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Beet Salad with Herbed (Macadamia Nut) Ricotta

Published on in Condiment, Greens, Nightshade-free, Nuts, Roots, Salad By |
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I remember a time when beets were scary. They were vac-packed and soggy in the produce section of the grocery store, or sliced up in a can, which rarely equals delicious. Despite their endearing colour (purple, you guys!), they fell flat and tasted like dirt.

Luckily, sooo much has changed. It is now much easier to get beets that recently grew in the ground, often with their greens still intact, meaning their dirt-living life wasn’t too long ago. It’s natural that their earthy flavour still lingers, but that natural sweetness that comes from a freshly dug-up beet is undeniable, and their texture, both when raw or cooked, is something to celebrate too. Oh yeah, and they’re good for you.

They are full of phytonutrients that vary based on the colour of your beets, so by eating a variety of colours (just like all foods) you will get a broader range. They also boast anti-inflammatory super powers, are full of anti-oxidants and aid in detoxification.

Buying beets with their greens intact is usually the freshest option. The leafy beet greens and stems deserve a blog post all to themselves, so I’m not going to get too into it here, but keep them and juice them or sauté them with some garlic. They are packed with anti-cancer and they taste good too. For this recipe, for me, it was a little bit too beet on beet to use them as well as the roots, but this way you get two meals out of one veg. Bonus.

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Cherry Season, 3 Ways

Published on in Breakfast, Condiment, Drink, Freeze-able, Nightshade-free, Raw, Snack By |
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When certain fruits or vegetable come into season, underneath all of the welcome back party feelings, a part of me starts to panic. It’s a bit like when you start worrying about going home on the first day of your vacation. What if I don’t get the chance to take full advantage of it before it leaves us again for another year?!


(A cherry pitter, although niche, is indispensable for the short cherry-filled weeks. They also work for pitting most olives.)

The summer is full of this strange, delicious seasonal produce anxiety. I find the only way to remedy it is to properly roll around in the local bounty. Eat lots of it as is, while you transform the rest into culinary creations to be appreciated both later that day and later that month, when it has abruptly stopped showing up to the farmers markets.

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The Salt Conundrum (Seaweed Salt)

Published on in Condiment, Nightshade-free By |
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Of all of the foods that are considered ‘bad for your health’, the one I find the most challenging to avoid is not chocolate. It isn’t refined sugar or bacon either. It doesn’t even have a flavour all its own, but selflessly gives a small boost to all other flavours. It is salt, the high heel shoes of the culinary world. Much like heels, salt needs to be used in moderation. If you use it too often, your taste buds adapt, and you will require more salt to avoid your food tasting bland (or feeling short in a pair of flats….).

By avoiding processed foods and cooking from scratch, you are able to avoid added sodium (and so much more). Clearly we are big proponents of cooking from scratch, here at TCCK, but we also want the food you make to taste delicious, so that you WANT to eat it. How else are you going to get all of those cancer-crushing, bio-available nutrients into your body?

So maybe small amounts of high quality, mineral-rich, additive-free sea salt would be ok. Derived from the cleaner oceans of the world, where the air is warm enough to evaporate the water off naturally, so that no de-mineralizing boiling needs to take place.

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Grain-free Falafel

Published on in Condiment, Greens, Keto-friendly, Main course, Nightshade-free, Nuts, Raw, Salad, Seeds By |
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Having just spent a couple of weeks in parts of Europe where the food, is smooth, rich, mild, and temperate, I need a change of (flavour) scene. It was all so delicious, but now I crave spices, herbs, bitter, tart, and a little bit of aggression. I hope you do too.

Hello falafel! I indulged in a couple of Maoz moments while I was away, to counter some of the delicious but rich and thematic everyday fare (Maoz -a veggie falafel stand that has a tendancy to pop up exactly when you need it, all over Europe). This is where the inspiration is coming from this week (in part, because I couldn’t wrap my head around Crushing Cancer Croissants. Yet.)

The healthier, Crushing Cancer version of the falafel is baked at a low temperature instead of fried, refined oil-free (all of the fats are whole fats, derived from nuts and seeds), and gluten and bean-free. Everything on my site is naturally gluten-free, (we are looking to lower inflammation, not cause it, right?) and the lack of beans in this recipe is good news if you have trouble digesting them, but the culinary reason that I am using almonds, pumpkin seeds and flax in place of the mighty chickpea is that they create a firmer texture with a bit of crunch (we are looking for crunch from somewhere other than the deep fryer).

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