Bruised Rosemary Honey Roasted Nuts

Bruised Rosemary & Honey Roasted Nuts:

2 cups raw pecans

2 cups of additional raw nuts such as raw almonds or cashews

3 Tbsps of Ghee (clarified butter which is lactose free)

3 Tbsps of Honey

Coarse Sea Salt

Fresh Rosemary

Preheat oven to 375.  Melt the ghee and honey in a pot on low heat and crank in a little coarse sea salt. Pull the rosemary from it's stem and bruise it into the melted mixture using the back of a spoon to release the oils and fragrance.  Remove from heat and stir in the mixed nuts.  Line a baking sheet with parchment and spread the nut mixture out evenly.  Toast in the oven for approximately 10 minutes, stirring half way through.  Remove from oven crank on more coarse sea salt and allow to cool.  Put in jars, label, and wrap, or serve in jars as light cocktail fare.

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through the holidays? 

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Summer's Here: Two Seasonal Shared Plates + Kombucha Cocktails

Enjoy these two easy to make seasonal dishes that require no fancy skills and let the flavor of the produce speak for itself.  Perfect for entertaining or simply enjoying outdoors with a flute of gingery kombucha topped with fresh berries or a peach fizz kombucha kitten kocktail.

xoxoxo

Seasonal Harvest Shared Plate:

serves 2-4 as light bites

3 sliced radishes with radish greens
1 peeled carrot chopped into small sticks
fresh dill, 1-2 Tbsp
2 tsp Olive Oil
coarse crank sea salt

Arrange the veggies on a plate, drizzle with olive oil, top with a few generous cranks of sea salt

Raw Corn and Mango Pico
serves 5 as a side

3 ears of corn on the cob
1 red bell pepper
1/2 an avocado
1 small mango

2 limes

2 spring onions

3 Tbsp cilantro, fresh

cayenne

optional honey

s/p

Chop the corn off the cob.  Dice the remaining vegetables.  Chop the mango.  Mix into a large bowl and add the juice of 2 limes, cilantro, a dash of cayenne, salt + pepper, and optionally a drizzle of honey.

Peach Fizz Kombucha Kitty Kocktail:
serves 2

1/2 cup coconut water
one small pitted peach

Blend coconut water with peach.  Slice an orange thin.  Drop ice cubes in a glass and line with a few orange slices.  Fill 3/4 way with GT's gingerade komucha.  Top with the blended peach coco water.  Drop in a straw and umbrella, serve, stir, and sip.

Figgy Business

Yo it's fig season.  I've been eating black mission figs lately up the ying yang.  I can't get enough of these delicious no guilt treats packed with potassium, fiber, and well...magic.  Today was my first foray into calmarnya figs...the green ones.  As i savored my gooey red jammy filled velvety pouch of figliciousness i referenced feeling goddess like.  Figs are so beautiful and i think somewhat magical too.

While i'm not a big cheese eater i do indulge in a wee bit here and there.  Lately i've been indulging in a wee bit of goat cheese on me figs.  OH MAN!  Slice your figs into four, slap on a dallop of goat or honeyed goat cheese and top with a pistachio.  This is the stuff goddess dreams are made of.

Want to keep it VEGAN?  Leave the goat cheese behind and dust your figs with dried flaked coconut.  YUM!

By the way, as if you couldn't have figured this out on your own, this figlicious treat is stellar accompanied with a glass o' vino.  I'm currently into 2009 Vigilance Cimarron, a sustainably farmed cuvee out of California.  So easy to sip, sniff, savor, and enjoy.  AND for you Bev Mo fans, it's on the 5 cent deal until October 24th.  Buy one get one more for 5 cents.  Yeah, you heard that right.  It's typically the only time i buy more expensive wines (this is a $20 bottle).  So get on down to your Bev Mo (or order on line here), get your vigilance, hustle to your co-op or farmers market, and get yourselves some figs, pistachios, and goat cheese.  Enjoy my Sweetpeas...enjoy with gratitude.  Savor each sip and bite thanking the farmers that grew it, those before them that taught them how, and the many complexities of flavors, colors, and textures that will prance upon your palette.  You can thank me for this tip later.


xo

Side-step The Cookie Pusher & 'Skinny' Dip Into This.

Welcome to samoas (thin mint and tag-a-long) season.  There are cookie pushers around every corner and at the door of every market that seem to always find me at my most vulnerable moments.

Yes Scout, you are cute...and yes, you know how to move cookies...but girl, this year i'm not budging.  I don't care if you are 2 boxes away from making a girl scout world record.  I refuse to let a 3 1/2 foot hussler, that doesn't even know what a 'calorie' is, ruin my best efforts at losing these last 5 lbs.

So, I've signed up for bootcamp.  Talk about out of my work out box.  I do yoga.  I don't take to being yelled at well.  Yet, i happily joined Core Power for 2 weeks of double workouts daily: One crazy 1 hour circuit training class with coaches with whistles at the crack of dawn (cock-a-doodle-doo), and one workout later in the day on my own.  I'm 3 days deep and the body is already feeling fatigued.  I'm so out of my comfort zone....but it's soooo what my body needs.  Plus (go figure) its really quite fun!

Because of my determination to be aggressive with my routine these next 2 weeks, my place looks like a bachelor pad.  In the effort to get back into my skinny jeans (my mantra throughout bootcamp) I've hung images of Victorias Secret models all over the kitchen.  Clearly the boyfriend likes the home improvements i'm making.  Having a skinny bitch on the fridge and in the pantry should make me think twice before forging into the crackers, cookies, cheeses, or whatever lies in this hungry girls war path.

But enough about me.  You must be wondering where your recipe is....

Here is another Hara Mara All Star.  It's a simple dip they'd put on the table for us daily to eat with either baked tortilla chips or jicama sticks, carrots, and cukes.  I've adjusted the recipe a bit to make it a little more of a 'skinny' dip.  Chef Hugo gave me the recipe as follows (he used beet for the sample he demoed with us, as pictured above):

Steam about a cup of any vegetable you would like to use (beet, cauliflower, carrot, sweet potato)
Once they are steamed to the point that they are very soft put them into a high speed blender (make sure they are still hot, this is crucial to getting smooth consistency)
Add the juice of 1/2 to 1 lime
1 clove of garlic
and about 1/2 to 1 cup of avocado oil
add salt and pepper to taste and blend

He mentioned that if you make it with sweet potato to try adding a little nutmeg and orange.

He also said this makes a great vegan sauce to top any dish.  Just simply add a little veggie stock to thin it down.

Wanting to re-create my hara mara dining experience again, I went to buy avocado oil and was blown away at the cost.  It's especially a punch in the stomach considering the amount of oil the recipe uses.  Plus....that much avo oil is just straight fattening (2 tbsps of avocado oil has almost 30 g fat while one whole avocado has that amount.  The recipe calls for 1 cup avo oil.  There are 16 tbsp in a cup, you do the math).  So i turned on my ingenuity engine and bought myself a big ol' ripe (soft) avocado and decided to try to make it without the oil, but using the real fruit instead.  It turned out GREAT!  Whipped and delicious and lower in fat than the hara mara original recipe, it didn't last but a few moments before the boy and I devoured all of it's goodness.  The image i took below was made with a yellow beet rather than red and the avocado rather than the oil, so the color turned out to be a yellow green, however i bet if you used a red beet you'd get a darker pink/red end product.

'Been Fishing For This: Vegan Ceviche!!

Could it possibly be true?  Vegan Ceviche???  Isn't that a contradiction of words???  According to dictionary.com, it absolutely is a contradiction.

ce·vi·che  /səˈvitʃeɪ, ‐tʃi/ Show Spelled[suh-vee-chey, ‐chee]  

–noun
 

an appetizer of small pieces of raw fish marinated in lime or lemon juice, often with onions, peppers, and spices.

But friends, i am here to tell you otherwise.  Chef Hugo at Hara Mara resort in Sayulita served us a fabulous lentil ceviche that had even the toughest of critics licking their smackers and begging for the recipe.  Hugo was kind enough to tell us what went into the lentil ceviche, but didn't go to deep into the preparation.  Here is what i got from him: 

sprouted lentils marinated in lime, salt, pepper, and olive oil for one hour

mix with chopped cucumber, onion, tomato, carrot, cilantro, and garnished with avocado.

serve drizzled with olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon.

Sounds easy enough right?  It ABSOLUTELY is!  If you want to impress your veggie head friends, this one is sure to please.  Even the BF enjoyed his veggie ceviche (though he did along side a slab of grilled steak, ha).   Here's my rendition....which, dare i say, blew chef Hugo's out of the water!

Sprouted mixed lentils

3 limes, juiced/squeezed

1 small jalapeno or serrano chili

1/2 a cucumber peeled

1 small tomato, chopped 

about 1/8 cup of finely diced red onion

about 1/8 cup of finely sliced cilantro

salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper,

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 an avocado sliced

 I used a couple containers of sprouted mixed lentils (though you could sprout your own if you had a few days).  Mix these in a bowl with the juice from 3 limes, some black pepper, salt, crushed hot red pepper, and a few Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil.  Take a green chili (jalapeno or serrano) and remove the membrane inside and the seeds.  Julienne to the tiniest of pieces.  Using 1/2 a cucumber, slice a cucumber in half lengthwise and remove the seeded center and discard (or eat) those seeds.  Dice the remaining cucumber, red onion, thinly slice cilantro, and finely chop a small tomato.  Add these to the marinated sprouted lentils and mix well.  Taste.  Add additional salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to your liking.  Serve in a martini glass with sliced avocado. 

We ate this with freshly baked corn tortillas made into chips (click here for the directions) and sprinkled with sea salt and lime, and chopped up some jicama sticks to cool the palette if it gets too hot.  The actual lentil ceviche wasn't crazy spicy, but i got carried away with the tapatio.

Happy Appies: Zesty Chickpea Poppers

I just received my january/february 2011 issue of Whole Living Magazine in the mail yesterday.  It's a great edition, and if you don't get the mag stop by the store and pick it up or order a subscription here on my amazon store (click here).  There is a fantastic article for a 28 day challenge that offers some really great recipes, a detox structure similar to what i use, and it will surely get you started on your post holiday health kick on the right foot.  One of the recipes that caught my eye was for crunchy chickpea snacks.  What a great last minute app to offer if you're hosting an occasion.  They are easy to pop in your mouth, not fattening, and fully delicious!  Lucky for me i had a can of garbanzos in the cabinet and i went to town creating  my own spice mix for my poppers.  They turned out YUMMY and didn't last very long.  Next time i'll double, triple, or quadruple the recipe so that i can save some in a glass jar to munch on throughout the week.

Zesty Chickpea Poppers:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees
drain and rinse a 15 oz can of garbanzos
lay the beans out on a baking sheet and mist well with vegetable oil (canola, olive, etc)
Sprinkle liberally with garam masala and cumin and add a light dusting of cayenne
Sprinkle as well with sea salt
Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes shaking the pan or toss the beans with a spatula occasionally
Allow to cool, additional salt if you like, and enjoy.

The original recipe says these little crispers should last in a tightly sealed glass jar for up to 2 weeks.

'I'm Seeing Green' Shrooms

You can do whatever you want with this pesto recipe, but it's damn good stuffed into some baby bella mushrooms. You can even take your leftover pesto and make a yummy salad dressing with simple additions, or toss the remainder over some pasta or even better raw pasta - zucchini noodles. Like all good cooks i rarely measure - so go with your eye and your tastebuds. All recipes are below!

Pesto Recipe:

equal parts fresh basil leaves and spinach leaves (approximately 2 - 3 cups total)
raw pine nuts (approximately 1/3-1/2 cup)
approximately 1/4 cup olive oil (cold pressed extra virgin is best)
1/2 of a lemon, squeezed/juiced
1 clove garlic
sea salt to taste
(food processor or high speed blender needed)

easy as can be: toss in the basil and spinach, pine nuts, garlic, lemon, and a couple cranks of sea salt. Add about 1/2 of the oil, and process. You'll need to stop to scrape the sides down on the food processor, continue to process until smooth, adding the remaining oil as needed.

for the bellas: destem and degill by using the back of a spoon to gently scrape the inside gills away. wipe bellas with a damp cloth to clean. Spray the bellas with olive oil spray (if you have a mister), or rub olive oil on palms and lightly coat bellas. If grilling start scooped side down for just a moment, then flip and stuff, grilling the under side - these cook pretty darn quick. You could also stuff them with the pesto and place in the oven under broil for a few minutes - watch to make sure they don't burn.

Leftover pesto - salad dressing:

Combine 1/2 squeezed lemon, dash of balsamic vinegar, dash of olive oil, with one tablespoon pesto. Stir together, taste. If too thick add lemon, oil, or a dash of vinegar whichever is needed to suit your taste. Toss over a farmers market greens medley and a bouquet of colorful cherry tomatoes sliced in halves.

Raw pasta:

if you have a spiralizer (saldacco, spirooli, joyce chen) crank up a few zuchs and top with the pesto. If you are reading this thinking "what in the world is a spirooli?" you should google it. It's a great tool to turn veggies (like carrots, zucchinis, beets, and radish) into angle hair pasta. If you don't want to spend $30 on a hand cranking kitchen appliance, then use your veggie peeler to make fettucini style noodles. start at the base of zucchini and peel/slice away from you approximately 5 times, turn zuch slightly and slice again 5 times, repeat all the way around your zuch till your left with the seedy center. And there you go - raw pasta!