotated the bowl so that it warmed evenly.

The rising time may vary from season to season. In the Southern California summer it takes about 30-45 minutes and can take days in the winter. Our batch took about 45 minutes to an hour for the first rise.

While the dough is rising, sprinkle oat flakes onto a baking tray. After the dough rises once, take the dough out of the bowl place it, knead thoroughly and place on top of the oat flakes on the baking tray and shape accordingly. Cover the dough a second time, place in a warm spot and let it rise. It should take about the same time as the first rising.

Preheat the oven to 450˚. Once the dough has risen a second time, uncover it and place into the oven and splash about 1/2 cup of water on the bottom of the inside of the oven (the space below the baking tray) and close the oven door. This is done to make the bread extra crusty. Bake for 10 minutes then splash another 1/2 cup of water on the bottom of the inside of the oven again, close the door and bake at 425˚ for another 37 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven, brush with olive oil and set on a rack or on it's side to cool.

Bon Appetit!

Note:

The baking time may vary with ovens, so make sure to make adjustments. Also, to expedite the process you might want to cook the wheat berries in a large batch ahead of time and freeze one cup portions into plastic baggies. It's good to have these on hand anyways, they are good additions to oatmeal, cereals, salads and soups. Click here to check out how to cook wheat berries.