Italian Veggie Burgers with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Now that the weather is colder, I find myself eating fewer green smoothies and more seeds, nuts and dehydrated foods.  I'm also eating a bit more cooked foods, especially sweet potatoes, brown rice and kasha.

I recently improvised a raw sunflower seed-based veggie burger flavored with sundried tomatoes. When I gave the normally carnivorous Jake a bite, he closed his eyes, smiled and pronounced it delightful, so I decided to share the recipe.  

Italian veggie burger lunch

Italian Veggie Burger with Sun Dried Tomatoes 

1 cup sunflower seeds, ground

½ cup flax seeds, ground

¼ cup hemp seeds

1 cup chopped celery

2 chopped scallions

1 tbs capers, finely chopped

¼ cup water

½ tsp sea salt

1 tsp dried oregano

½ tsp dried basil

Pinch pepper

1 cup parsley

¾ cup sun dried tomatoes

1 large clove garlic

In a large bowl, mix together sunflower seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, celery, scallions, capers, salt, oregano, basil, pepper and water. 

In a food processor, process parsley, sun dried tomatoes, and garlic to a paste.

Add the tomato mixture to the seed mixture, mix and shape into patties. (I formed it into one large rectangle which I later cut into smaller squares to fit my flax bread.)Dehydrate at 104 for three or four hours.  If you don't have a dehydrator you can use your oven on its lowest temperature and keep checking until it's the consistency you want.  

I served mine on flax bread with a garlic cashew cream, lettuce and arugula sprouts, but they'd be good with ketchup or mustard.  I have to admit, I didn't love my flax bread.  Next time I'll eat them without.

Acknowledgement: The basic seed ratio is from a burger recipe in Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Essentials. I’ve changed the veggies and seasonings.

before dehydrating

after dehydrating

Black Olive and Sun Dried Tomato Almost Tapenade

I've always loved olives. When I was a girl, my parents bought me a gallon of olives one year for Christmas, and I may have eaten them all by New Years.

These days I don't eat olives with quite so much abandon. I usually chop up two or three and include them in my dinner salad.  That was my plan for the half pint of olives I'd bought earlier this week.  But when I pulled them out of the refrigerator yesterday, I suddenly wanted something very, very olivey; something like a tapenade. I didn't have any capers, but I did come up with this tapenade-like spread. And my olive craving was sated.

 Black Olive and Sun Dried Tomato Spread Almost Tapenade Recipe

1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, soaked 30 minutes
1/4 cup pitted black olives (I used Kalamata)
1 medium zucchini, cut in chunks
1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 large clove garlic, minced
splash apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything except the salt and pepper in a food processor and pulse until it's the consistency you want. You might find that it's plenty salty from the olives, so taste it before you add seasonings.  I think this recipe would benefit from some fresh basil if you have any, but it was plenty flavorful without. And of course, if you have capers, they'd be good, too.


Yesterday's Chow (rather than today's, since I made this recipe yesterday)
Smoothie inspired by halvah and chai, with bananas, tahini, vanilla, honey, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Black Bean Friday: I eat black bean soup on Fridays with my playwright friends. Not raw, but good.
Green salad
Almost Tapenade served on an assortment of vegetables and flax crackers.

Raw pesto-inspired sunflower seed pate

Since I began eating a primarily raw diet, I've found there are certain staples I reach for again and again: lots of lettuce, kale, carrots, avocados. These didn't surprise me. But one thing I didn't expect to depend on is sunflower seed pate. It's cheap, it's nutritious, and it's easy to vary. It can form the basis for all sorts of wraps or nori rolls, and it makes a great veggie dip.

A few days ago I made a pesto-inspired sunflower seed pate. Today I spread it over tomato slices, topped it with alfalfa sprouts, and served it with a salad for lunch. So good!

Pesto-Inspired Sunflower Seed Pate
1 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, soaked overnight and drained
1/2 cup tightly packed basil
1/2 red pepper
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
juice and zest of 1/2 large lemon
2 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp tamari, Braggs liquid aminos, or nama shoyu
1 date, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil


Put it all in the food processor and process until smooth.  Taste and add salt if necessary. 


Other good food news: it's raspberry season.

I used some of these in a watermelon/basil/raspberry smoothie. What a crazy combo--one I would never have thought to try if I hadn't found the recipe here.  It was unbelievably good. The basil gave it a depth and complexity. I have some basil essential oil, and now I'm tempted to combine it with fruity notes in a soap. 


Today's Chow:
Smoothie with frozen banana, strawberry, chard, avocado cacao.
some raspberries as I picked them
tomato slices topped with sunflower basil pate and sprouts; green salad
watermelon/basil/raspberry smoothie
more green salad
a raspberry/cashew/lemon experiment. If I perfect it, I'll blog it.

Ice Cream for Breakfast

See this? This was my breakfast.

It's the raw vegan version of ice cream. And if you've never tried it before, you won't believe how good--and easy--it is.

Strawberry Banana Raw Vegan Ice Cream
1 1/2 frozen banana, cut into chunks before freezing
4 fresh strawberries
a little almond milk if necessary for processing

Remove banana from freezer and allow to slightly thaw for ten minutes. Add banana chunks and strawberries to food processor. Process until everything is the consistency of soft serve ice cream, adding a little almond milk if the bananas are still too frozen. (I was impatient, so I needed the almond milk.)

This makes one unbelievably delicious serving. I topped mine with dried coconut and another strawberry, but you could use cacao nibs, other fruit, nuts, or eat it as is. You even serve it in little walnut date crust, or over a raw vegan brownie. But whatever you do, do it fast. By the time I'd finished taking this photo, it was starting to melt.

Update: I made it again with half bananas and half blueberries. Even better!

Today's chow:
raw vegan strawberry banana ice cream
sprouted quinoa and blueberries with almond milk
blender soup with red peppers, cuke, jalapeno, garlic, one date, cashews, salt
flax crackers and guacamole
green salad with tahini dressing
banana chard smoothie (thought I was going to go a day without a smoothie, but no.)

Jicama Salad with Beets, Orange, Spinach and Walnuts

Last time I went grocery shopping, I picked up a jicama without being sure what I was going to do with it. Well, today I was poking through the refrigerator, wondering what to do about lunch, and I came up with a great jicama salad. Not only is it one of the tastiest salads I've ever made, it's also one of the prettiest.

It came together pretty quickly, too.  Here's the recipe:

Jicama Salad 


Salad:
1 1/2 cup coarsely grated jicama
1 medium beet, coarsely grated
1 orange, sectioned and diced
1 cup baby spinach leaves
1/2 small avocado (about 1/2 cup), diced
2 tablespoons walnuts, coarsely chopped


Dressing: 
1/4 cup olive oil
juice from 1/2 lime, or to taste
salt and pepper to taste

The directions are self explanatory--just combine everything and serve--except that I rolled up my spinach leaves and cut them into ribbons (chiffonade).  I used an organic Valencia orange, and it was more flavorful than a Navel. I bet a blood orange would be delicious, too.

Jicamas are high fiber, full of Vitamin C, and are wonderful for diabetics or people who want to lose weight because they contain inulin, a sweet, zero-calorie carbohydrate which doesn't metabolize in our bodies.

Also, remember I mentioned some flax seed crackers I was dehydrating? This is the first time I've made  raw flax seed crackers as opposed to bread, the difference being I didn't grind or process most of the flax seeds when I made the crackers. I did soak them first, and was quite surprised at how gelatinous they became. It's one thing to read about them becoming gelatinous, but quite another to poke them and have the seeds and water spring back at you. It reminded me of that childhood Halloween game where you pretend peeled grapes are a bowl of eyeballs.

I used this recipe for the flax crackers. More or less.  It made three trays worth of crackers. They looked like this before I put them in the dehydrator:

Now they're thin, crunchy and a little spicy, the perfect accompaniment for the guacamole I'm planning to make this evening.

Today's Chow:

smoothie with bananas, spinach, cinnamon, nutmeg and almond milk. Tasted eggnoggish. :)

morning snack of raspberries, blueberries and kiwi with a dollop of yesterday's cashew yoghurt.

Jicama salad

expecting to eat a green salad, guacamole and flax crackers for dinner.

Collard Wraps, Berries with Vegan Cashew Yoghurt

When you're eating a primarily raw diet--especially if you don't have a dehydrator--it can be challenging to look for presentations beyond salads, blended soups, and food processor mush. One way to change it up is to serve food wrapped in other food.  You've probably eaten stuffed grape leaves, spring rolls and burritos. But unless you're familiar with raw cuisine, you've probably never tried collard wraps.

My first attempt at making collard wraps--okay, my first couple of attempts--were disappointing. The leaves would tear; the filling would leak out. It wasn't the kind of thing you'd want to eat on a date. But then I learned to shave down the thick stem so the leaf was more pliable.

The collard leaves I had today were on the small side, so I used two for each wrap, overlapping them slightly. I filled them with a raw hummus I made yesterday from sprouted garbanzos, some alfalfa sprouts, and a little bit of apricot. (I wanted something sweet to contrast with my spicy hummus.)

Mind you, you can throw anything in a collard wrap.  Any kind of nut or seed spread, greens, julienned  vegetables like carrots or peppers, fresh herbs, or avocado would all be good choices.

I make my collard wraps using a burrito technique, first folding in the sides, then rolling everything away from me, keeping the sides tucked in. The end result is pretty, I think. I especially love the look of   the leaf's veins.

But another method for making collard wraps is to keep one side open. This way makes for messier eating. On the other hand, it allows you to see the filling's colors and textures.  You can learn this technique here:

I don't want to overload this post with too much disparate information, so I won't talk about my flax crackers until next post. Instead I'll leave you with this image of the mixed berry/cashew yoghurt dessert I made for Jake and me.

Of course that isn't really yoghurt. It's a raw cashew/banana/lemon concoction that took about one minute to throw together. I found the recipe on Raw on Ten Dollars a Day.  Delicious, and much lighter than the usual all cashew, no banana creamy sauces I'm used to.

Yeah, I picked those raspberries. I love that I can find wild raspberries in my urban environment.

Today's Chow:
Smoothie with strawberries, apricots and spinach. No fat; I was starving in a couple of hours, which led to an emergency raw chocolate/walnut snack mid morning.
Collard Wraps for lunch.
Snacked on my dehydrating crackers!
Green salad.
Berries with cashew yoghurt.

Raw Sunflower Seed Pate with Sundried Tomatoes

Sunflower seeds are a new favorite, ever since I made this raw sunflower pate with sundried tomatoes. (We're going to pretend I typed it with an accent mark over the e, because I'm talking about a pa-TAY, not a bald head.)

I'm not sure why it took me this long to appreciate raw sunflower seeds. I've always liked them roasted, but raw they struck me as bland. I should have realized that their blandness is a virtue. Like tofu or avocados, they're culinary chameleons, taking on the flavor of whatever they're prepared with while adding body and nutrition.  Sunflower seeds are also much less expensive than most other calorie-dense options for raw vegans. At my local co-op they cost a little over $3/lb (organic); about a third the cost of the nuts I might otherwise reach for. They're high in Vitamin E, magnesium, selenium and phytosterols (good for lowering cholesterol). 


Soaking sunflower seeds so they begin to sprout makes them more digestible and increases their protein. So begin by soaking them for at least four hours, then rinse and drain them. I usually soak them overnight, drain, then refrigerate until I'm ready to use them.


Raw Sunflower Seed Pate with Sundried Tomatoes Recipe
1 1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, soaked and drained, reserving water.
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes, soaked 30 minutes
1/2 red pepper, coarsely chopped
1 handful cilantro (or basil if you prefer; I had cilantro I wanted to use up.)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 date, chopped (or use a smidge of honey)
1 lemon juice and zest
1 tablespoon red or sweet Vidalia onion, chopped
one teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon tamari and/or salt to taste 
black pepper to taste
soaking water from tomatoes if necessary


Put everything in the food processor and go to town, adding reserved tomato water a tablespoon at a time until it's the consistency you like. 


Sorry I didn't take photos! I was selling my soap this weekend at a big festival and was crazy busy. But I'm proud of myself for packing all raw snacks and meals for two days. I brought watermelon, gazpacho, this pate and green salad both days. 


One thing I did photograph was this sprouted garbanzo bean.

 I threw a bunch of these in my salads. Notice how the tail is only a quarter inch long? That's how you want them. Raw sprouted garbanzos remind me of jicama in taste and texture.They help turn a green salad into a satisfying meal.  


Today's Chow
smoothie with banana, Swiss chard, 1/2 avocado, cocoa powder, one date, cinnamon
fruit plate provided to the vendors!
watermelon
gazpacho
green salad and sunflower pate
After I got home, I had two kiwis and some frozen banana "ice cream" (just frozen bananas buzzed in food processor.)