I’m MoFo inspired!

An actual blog update, oh no!

I’ve borrowed this survey from my friend Nicole, who is the wondrous wonderful beacon of inspiring wonderment glowing in the vegan firmament who originally inspired me to throw caution to the wind (and vegan pies into the faces of naysayers) and go veg in the 1st place! All the MoFo-ing (“Vegan Month of Food” blogging) going on in the blogosphere has also inspired me to forgo valuable sleep and answer the following questions!

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1. Favourite non-dairy milk?
… Good grief, just one? Well. I love the heck outta my homemade raw nut milks. Almond & date milk is a classic. Macadamia milk is frothy & perfectly creamy, cashew milk is great in tea & in berry smoothies, & hazelnut milk is simply divine (but pricey!). Shop-bought? I usually go for Vitasoy rice milk or Bonsoy. Or a coconut if they look nice!

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
… Only 3? Another good grief! I’ll just tell you my most immediate plans: 1. For my 6mo daughter, I’m going to try whizzing up a raw mash of sweet potato & zucchini, maybe a dash of flax oil or Udo’s oil, & warm it slightly; 2. Mango sorbet coconut tartlets from Ani Phyo’s dessert book; 3. Sprout & tempeh sang choy bow.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
Tamari & nutritional yeast is BRILLIANT on popcorn. Just ask Webly.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
A while back I made a gluten-free orange cake that collapsed near the end of baking & turned to mush in the centre. But it still tasted good! I made many gluten-free test loaves with too much baking soda, yick. & onion in juice… What the hell is up with people drinking that? Yargh.

5. Favourite pickled item?
Radish in sushi.

6. How do you organise your recipes?
Organise? In one big random pile! Or with categories or tags on a blog!

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
Compost, bitches! We have 2 enormous bins in the garden, & a bokashi bin in the kitchen. There’s a rumour going around that we named them after our favourite characters on True Blood. I think you’ll find that’s an outright lie. Or true. One of those.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?
ONLY 3? Wot! Very uncool.

1. Bananas
2. Parsley
3. Sesame seeds

… damn it. I want goji berries & dates, too. & a million other things! Like raw brazil nut carob/cacao cakes! & coconuts. D’oh.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Mushrooms. On the BBQ. I remember I thought they were gross & didn’t want to try them, but then I did & said something like: “Mushrooms are better than chocolate.” Wise words, indeed.

10. Favourite vegan ice cream?
I can’t go past the lime icecream from Ani Phyo’s raw dessert book. It’s like the best fruity gelato & the best creamy icecream ever all at once! So lovely. & FYI: I’ve heard it said that vegan icecream is not real icecream, & that’s very true: it’s unreal icecream. Fucking A.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
Blender! Of course.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
I’ve grown to love parsley. It’s brilliantly versatile & packed full of nutrients. Good, old parsley! It’s underrated. & quite lovely in the right smoothie or juice.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
I have an enormous collection… not sure. I think my 1st vegan recipe book was Vegan With A Vengeance.

14. Favourite flavour of jam/jelly?
Raw jam made out of dates & raspberries srsly kicks butt. & I don’t mind some fig jam.

15. Favourite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
Ooo… Snackwise, the raw brazil carob & coconut slice kicks even “carob haters” in the arse, so that’s fun! Mains, I find baked vegan shepherd’s pie wins many hearts. Or a salad of raw Asian greens, herbs, avocado, & tomato dressed with a tamari-gingery-sesame seedy-nice oil concoction amazes anyone & everyone. You CAN win friends with salad!

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
I love tempeh the mostest, but don’t eat it often enough. Tofu is easy & nice. I don’t do wheaty seitan usually, but occasionally yum-out on Asian soy faux meat. In a protein kinda category (& FYI ugh, I loathe the world’s protein fixation & exaggerated RDIs), I usually steer more towards nuts, mushrooms, greens, lentils, & beans.

17. Favourite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
I’m all about breakfast, baby. Smoothies, juices, fruit pudding, freshly blended nut milky things, berry-laden raw muesli, scrambled tofu or nuts, leftover pizza or curry, herbs & greens, nut spreads on toast/raw bread, marmite, tomatoes, faux pho, miso, & raw desserts… Breakfast for every meal, k thx!

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
Placemats & kitchen scales &… random stuff.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Berries, carob sauce/raw icing (frosting), tempeh.

20. What’s on your grocery list?
Right now? Tomatoes & garlic. Running low!

21. Favourite grocery store?
Don’t really have one… I prefer outdoor produce markets, & they vary week to week… Asian grocery shops that stock crazy “pure vegetarian” foods are always fun. I like the one at Q-store shopping complex on the Gold Coast. They always have fresh coriander, which is more than I can say for the bloody awful chain stupormarkets around here! Fie.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.
A proper crème brûlée. I’ve been meaning to for aaages. People always make them custardy instead of really creamy. I reckon it would be easiest replicated using gourmet raw foodie techniques rather than with cooked stuff. Macadamia nuts &/or cashews are probably a good place to start. & I shall start. As soon as I have time & develop a hankering for an insanely rich dessert.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
Way to embarrass me, survey. I haven’t been keeping up with any blog regularly since bubs arrived! Sorry, blogosphere.

24. Favourite vegan candy/chocolate?
Swami’s Rawganic chocolate bars. No contest. She’s a brilliant cook/uncook.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
I don’t really do extravagant..? Perhaps hemp oil… oh, wait. That’s not officially recognised as a foodstuff in Australia yet! Way to be behind the times, Australia. Also hemp flour, since you can’t buy hemp seeds. & hemp flour is only supposed to be used animal feed, apparently. Gee, lucky humans are animals, then! But. Ok. So I’d better just feed it to my cats because our backwards-arse government regulatory body says no. Yep. Yessir.

26. Ingredients you are scared to work with?
Anything vegan ist gut, ja! Except maybe that Mexican gourmet moldy corn stuff? Pass. I don’t digest regular corn too well anyway. Also, O_o & vegan haggis. I mean srsly. WHY.

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Fun! I hope y’all out there are enjoying Vegan MoFo! Xoxo

Raw Food page updated

I haven’t blogged for a while, it seems! Pregnancy keeps one a little busier than one expects. Of course, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that my husband & I are also in the process of completing renovations on our unit & buying a house… So it hasn’t all been extra snacking & growing a baby! There are plenty of other Time Vampires at work in our lives right now… I’m coming up to 36 weeks. Not long to go now…

But! I’ve finally thrown some info together on the Raw Food page of this site.

I’ve also recently read Evie’s Kitchen – a book about mostly-raw vegan nutrition & living for kids (& their parents!). There’s plenty of fascinating up-to-date info in there that you won’t find anywhere else, & it’s packed with brilliant recipe ideas. Combined with reading & rereading a stack of other books lately, including Skinny Bitch: Bun In The Oven & Raising Vegan Children in a Non-Vegan World, I doubt there’s a vegan nutrition element that’s been left out of my literary diet these last few months. Yum!

ETA: I’ve added another page: Raw Vegan FAQ

Creamy Banana Passion Smoothie

In the house where I grew up we had a passionfruit vine growing along the fence for some years. I recently rediscovered my passion for passionfruit thanks to some cheap summer produce & created this delicious & simple smoothie.

2 large bananas, chopped
6 passionfruit, halved
2 cups water
¾ cup almonds (soaked is best)
⅓ cup dates
1 tsp vanilla extract or ½ bean

Blend bananas, water, almonds, dates, & vanilla until smooth. Scoop out passionfruit seeds & flesh, add to blender, & whiz until well combined & seeds are broken up (into pieces around the size of black sesame seeds). Serves 4.

Don’t over-blend this one or it will froth up! If you want to make your smoothie extra-icy, add ½-1 cup of ice & blend for 10 seconds.

&here’s a bonus blurry pic of my most excellent raw pizza lunch & green juice:

&for people who are counting: 11 weeks to go…

Seedy flax flatbread

Raw bread = yum! And so easy to make. This is the only bread I’ve been eating at home lately.

You’ll need a temperature-adjustable dehydrator or a very-low-heat-capable oven for this one! I find a spice/coffee mill to be another good tool for making this bread as well – freshly ground seeds make a much better flavour and texture. Old flaxmeal develops a bitter taste as the plant oils begin to break down. Keep your flaxmeal in the freezer and your flaxseeds in the fridge so you don’t miss out on a better flavour and those valuable omega oils!

3 cups ground flax seeds (linseeds)
4 cups water
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup seeds – your favourites! I use a mix of pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, & poppy
1 tbsp dried herbs – I usually go for Italian herbs like oregano and thyme, & a bit of crushed garlic is nice occasionally, too.

In a large bowl, mix together the ground flax seeds, water, and salt until well combined. If you let the mix sit a few minutes while you get out the rest of the ingredients it will begin to thicken.

Stir through your favourite seeds and mixed herbs. Spread the batter evenly on to dehydrator trays – in an Excalibur dehydrator you’ll use 3 trays, and in a smaller circular dehydrator you’ll use around 5 trays (don’t forget to line the trays with parchment/baking paper if you don’t have other tray inserts to use on top of the mesh!). Use the back of a spoon to smooth the mixture out.

Dry at 40ºC/104ºF to 45ºC/113ºF for approximately 4 hours. Flip the bread over and score it into slices – approx. 9 square slices on each Excalibur dehydrator tray, and 6-8 wedge slices on the round trays – the lines will make it easy to break the bread into slices. Continue to dehydrate until desired texture/dryness is reached – for at least another hour.

Store the yummy seedy flax flatbread in the fridge. When fully dry, it can last 6-8 weeks at least! If you are going to use the bread immediately or within a week or two, under-dehydrate it a little and serve it warm straight out of the dehydrator – retaining a little extra moisture makes the bread more flexible.

Coming up soon: easy instructions on how to make your own Excalibur-sized dehydrator for around $50! As soon as my handy engineer-type husband gets around to putting it all together…

Yummy Carob & Coconut Cookies

Makes around 6 large or 12 small biscuits/cookies.

1 cup raw almonds
¾ cup dates, pitted
pinch sea salt
½ cup raw carob powder*
⅓ cup shredded coconut
¼ cup buckwheat crispies (whole hulled groats soaked & dehydrated) (optional)

Put almonds (air-dried or towel-dried if pre-soaked) & salt into food processor. Process until chopped into tiny pieces. Add dates slowly, processing until well-combined. Add carob powder & process until combined. Add coconut, pulse until mixed through. Tip mixture into another bowl & stir through the buckwheat. Grabbing about a tablespoon of mixture at a time – roll into a ball & squash flat into a cookie/biscuit shape (if you don’t use soaked almonds, you might need to add a little water to get the mixture to stick together). Repeat until all mixture is used up. Refrigerate (or dehydrate until desired texture is reached).

Other options:
+ Press a piece of dried fruit, dried berry, a nut (eg. pistachio, macadamia, or chopped walnut pieces), or another “topping” into the centre of each biscuit for decoration & extra tastiness.
+ Roll the cookies in extra coconut to coat them – extra coconut yum!
+ Instead of buckwheat, you could also stir through chopped raw walnuts or another favourite nut or seed.
+ To make raw buckwheat crispies rather than buy/order them from a raw shop: To make raw buckwheat groats edible & crispy you have a couple of options: (1) Soak hulled buckwheat for 8 hours or overnight, rinse very well (get all that lovely “slime” off!), then dehydrate until dry; or (2) Soak hulled buckwheat for 15 minutes, sprout for 12-24 hours in a jar or sprout bag, then dehydrate until dry. The 1st option creates a crunchier, sweeter texture, & the 2nd option an earthier, less crunchy flavour that’s a bit healthier (& a bit easier to digest if you have digestive problems).
+ Add a teaspoon of cinnamon for a richer, earthier flavour.
+ You might want to reduce the amount of dates to about half a cup if you use a particularly sweet date like medjool.

*For a truly superb flavour, get a good quality untoasted carob powder – organic is usually a good bet. Carob oxidises rather quickly & loses its rich flavour, so the best place to get it is usually from a healthfood shop or organic supermarket with a high stock turnover. If you can’t get decent carob, try using a bit more &/or adding some spice like cinnamon. Additionally: these cookies harden up after being stored in the fridge for a while. I rarely bother dehydrating these sorts of foods – I prefer more water in my food for better hydration!

Cure everything!

And increase longevity! With vegan and living foods.

Free lecture found on Google videos:

FREE GARY NULL LECTURE – CHANGE YOUR LIFE
60 min – Jan 4, 2007

Watch Gary Null’s Latest Incredible Lecture. This Extraordinary Presentation Was Filmed LIVE before thousands of people in Dallas, Texas. Enjoy!

Worth a watch. Good science, other good ideas, and good references. Quite a funny presentation in places (and even includes information on improving rat diets & health, too!).

Also, I’ve changed the header on this site to stacks of colourful fresh produce. Looks prettier! The old header was gluten-free baked bread… and I don’t bake cooked bread these days as I prefer raw flaxbread, so it didn’t seem appropriate any longer.

Recent Eats

In The Raw @Home

Since my pregnancy nausea has settled down (which didn’t take long, thankfully! so long as I steer clear of onions) I’ve been eating more raw foods and trying out recipes.

A lunch of raw spinach dolmas full of pine nuts, dill, dried tomato, raisins, olive oil dressing – a variation on the Mediterranean dolma recipe from Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Kitchen.

A breakfast of raw flaxmeal (linseed) coconut pancakes, with bananas and orange-date syrup, also from Ani’s book.

I can’t recommend Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Kitchen book enough – perfect for gluten-free eating as there’s not so much as a trace of offending grains or processed products, as well as anyone interested in incorporating more crisp, fresh, raw food into their diet. Her stuff is so creative, and much quicker to make than one would expect. Check out Ani Phyo’s videos on Youtube for examples of that.

Snacking @Out&About

Combo meal at Kuan Yin Teahouse – talk to the owner Michael if you want info about gluten in their stuff. If, however, you’ve been eating more raw food at home as we have, you’ll find your tolerance for small amounts of gluten in the diet will noticeably go up pretty much immediately, particularly if you’re simply gluten intolerant rather than allergic… Healthy eating = health improvements = like magic. I haven’t had a trace of cold, flu, or hayfever for almost a year now, which still surprises me given my chronic hayfever and sinusitis history. Ani Phyo, author of the book mentioned above, hasn’t had a cold or flu for over 10 years now. This seems common among mostly-raw and high raw folks, and in statistically significant numbers. (The best raw nutrition info is probably in Raw Revolution Diet, co-written by two dieticians.)

Gluten-free Chocolate Macadamia Cake, made by Jane at the Forest, who also made our wedding cake. We sometimes get free samples of her new creations these days… Free gluten-free cake? From the best baker in Brisbane, and probably in the entire country? Yes, life is wonderful.

The Other

For those keeping tabs, I’m 14 weeks pregnant now – only 26 weeks to go! My iron levels and everything are great, unsurprisingly, and my cholesterol is lower than the Mariana Trench. I’ll be getting a “4D” ultrasound in around 6 weeks time.

Recently I’ve been reading several books, including Raising Vegan Children in a Non-Vegan World, Raising Vegetarian Children, and My Mother Wears Combat Boots. On the net I’ve been surfing around articles on VegFamily: Vegan pregnancy and Vegan Babies & Toddlers. Also checking out vaccine information, having heard mixed opinions and having personally seen immunisations fail for whooping cough, measles, and hepatitis. Vaccines are far from 100% effective, not 100% risk-free, and certainly contain non-vegan ingredients. My husband is educated in several science fields at advanced tertiary levels and, from his research, he has decided he’s not keen on vaccinating in general, particularly the overly aggressive immunisation schedules pushed in western nations. Some sites I’ve looked at recently: VegFamily: Are Vaccines Really Safe and Effective?, Immunise Australia Program, Australian Vaccination Network, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein Vaccine Lecture, HealthSentinel.com, WAVE: Vaccine Ingredients, an interesting peer-reviewed journal article: “The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequences” by Neil Z. Miller, among many others…

Raw Ginger Biscuits

As promised! Including a crap blurry photo taken with my daft mobile phone… They kinda look like tiny falafel patties. But they don’t taste like ‘em!

1 cup raw almonds
1 cup shredded coconut
¾ cup dates
1 tsp sea salt
roughly 1 inch chunk of fresh ginger root, grated

Process almonds and salt to a powder in a food processor. Slowly add dates, one at a time. Add coconut, and pulse processor until just combined. If you want “smoother” cookies, use desiccated coconut instead of shredded. Add ginger gradually. Taste test mix to check if desired gingery-ness has been reached. Empty contents of processor into bowl. Taking 1 tsp to 1 tbsp size chunks of dough, roll into balls then press flat into desired biscuit/cookie shape. Refrigerate to firm up. Optional: instead of refrigerating immediately, dehydrate on a low setting for several hours to achieve a drier, crispier biscuit/cookie.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend these ginger cookies for pregnancy nausea! The nut base was too rich for my sensitive tummy. Blander, flour-based ones are better until the nausea passes… and it seems to have passed for me, now. Yay!

June already? No recent posts? Must be time for a rambly update…

Winter has arrived here in the southern hemisphere, and we’ve had flooding rains and all sorts of “fun” around my city.

The cold weather has meant our feline companions have become extra needy and have been progressively taking up more and more space on the end of our bed at night, leaving less and less room for us and interrupting our sleep! We could shut the door, I suppose… but that would probably just result in a howling cat duet outside the door.

My husband and I have also been renovating our bathroom, and we’re just about done – just waiting on some tiles to arrive so we can finish fixing up the walls. There’s also the possibility we might be moving in the not-to-distant future, but we’re still working on the details, so more on that later.

I’ve been eating more and more “raw food” as well. This doesn’t have much to do with veganism particularly, as I’m largely of the ethical vegan variety, and view the diet/health part and ecological benefits as secondary to the liberation/welfare of commodified/abused animals. The combination of my husband being diagnosed gluten-intolerant a while back and my reading the Campbell’s China Study at an earlier point has led me to investigate healthy eating alternatives within the framework of a cruelty-free lifestyle, and – while a plant-based diet already seems to be the healthiest option as far as nutrition is concerned – there’s no harm in going further and improving healthy eating beyond the minimum. I was never much of a junk food person to start off with (besides potato chips… fried tater = love), and my husband has always been a bit of a “foodie” preferring fancy creations made from unprocessed wholefoods. And you can’t get more wholefoodie than raw and fresh.

I picked up a copy of Ani Phyo’s Raw Food Kitchen a few months back and have been trying out the recipes, and I have to say I’m pretty darn impressed by the raw food style of “uncooking.” Most of the foods are incredibly tasty, and I’ve been brimming over with energy. It’s quite surprising. It’s not a hugely noticeable improvement, as I was already eating a pretty decent diet and in great health, but I’m certainly perkier and sleeping less, as is my gluten-intolerant husband. Since I started increasing raw foods in my diet in January I haven’t had so much as a sniffle, and between the stress of a wedding and a family funeral combined with a background of chronic hayfever, I think that’s probably something worth writing home about. I can still have my black forest cake and eat it, too, except now it’s made out of brazil nuts, dates, carob and other goodies that form a surprisingly awesome cake that is probably among the tastiest damn cakes I’ve ever chomped on (and I’ve chomped quite a few!). And I can eat the whole damn cake while losing weight at the same time – it’s a lazy person’s dream diet! Ha. (Except that the higher energy levels mean you’re actually driven to want to exercise! Which is probably not such a bad thing, either.)

Still, it’s a separate issue to the ethical vegan life, insofar as it’s only of obvious benefit is to myself (although with the increase in local fresh foods and decrease in packaging it’s probably a tad less environmentally destructive, which is useful). I’m not going to go on about that too much here. This blog is supposed to be about supporting gluten-free vegan living, not a health programme as such, beyond the absence of gluten. Veganism is for animal rights and liberation, not personal gain/health or “just a diet.” Still, given my interest in the health/gluten intolerance areas, it’s probably a little comforting to know that my recipes – if you do try them out – are unlikely to aggravate digestive problems, hey? Ha. They might even assist with health improvements…

So if “raw” recipes start featuring more heavily, this is why. The most equipment-heavy stuff I’ll post will use a blender or food processor at most, other than the dehydrated raw bread I’ve already posted. I don’t have the intention of going 100% raw any time soon, as “My Husband, The Scientist” – in addition to his digestive system being a severe critic – is quite critical of the biological/chemical/nutritional science expounded by proponents of the “raw movement.” My Husband, The Scientist won’t tolerate any blind-faithy, airy-fairy, feel-goodery, fluffy-bunny nonsense in our kitchen! And fair enough, too – all that unscientific mumbo-jumbo would probably knock our chakras out of alignment… um.

What else? More recipes coming soon. And perhaps the most important news I’ve saved for last: I’m adopting some mice that have been rescued! I’ll post photos and stories of the little guys soon.

Raw Buckwheat & Flax Flatbread

Decent raw bread recipes are hard to come by. Breads heavy in flax have a very strong flavour and can be a touch bitter, other recipes require you to shove stuff through a juicer as well as dehydrating. I have been trying out more raw food cuisine recently, on a health kick, and have come up with this recipe. This bread has a pretty mild flavour compared to straight flax seed/meal breads, and if – like me – you enjoy the taste of buckwheat, you will probably love this bread.

It’s high in omega oils, fibre, B-vitamins, and several minerals, including manganese. Buckwheat is a seed rather than a grain, and contains no gluten – it’s closely related to rhubarb. Freshly ground meal from seeds are the best, otherwise buy your flax and buckwheat meal from a health store with a high turnover so it’s fresh, and keep it in the fridge or freezer. It’s also a good idea to keep your seeds in the fridge so the oils don’t break down or go rancid.

Required Appliances
Dehydrator with temperature setting option of 40ºC (104ºF) or lower.

Ingredients
1½ cup ground buckwheat or buckwheat flour/meal
1 cup ground flax seeds or flax meal
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups filtered water
⅓ cup sunflower seeds
⅓ cup whole flax seeds
⅓ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ sesame seeds (white, black, or a mix)
1 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)

Method
Mix buckwheat and flax meal in a bowl. Add salt, nutritional yeast (optional), and water, mix until well combined. Stir through sunflower, flax, pumpkin, sesame, and poppy seeds. Spread the batter evenly over 2 dehydrator trays. Dehydrate at 40ºC (104ºF) for 4 hours, flip the bread over, then dehydrate for another 1-4 hours, depending on how dry you want your bread. Cut each tray of bread into 8-9 slices (8 if round tray, 9 if rectangular). Store in refrigerator. Makes 16-18 slices.

Serving Suggestions, etc
+ A great “bread” for morning “untoast.”
+ An awesome raw pizza base.
+ A bun for burgers or sandwiches.
+ You can use different seeds in the bread to suit your own tastes.
+ Add finely chopped onion, crushed garlic, pepper, herbs, and/or spices for fancy flavour variations!
+ You might need to add a little more or less water to the thick bread batter depending on the water content of your flax and buckwheat meal.
+ Instead of water – and for extra tastiness and vitamins – you could use fresh celery juice or a mix of celery and carrot juice.
+ The longer you dehydrate the bread, the dryer it will be, and the longer it will keep – up to two months in the refrigerator. (Well-dried bread is great to take camping or on road trips!)
+ Less dehydration time makes a soft pliable bread with a great texture. It will keep for about a week in the fridge.
+ I use nutritional yeast that contains vitamin B-12. (Note: nutritional yeast is sometimes called savoury yeast. It’s not the same as brewer’s yeast or other yeasts!) While nutritional yeast is not strictly raw, it’s handy if you like to add extra vitamins to your food.
+ Read more about raw food preparation on the FAQ page.

Carob Banana Breakfast Smoothie Treat!

Ingredients
1/4 cup raw almonds
1.5 cups filtered water
a crushed vanilla bean or 1 tsp alcohol-free natural vanilla essence
1 tsp dairy-free pro-biotic powder*
2 ripe or overripe bananas
1 tbsp (or be more generous! yum!) raw carob bean powder
pinch to 1/2 tsp spirulina powder
tiny pinch of sea salt

Method
Add almonds, water, vanilla and pro-biotic powder to blender, blend until smooth (it will be slightly warm by this stage, activating the pro-biotic). Add remaining ingredients, blend until well combined. Serves 2.

Notes
Serve over ice if you’d prefer your drink cooled rather than room temperature-ish, or use refrigerated or frozen bananas.

You can store it in the fridge for a 2-4 days, during which the pro-biotics will flourish.

*Animal-free/dairy-free pro-biotic powders typically contain lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacterium lactis, and/or oligofructos. These are fungus-like, unicellular microorganisms, also found in soy yogurt, similar to yeast, from the bacteria kingdom rather than animal. Unlike animals, they don’t have capacity for suffering, thinking, etc, and you’ll be giving the blighters a happy home inside you anyhow! And they will help maintain your gut flora health. The point is: it’s vegan.

Pasta-free “Pasta” in Marinara Sauce

Who needs fake-o imitation-wheat pastas? I quite like the buckwheat pasta I’ve tried, but the rice/corn pasta? Not so much. But, there’s another alternative! And it’s fresh, tasty, and energising. Essentially, it’s a salad with good quality marinara sauce stirred through. Freshly blended up sauce really is the key to it. It’s damn goooooooood.

Here’s a half-asparagused photo:

Okay, it’s half-eaten, but look at the colours! Orange, purple, green, red! Aint it purrrrty?

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients
(for just one serve – double for 2 serves, triple for 3! etc!)
1 carrot
an eighth of a purple/red cabbage
1-2 handfuls of rocket (arugula) or baby spinach (or other favourite leafy green)
1 large tomato, chopped
2-3 sundried tomatoes or semi-dried tomatoes, chopped
¼ cup favourite fresh herbs, chopped OR 1 tabsp dried herbs
1 tabsp extra virgin olive oil
½ clove garlic
small splash of lemon juice (or lime)
add salt to taste

Method
To make the “pasta” -
Peel the skin off the carrot, toss away. Continue to peel layers off the remainder of the carrot, into long lengths, creating “fettucini”. Thinly slice the cabbage and pull layers apart to get long, thin, noodle-like strips of cabbage. Finally, roughly chop the rocket and toss it all together. (You want roughly equal parts of carrot strips, cabbage strips, and rocket).
To make the marinara sauce -
In a blender, combine all remaining ingredients until smooth. If the sauce is very runny, add more sundried tomatoes to thicken it. Add salt to taste.
To serve -
Toss the sauce through the pasta. Done!

Optional: You can sprinkle nutritional yeast or black pepper on top if you like. Or, alternatively, sprinkle with seedy nut sprinkles! See below…

Herb suggestions: a Italian-style mix of basil, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and rosemary.

Also: bitter greens work best with the pasta, like rocket or kale, to balance out the sweetness of the carrot. Zucchini is also a popular raw “fettucini” but I find the water leeches out really quick and mucks up the sauce, plus it’s a bit bland.

Seedy Nut Sprinkles
¼ cup almonds
¼ cup sesame seeds
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1-2 teasp miso paste (depends on the strength/saltiness of your miso)
Generous pinch of sea salt

Grind nuts & seeds to a powder in a food processor or a spice grinder/mill. Add everything else and process until combined. Store in a jar in the freezer. If you are allergic to nuts or sesame seeds, just make the recipe wholly with almonds or wholly with sesame seeds. Add more or less miso and salt after taste testing. The sprinkles may clump up in the freezer, so just shake it, shake shake shake it up, baby, before use.

I’ve been getting into simple raw foods over summer (I’m in the southern hemisphere, people!). They are so darn quick to make, and very energising and refreshing. Plus, there’s no heat in the kitchen, and less energy is used in preparation. So you can save the animals, save the environment, and eat pretty darn well while you’re doing it. Nice.

The proof is in the pictures

There’s nothing like a great whopping pile of vegan stodge. Exhibit A:

Simmer potatoes in water and salt until very tender. Add Nuttelex or Earth Balance or similiar. Pinch of nutmeg. A clove or three of crushed garlic, some mixed dry herbs of your choice, a heaping of nutritional yeast, and mash like you’ve never mashed before. Mash the fork out of those potatoes. You can do it. I believe in you. Then top them with strips of pan-fried marinated tempeh (organic BBQ sauce or Braggs/tamari & garlic is good), drown it all in gravy (homemade miso gravy rocks: mushrooms, low-sodium vegetable stock, miso paste, rosemary, thyme, nutritional yeast & tapioca starch to thicken), and sprinkle with shredded fresh basil. Sprinkle liberally. Do everything liberally. Except in Australia, where you want to do it Laborly or – even better – Greenly. A-hoy-hoy.

Raw pancakes? It’s entirely possible and entirely tasty fresh! Check this action out. Exhibit B:

These are great in the Australian summer – no-cooking-necessary! Mini flax pancakes (flaxmeal, coconut oil, agave, salt and water, rolled into balls then flattened into pancake shapes) topped with carob pudding (food processed carob, avocado, banana, and dates), all topped with grapes, shredded coconut, sliced banana, and chopped macadamia nuts, with a little agave nectar drizzled over & around it all.

The proof is in the tasting, actually. These pictures are a poor substitute, I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to get into the kitchen and cook up some vegan food pr0n yourself. There’s a good lad and/or lass.