Archive | September, 2015

Pumpkin Spiced Carrot & Walnut Milk

Published on in Breakfast, Drink, Freeze-able, Nightshade-free, Nuts, Raw, Roots, Snack By |
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After a long, hot summer, the leaves are finally starting to get crunchy less due to dehydration and more because IT’S FALL! Sweaters, boots, umbrellas, more leg hair, less squinting, phantom back to school anxiety, warm breakfasts, soup, and pumpkin spiced everything.

I love the smell of pumpkin pie baking in the oven but have always been disappointed by the pumpkin pie itself. I feel a bit guilty about this because I was born on Halloween and I feel like pumpkins and I should be kindred spirits. Also, pumpkin pie is my husband’s favourite dessert of all time, which means I make it at least once a year. That or rice pudding. I know.

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Belgian Endive Salad with Fresh Figs & Hazelnuts

Published on in Fruit, Greens, Main course, Nightshade-free, Nuts, Raw, Salad, Salad dressing By |
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This is not your every day salad. It is inspired by a salad I used to make 50+ times a night at a sweet French restaurant in Vancouver in my late teens/early twenties. Every ingredient spoke to me and I literally craved it when I wasn’t at work. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that unlike the other things I was grazing on all night at work (leftover duck fat pomme rissolées and a staff jar of nutella, poorly hidden on the pastry shelf), this salad alone is what gave me the energy I needed to get through a long service every night.

Belgian endive (a form of chicory) also known as witloof (white leaf) is a pale, torpedo-shaped….lettuce option. It is pale because it doesn’t see the light of day, so it doesn’t form chlorophyll. Even at the grocery story, you’ll often find it hiding in the box it came in. If you work for a French chef, you will get in trouble for not putting the lid back on the box when you grab a handful of them from the walk-in mid-service. They like it dark.

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Black Sesame Kale Gomae

Published on in Freeze-able, Greens, Nightshade-free, Raw, Salad, Sauce, Seeds By |
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You know when you’re starving and you go to a restaurant and can’t wait for them to make your food so you order an appetizer that you know will be quick so that you don’t ruin lunch by being a hangry jerk? That’s how I was introduced to gomae salad.

I have since gotten my blood sugar under control and am generally a nicer person now but my gomae love persists.

Sushi restaurants are abundant where I live. You can get decent sushi on practically every block. I am only reminded that this isn’t the norm in most of the world when my sisters come home from living abroad and want to go for sushi more times in two weeks than I have been all year. That’s a lot of deep-fried tempura potential, so gomae helps to green things up with the help of calcium-rich sesame seeds (…and questionable sugar sources).

Homemade is always better, so of course a recipe for refined sugar-free, raw sesame seed gomae needed to be in my repertoire.

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Mexican Tomato & Black Bean Soup

Published on in Freeze-able, Grains, Legumes, Main course, Soup By |
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Whenever I finish cooking for a client (their treatment is over and they are starting to feel better) we often have a conversation about how they are going to keep up the nutrient-dense way of eating on their own (without a chef).

Mexican Tomato & Black Bean Soup

My first recommendation is always juices and smoothies. I don’t have a ton of recipes on here for either (well, some, here and here) because it seems like such a simple thing to figure out on your own (is it? Should I have more?), but it is truly one of the best ways to ensure a good volume and variety of nutrients. You don’t need a lot of skill and you can consume 3-5 lbs of veg in a glass of juice and all kinds of hard-to-include-in-your-regular-diet super foods in a smoothie.

Mexican Tomato & Black Bean Soup

Those options are both raw, which is a good thing in many different ways, but it can require some balance as the cooler months come into play. Some good soup recipes can be useful, as soup is warming, nutrient-dense, savory and satisfying on many levels. It’s a bit like a cooked smoothie, offering lots of veggies, but with fewer nutrients that don’t do well in the heat and more nutrients that expand and multiply with some heat, so it literally brings something different and balancing to the table.

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