African Pineapple Peanut Stew

Another awesome recipe we read about on Thirty Bucks a Week, who got it from this site. Their descriptions pretty much say it all….this dish is easy, healthy, vegan and we love love loved it! Nathan ate his over brown rice, I ate mine over romaine lettuce.



I think this could be easily adapted to a raw recipe if you use a raw almond butter sauce and let the greens marinate for a while to soften them.

Right now I'm eating a raw lunch adapted from the Lemony Buckwheat with Asparagus & Spinach we made the other night. I just marinated the asparagus overnight in the olive oil/garlic/lemon mixture (plus some water to cover) and put it over mixed greens. Man is my pee gonna smell in about an hour….

Also, here is an interview with Michael Pollan (Author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food) from Democracy Now. He talks about some issues that everyone should be aware of, such as why factory farming is disgusting, why you're doing yourself no favors by eating processed foods, and how the food industry uses marketing to try to trick you.

Cheers,

K

How I tricked my husband into liking Raw Kale

I finally got around to making some raw coleslaw. It was going to be a basic cabbage, carrots and dressing affair, but there was one lone large kale leaf in the crisper so I got experimental and threw it in. Success. Nathan and I loved this recipe and he didn't seem to mind the green specks in his beloved coleslaw (you really can't taste the kale).

Cole Slaw with Kale

-1 head cabbage
-2 large kale leaves (or more!)
-2 carrots

-1/4 cup olive oil
-3 T apple cider vinegar
-2 T honey
-1 large garlic clove (minced)
-1/4 t sea sale
-1/4 cup water

Directions: Put first three ingredients into food processor. Whisk the rest of the ingredients together for dressing. Combine.

Very easy and cheap...try it instead of the usual gunky mayonnaise version!

K

Lemony Buckwheat with Asparagus & Spinach

I spotted this recipe while looking on the Vegetarian Times website for the asparagus marinade I mentioned (but couldn't find) yesterday. It was the perfect solution to the asparagus & huge bunch of spinach waiting to be used in our fridge. And it was: Perfect. I LOVED this. Nathan even thought it was good and he doesn't usually like "slimy green stuff" in his food.

Here is the link to the recipe.

You'll see the original name is Lemony Bulgur, but I didn't have bulgur and guessed buckwheat would be an OK substitute. Even though I've never cooked either Bulgur or Buckwheat. We had the buckwheat leftover from the raw foods experiment when we sprouted & dehydrated it in crackers. I was about to say it's my new favorite grain, but I just read here on the Whole Foods site that it is actually a fruit seed related to rhubarb

Anyway, it's great. Sort of tastes like brown rice except bigger and squishier, with a consistency like thick porridge. I thought it had a much more satisfying texture than brown rice. And it's easy to make and super cheap.

We left out the walnuts, basil, & mint too, due to cost. I think the combo garlic & lemon zest are what really make this dish amazing….I'm craving it right now and regret letting Nathan take the leftovers to work.

Asparagus is in season, go make this! It's healthy, cheap, and easy - only took me about half an hour.

K

Mother's Day Raw Strawberry Pie

On Sunday we had our typical double holiday celebration, going to Nathan's parents' house first for brunch, then mine for dinner. We made a bunch of food (which was not included in our food budget….I counted it as "presents"). Nathan made a stuffed chicken dish for his family.



And for mine we made a big salad, marinated asparagus (featured in this month's issue of Vegetarian Times - delicious! Go subscribe!) And, my near masterpiece….

RAW STRAWBERRY PIE

The Joy of Vegan BakingBy Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

It is best when served within an hour or two of preparing it, sinceit is at its most fresh then, but it holds up just fine in thefridge.

Chilling Time: 1 hour

Servings: 8-12

Crust Ingredients:
2 cups raw almonds or pecans
3/4 cup pitted dates, preferably Medjool

Filling Ingredients:
5 cups sliced ripe strawberries
5 pitted dates, soaked 10 minutes in warm water and drained
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Instructions:

1) Place the nuts in a food processor and grind until they’re a coarsemeal.

2) Add the 3/4 cup of dates (for the crust) and process untilthoroughly combined.

3) Press the mixture into a non-stick or verylightly oiled pie plate or spring form pan.

4) Arrange 4 cups of the sliced strawberries on top of the crust and setaside.

5) In a food processor or blender, combine the remaining 1 cup ofstrawberries with the 5 soaked dates and lemon juice.

6) Puree untilsmooth.

7) Pour the sauce mixture over strawberries.

8) Refrigerate the pie for 1 hour before serving. This will help the pieset and will be perfect for slicing.


The pie turned out really yummy, if you like strawberries! Amazing how easy it is to make a crust with just nuts and dates thrown into the food processor. Where I went wrong is, well, I made the sauce to pour over the top of the pie, decided it didn't look like enough, so made another batch and used it all. I think this made it turn out a little too sweet (because of all the extra dates) and runny. It leaked out of the my spring form pan and made a big mess, I'd definitely recommend just using a pie pan to be safe.

I also sprinkled the top with some Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips. They were good but a little chunky for the pie. I think dark chocolate shavings would work a lot better.

It took less than an hour to make, and I am slow, and cost about $14. The ingredient list is short and simple, but strawberries, nuts, and Medjool dates are all expensive. Side note, if you've never had a Medjool date, the big kind with the pit in the middle, they are SO much better than regular pitted dates. They are so rich, moist, and sweet it's unbelievable. Lots of people take out the pit and stick a couple almonds or a brazil nut in the center for a really satisfying snack.


Happy eating,
K

Monthly Spending Update

It's not so easy for me to go from not really having a food budget to trying to track expenses by the week. I find myself constantly thinking about what's in the fridge and how I can make it last the week (without making Nathan miserable). I'm hoping this will get easier with practice, because we are set to save a significant amount of money, which as discussed earlier, will be used to send us on a guilt free vacation to escape from the MN winter.



I say guilt free because I feel like any extra money should go towards paying our massive student loans or saving for a house, so if we weren't cutting $$ somewhere, I wouldn't have total peace of mind spending $2,500 or so on a nice vacation.

Speaking of….any suggestions of great, warm, not too expensive places to go? Right now I'm set on Nicaragua, but I'm open….

I can't believe I'm talking about this when it's just about to be summer here.

Onto the Spending Recap: We have about $143 (out of our $225 monthly budget) for the remaining 2 weeks of May. Sounds like a lot, but we just ran out of olive oil and also will be going to the cabin next weekend, which means lots of cooking & booze!

Cheers,

Kelly

This Week In Food

….has not been too exciting. We haven't cooked anything at all, just been eating lots of salads, bean burritos, and PB&J. This is partly due to me bringing home leftovers from a free office lunch on Monday, then having to go out to lunch Tues. and Wed. with a co-worker who was in town from another office.

Tuesday we went to Runyon's, a bar near our office, NOT my choice. Note I said bar. I can see Runyon's as being a fine place to drink whiskey and eat some fries, but not to have a meal in the middle of the day if you don't want to feel like greasy bloated a$$ afterwards. Their limited menu was mostly burgers and they are "known" for their wings, which my co-workers ordered and were an unnatural shade of bright greasy orange. I had a veggie burger and salad, with lettuce that had brown edges on nearly every piece. Ick.

Wednesday it was a smaller group and I convinced them to go to Zen Box, which was just voted "Best Skyway Lunch" by the citypages. The sushi & meat bento box lunches didn't look too fresh, but I had a really yummy salad with lettuce, edamame, carrots, and buckwheat noodles for under $5. I would definitely try to recreate this one at home.

And today….it's the first day of the all-day Thursday farmer's market on Nicollet Mall! Only an hour until I escape this cube and walk over there. I'm thinking asparagus and ramps. Ramps? Yeah I'd never heard of them either, until last week. Tina writes at 30 A Week that the flavor is "halfway between scallions and garlic". They were also featured recently here on Mark Bittman's blog. Here is a photo from his post:

Happy Eating,

K

Road Trip Recap

I could write a short novel about our 3 extremely fun days in Kansas City, but will try to break it down into just the highlights:

-Arriving Thurs. night and happening to end up at a bar with karaoke where Nathan sang the best Neil Diamond EVER. Wish I had a recording to post here. But instead, here's a picture of the portrait a random guy "portrait artist Ben Seibel" spent a half hour drawing of me at the bar:



(Note: The sketch looks way better than this pic shows, I look cross eyed here, Nathan can't find it right now to take another photo though, so....)

-Driving around the cute neighborhoods on Fri. and finding an outdoor art fair, right when it was warm enough for no coats, on a day when "they" predicted storms all day.

-Going to a completely separate art crawl on Fri. eve., 50 galleries in a walkable 10 block radius, free dance performances, bands playing in the streets, general merriment.



-Walking through the city Sat. and marvelling at how like the twin cities it is, except nicer. We DID make it to Succotash, thanks for the suggestion Gnome, such a great quirky place in the middle of a half indoors/half outdoors farmer's market type setup. I had an excellent fresh juice concoction called "kiss me" with apples, beets, ginger, and….I forget…

-Realizing while browsing through their weekly entertainment guide that Lidia from the PBS cooking show "Lidia's Italy" has a restaurant right near our hotel….we had to go, chancing that it might be some cheezy corporate monstrosity. Not AT ALL! It was gorgeous and had brochures about how they partner with a local CSA for their produce, they even serve as a CSA pick-up site for regular members. This was no hippie joint either, extremely elegant with amazing food and incredible service.

-Sat. night - time for the Cake concert! We half listened to the show while making new friends with a group of rowdy 40 somethings who later piled us into the back of their…Hummer?…to take us to their favorite bar, a sort of old time Italian mafia place with karaoke? I don't know, I was pretty far gone by that point.




-Most notably, I didn't say a word about the Hummer. I didn't even give Nathan a LOOK. I didn't even oh so politely and drunkenly pull any member of the group discreetly aside and ask just what goes through one's head when deciding to buy a Hummer? These seemed like really cool people. Maybe somehow in Kansas City owning a hummer doesn't = being a huge asshole. Just another reason it is a great city….

If you live within driving distance, KC is definitely worth a visit! Just don't stay at the Westin Crown Center, it sucks.

Cheers,

K