A Quick and Simple Snack for Summer

My first blog entry ever was about my favorite food…smoothies. I want to continue to share with you my favorite smoothie recipes. Just like you, I’m always on the go and am constantly juggling projects. When I get hungry, I want to snack fast. I want something fresh, easy to make and easy to clean. (I'm not much of a dish washer!) I can’t tell you how often I make smoothies because they are delicious, healthy and the magic word…soooo easy to make. I make them for breakfast, dessert and sometimes when I'm really really busy, I even have them for dinner! This week I’ve been making a lot of strawberry pineapple smoothies, so I decided to share my recipe with you. 1 banana 1/4 cup of frozen strawberries 1/4 pineapples 1/4 cup almonds 1 cup water 1 Tbsp flax seeds Combine all the ingredients in a blender until smooth and enjoy! If you have a Vitamix blender, this will blend very easily. If you have $20 blender (I had one all through college) then it’ll take several attempts at getting this smoothie to be smooth. Most likely, it’ll be a bit chunky due to the almonds, but I like that way. If you want to lose weight, get healthier, or just eat something delicious, please give smoothies a try. I can't emphasize enough how yummy and easy they are to make.

Tropical, Sensational and Oohhh so Easy!

It’s Sunday night and you just gotta have something sweet...but you can’t add extra pounds to that fab body of yours! Oh what to do, what to do? Well, I’m in the same boat and I can’t binge as I have a wedding dress to fit into, so I came up with an easy dessert recipe anyone can follow. While shopping at Whole Foods I was looking for something yummy that I could snack on. Now, I’ve been really good with my work-out “regime” and I just wanted something yummy that won’t make me take two steps backwards for every step I’ve taken forward. And then I saw them, glistening in the grocery aisle and calling my name, 2 cans of organic papaya and mango just wanted to come home with me. It worked! When I was wanting something sweet that night, I remembered the tropical fruit I picked up. Here are 2 versions you can try…one is no fat, and the other has a little but certainly not as much a slice of chocolate cake. Tropical Fruit Salad 1 can mango 1 can papaya 1 banana 2-4 tsp agave nectar 1/2 tsp of blossoming orange extract Chop the fruit and mix it in a bowl. Then in a separate mixing bowl stir the orange blossom extract with some agave nectar. Pour this nectar over the fruit and enjoy! “Whipped” Cream 6 oz silken tofu (or if you can’t eat soy, then you can add about 3/4 cups of cashews) 1/4 cup agave nectar (I guessed at this amount) 2 tsp vanilla extract 2 tsp blossoming orange extract Blend all the ingredients in a blender until the cream is smooth. If you noticed in the picture, I layered the whipped cream with fruit in a martini glass. Once it’s all pretty, put it in the refrigerator to cool for about 30min. There it is…a guiltless dessert. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Mac and “Cheese” made with Vegieees (Seriously!)

Do you ever walk into the kitchen on a Sat afternoon and crave Mac and Cheese for lunch?…Ya? I knew it! So that’s what happened to me today. Every once in a while I really crave Mac and Cheese…and this really hits the spot! When I used to baby-sit children, I came up with this absurdly great recipe. How I came up with it, I am not sure. Some crazy vision took over my palate and made me come up with this concoction, but it worked!

1 package of frozen veggies (I like Cascadian Farms Garden Vegetables with corn, carrots, green beans and peas.) 1 package of silken tofu (This is a very smooth tofu. I use the Mori-Nu brand found in Asian sections of grocery stores) 1-2 tsp turmeric powder(more if you want a brighter color) 1/4 tsp garlic powder (optional) 2-4 tsp olive oil (we live a low-fat lifestyle, but feel free to add more oil if you like) 2-4 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast 1 Tbsp Shoyu Sauce (you can use Braggs Liquid Aminos) 1/2 lemon, juiced 1-2 tsp salt (optional)

Now, just like most of my recipes, this is a ridiculously easy! All you have to do is cut up the tofu and steam it with the veggies for about 6-8 minutes. You can use firm tofu if you like, but the “cheese” will be more gritty than with silken tofu which is well…silky smooth! Then blend all the ingredients…you can add a little water to your blender if you do not have a powerful blender like the Vitamix. (we’re in love with our Vitamix! Whatever you do, never ask my husband about this blender, as you’ll never hear the end of it!) Pour this blended mixture onto macaroni pasta and stir. I sprinkled just a little bit of salt over the mac and cheese which made the flavors just pop! Please note that this is just a base recipe…feel free to add other things or take things out. Sometimes I add more carrots to this recipes to add more color, but I rarely make it the same way twice. Mmmm...I hope you enjoy this recipe.

When you just want it now!

So I got off the Greyhound bus about an hour ago and here I am blogging! I missed you all while I was gone…shout out to my sis Priya who helped pack my week with more meetings and projects I thought humanly possible! I went to Toronto to prepare for my wedding and I had all the right intentions to share more of Mama Raj’s cooking, but alas I had little time to myself amongst the chaos. I promise to make up for it and share more of Mama Raj’s recipes this week. As I was saying, I just got home and was staaarving! I opened our freezer and I found the perfect food to satisfy me while my pasta was being cooked: edamame. I knew that I had to just blog about it really quickly. So I went went to work cooking and taking pictures of it…see how much I love y’all? I didn’t even unpack my bags and here I am writing on my Mac as I scarf down my edamame. Edamame is the whole soybean pod and the inner beans are eaten as a delicacy in Asian countries. According to the USDA: When cooked and lightly salted, the pea-like beans inside "vegetable" soybeans make a protein-rich addition to salads, casseroles, soups, snacks, mixed or stir-fried vegetables and other foods. 6 cups of water 1 package of Edamame (in most frozen foods sections of grocery stores) Optional Sauce: 2 tsp of black fig vinegar (or any flavored vinegar could work) 1 Tbsp shoyu sauce (Japanese name for soy sauce…the brand San-J makes a wonderful shoyu) Once the water is boiling, cook the edamame for about 4 minutes. Drain and run cold water over it to stop the cooking process (if it is cooked longer the bean will be mushy... some people like that, but I like my beans a little on the firmer side). Now you can eat just like that (I had to stop myself from eating it all as I cooled it over the sink!) or sprinkle some salt over the pods. I decided to experiment with a light sauce and it was great! If you are used eating salted edamame, try it with the sauce above. That’s it for now…time for unpacking!

Powered by Seitan

Who says creating beautiful food takes hours? I whipped up this meal in about 15 min. Adding color to a dish can make it go from a “drab to fab” fairly easily. This picture above is steamed rainbow chard surrounded with some seitan (wheat gluten) The seasonings I used were very minimal, however it is bursting with natural flavor! For those of you who have not had the privilege of eating seitan, no it’s not food from the devil, it’s actually created out of wheat flour and is used as a meat substitute in many Asian restaurants. It has a meaty texture and the great thing about it is that is easily picks up the flavors you put on it. You can find this product at many health food and Asian grocery stores. Here is how I made this dish: 1 bunch Rainbow Chard 1 package of Seitan 2-4 tsp. of Paul Prudhomme’s Magic Blackened Redfish Seasoning 1 Tbsp Shoyu Sauce Chop the seitan in bite sized pieces. Spray a nonstick pan with canola oil and sauté the seitan with the Magic Redfish Seasoning. Once the seitan is lightly browned, put the seitan aside. Then lightly steam rainbow chard for a few minutes. (If you'd like, you can eat this dish with some type of grain on the side.) To make the dish look like it does above, all you need to do is put a mound of chard in the middle of a plate and place the seitan around the chard and pour some shoyu sauce on the chard for light flavoring. That’s it! What a simple, elegant and healthy meal!

Fresh Asparagus: A Quick & Easy Sauté

Have you ever had a night where you just want a simple elegant meal with no fuss, and no mess? After watching another tear-filled episode of Oprah’s Big Give (it’s kind of like Apprentice, but here contestants are judged on the merits of their giving) I was in the “no fuss, no mess” zone. I opened the fridge and saw a lonely bag of asparagus needing to be eaten. Hmm...what to do with it? I opened The Garden of Vegan cookbook and found what looked like a fairly easy recipe. A quick glance at the the ingredients, got an inspiration, and then promptly put the book away. (recipe books tend to inspire me to make things, but I’m not big on following recipes…must be my rebellious nature;)) With a vision in mind I got ready to make a yummy meal. Firstly, I got ready to blanch the asparagus for a few minutes. If you’ve never done it before, don’t worry, it’s super easy! Blanching 101 According to Wikipedia: Blanching is a cooking term that describes a process of food preparation wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is plunged into boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocked) to halt the cooking process. I put the asparagus in boiling water for about 3 min. Now, I made a mistake…I was in such a rush to eat that I didn’t peel the outer skin of the asparagus. If you want the vegetable to be really soft and easy to bite into, then take a veggie peeler and lightly take off the outer skin of the asparagus. It has a lot of cellulose in it so it tends to be tough. In my kitchen, there are no wrong decisions, so the choice is yours. 1 bunch asparagus 1-2 sprays of canola oil (or enough to coat pan) 2 garlic cloves 1 small handful of parsley, chopped 1-2 green onions (just the top green part) salt & pepper to taste While the asparagus was cooking, I minced the garlic cloves and lightly fried them with 2 sprays of canola oil, I like my food to be low fat, so I spray oil onto my pan so that it spreads out evenly and I end up using less oil. I then added parsley and some green onions and sautéed them as well. Halfway through the process, I added a few tablespoons of water and sautéed the veggies. (basically it’s like using oil, but you just pretend that the water is oil…just use your imagination!) As soon as the asparagus was blanched, I added it to the garlic mixture and cooked it with the rest of the flavors for a few more minutes. At this point, you can add salt and pepper to taste and it’s ready to eat! The food was so good that after I ate what you saw in the picture above, my husband quickly gulped down the rest of the asparagus. When I went for seconds, there was none left! Beware of hungry people finishing off this meal before you. So don't be shy...go ahead and pile on the asparagus before it piles into someone else's stomach!

Quinoa “Mongolian BBQ” Style

Today, I was up for a really quick meal and I realized that we only had a little bit of red quinoa and “normal” quinoa left in the pantry. So we decided to mix them together. Since today was the day my husband and I are suppose to make our dinner together, I gave him the duty of making the quinoa since it was easy. (oh and I got him to clean all the dishes too.. wohooo!) Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wah) is a very light grain that is very high in protein. If you’ve never had quinoa before, it is a great replacement for rice and it has a unique nutty flavor. It’s like no other grain! Since I was feeling lazy (what else is new?) I decided to just make a simple quinoa salad Mongolian BBQ style. For those of you who have never been to this restaurant, basically you just pick a bunch of veggies, sauces and other toppings at a buffet table and give it to a chef who cooks it right before your eyes. So inspired by this concept, I put all these ingredients below out on our counter and we picked the ingredients we wanted and mixed it with quinoa. I used all of the ingredients as I thought they all went well together. It made a delicious salad! So next time you want to prepare a quick meal, take some quinoa and load up on some veggies and some of the sauces I’ve suggested in the diagram below, and most likely you won’t go wrong. 1 cup quinoa 2 cups water or veggie broth Wash the quinoa at least twice to get the naturally occurring coating off the grain. This coating can make the quinoa really bitter. I remember spitting out the grain when I first tired cooking it! Believe me you don’t want to make that same mistake! Then, boil the quinoa with water and when it starts to boil, lower the temperature to a simmer and cook for about 20-25 minutes or until you get the desired consistency. (some people like it crunchy and others like myself, like it well cooked) If you are always on the go, then the next time you are making quinoa (or any grain for that matter) make double the amount and freeze the extra. Then, when you are in a hurry, you’ll have a great base for any meal.