Eat Your Greens Soup with Edamame

I had a good run of giveaways there. I was considering whether I could do an entire month of giveaways but quickly discounted that by writing this post. Although, to be fair, this was a recipe I discovered while previously reviewing a cookbook. This soup, in its original incarnation, belongs to Angela from within The Oh She Glows Cookbook.  While I love the glo bar recipe I shared earlier, this is the soup I keep returning to, time and time again.

I have a hard time explaining what the soup is. Angela called it a detox soup which makes me cringe, but it is filled with a nicely fragrant broth made from ginger, cumin with a touch of cinnamon and filled with loads and loads of vegetables. Mushrooms, broccoli and carrot. Sometimes I use kale or collards, sliced into thin strips, but this time I used a crunchy cruciferous mix of kale, cabbage and brussels sprouts for more variety.  I also continued with the green theme and used frozen edamame as my protein of choice. It fits well with the uniquely Asian twist brought by the last minute addition of shredded nori.

Like the recent article in The Guardian addressed, You can’t detox your body. It’s a myth. So how do you get healthy? A healthy mix of vegetables with protein is indeed the way to go.

Looking for more good articles, these were good finds:

The secret to a long, happy marriage – So far, I think Rob and I are doing very well in this regard 🙂

Everything I thought about recovery is a lie – An excellent post about recovery from an eating disorder.

Why do pigs oink in English, boo boo in Japanese, and nöff-nöff in Swedish? – Rob has always wondered why Polish dogs say “hau hau”. But do you know what noises porcupines make? Very cute noises.

Floating feasts – Almost makes me want to go on a cruise. Almost… Anyways a great article about food on cruise ships

A Warning on Nutmeg – Beware of nutmeg overload!

Secret Lives of Passwords – What does your password say about yourself?

Anyways, it is a good time for vegan cookbooks and I have a few more to tell you about. I hope to finish my reviews before the holidays so it is like a mini present for the winners. 🙂

I am sharing this with Souper Sundays and Shaheen’s Eat Your Greens.

Raw Cauliflower Nigiri Sushi

I was going to write a post for Thursday but somehow after the shootings on Wednesday, I didn’t feel like blogging. Thankfully everyone I know is fine and it is mostly back to business.

These are a cute appetizer if I ever saw one. Displaying cauliflower’s prowess in the kitchen, it lends as a fun rice substitute for these mock sushi nigiri. I like parsnip’s sweet undertones for sushi (see here and here) so I used a ripe mango to offset the dish with more sweetness. Although the biggest trick for these is definitely how to keep it all together.

The secret is psyllium. There was a time when I made microwave chocolate psyllium cakes fairly regularly (pun unintended) but mostly because they were easy and single-serve. These are a bit more labour intensive (but too cute), so I understand if you turn them into regular sushi rolls, too. I can see myself adding psyllium to raw sushi rolls next time, simply to help them keep their shape better, especially after cutting.

Are you tired of cauliflower yet? I have a lot more recipes to share. 🙂

 I am sharing this with Vegan Linky Potluck.

Lemon-Miso Macro Bowl with Miso-Braised Swiss Chard and Lemon Chickpea Dressing

Sorry for the blurry photo. Temperatures are dropping and the days are getting longer. We seemed to have misplaced my tripod in our whirlwind of a maze home still being unpacked so I am working with what I can.

This was a delicious bowl of goodness. Brown rice at its base, with a side of lemony chickpea spread and a hefty helping of lemon-miso braised Swiss chard.

The dressing is more puckering than my typical hummus and uses lots of lemon juice instead of balsamic vinegar (which I used in my previous hummus dressing). I was almost worried it was too lemon-heavy but it was nicely balanced when added to the brown rice.

I was channeling my mustard-hummus rice bowl with roasted cauliflower and truthfully, I was not really thinking of macrobiotics originally. However with the touch of nori in the Swiss chard, it reminded me more of my previous macro bowl with the miso-tahini sauce.

I also ended up adding peanuts for a nice crunch, so feel free to add something similar.

The miso-braised greens was adapted from Plant-Powered for Life, quite an gem of a cookbook. The original recipe was Miso-Braised Collard Greens with Cashews, and you can tell I adapted it by swapping chard for collards and peanuts for the cashews. The cookbook is filled with healthy plant-based recipes, each attached to a healthy eating tip. This recipe was found under tip 7: Aim for at least six servings of veggies every day. The tips range from Make variety your motto to Remember fresh isn’t always best and Pay attention to heritage foods. With such variety of the tips, the resulting haphazardness of the order of the recipes is the unfortunate result and make this an unwieldly cookbook unless you sport an electronic copy. Otherwise, you have a good novella to skim through, picking up small tips to help eat a bit better.

Recipes from Plant-Powered for Life spotted elsewhere:

Farro and White Bean Veggie Burgers

Red Bean and Okra Jambalaya

Tofu Mushroom Tacos

Tortilla Soup

I am sharing this with Shaheen’s Eat Your Greens and Virtual Vegan Potluck.

Maple Sesame Crackers

Spring cleaning isn’t just happening in our kitchen. Rob has decided it was time to clean up our hard-drives, over-drives and Monkey drives, too. Mostly spurred because, after trying to amalgamate his important files with my important files, it would not fit on our 1 terabyte of online back-up space.

Rob thought it was a bit nuts.

My files are mostly photos. Mostly food, but also from travel and of family/friends.

My shutter count on my six-year-old camera is 101,501. That’s only ~17k photos a year.

Apparently I take too many photos. And I keep them all. And then some.

I will let him tackle the computer while I tackle the kitchen, thank you.

We seem to have an excess of sesame seeds. Sadly, I bought a pack late in the year when I couldn’t find my original package…. I thought we were out. Instead, now we have twice as many sesame seeds. With our sesame seed surplus, I also made these fun crackers.

A simple cracker made with sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and maple syrup. I remain a bit apprehensive of black sesame seeds since I don’t find them as flavourful as their whole counterparts, but they certainly make for a pretty cracker. The maple syrup bound it all together after baking. Maybe I don’t need brown rice syrup afterall? 😉

Have you checked? What is your shutter count?

PS. In my defence, I take much less photos than I used to….. and my camera has travelled to many fun places over the years)

PPS. To find your shutter count with a DSLR, you can find it embedded within the Exif information of a photo, and it can be easily unearthed through Picasa.

PPPS. I am sharing this with Bookmarked Recipes, Healthy Vegan Fridays, and this month’s No Waste Food Challenge.

Parsnip Rice Sushi with Sweet Tamarind Dipping Sauce & Cookbook Giveaway!

I have been very fortunate to grow up in an environment where brains were valued over beauty. None of my friends were ever on diets. If I made New Year’s Resolutions (I doubt I did; my last decade has been more of a daily self-evaluation), they were short-lived vow to be nicer to my brother. My mother (and brother) may not believe me.

It was only after I started reading food blogs, did I encounter the dizzying world of detoxes, cleanses and diets. Not that I have ever condoned detoxes. Barring liver disease or overdoses, our liver does a great job “detoxifying” our body every.single.day. Imagine my surprise when not one, but two of my friends in Houston told me they were eating 100% raw shortly after New Year’s, spurred by Kristina’s 21-Day Raw Challenge. I love the creativity that comes from cooking/uncooking/eating raw foods, but they complement my cooked vegan eats. Let’s be honest, even in Houston, winter is not the ideal time to go all raw.

My friend hosted a potluck to kickstart her first day on her raw diet and this is what I brought to share. I used it as an opportunity to make something from a new cookbook, Balanced Raw. Raw sushi is easy to share at a party, so I tried the new recipe. I have made raw sushi before, and the recipes are quite similar, but I decided to share this version, too, mainly because Rob took some impromptu sushi rolling action shots. Using a placemat makes sushi rolling very easy. Parsnip rice is spiced with a bit of chile powder and filled with an assortment of vegetables.

A note about the cookbook, though. The recipes are built around a 3-week vegan “cleanse” with a meal plan for every day. The recipes span both raw and cooked meals, but they seem to follow a low-fat 80/10/10 vegan diet. While Kristina is good about mentioning the need to eat enough calories, the meal plans in this book look woefully inadequate calorically. However, the recipes are interesting and would be a useful adjunct to whatever your typical eats may be. There are ideas for vegetables beyond salads. I use raw foods to enhance my vegan diet. It is a great way to eat more vegetables and fruits.

The publisher is letting me give a cookbook to one reader living in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom (YES!). To be entered, please leave a comment here, telling me what you think about cleanses and detoxes. Have you done one? Are you doing one? I will randomly select a winner on January 20, 2014. Good luck!

Balanced Raw recipes elsewhere:

Blue Greens Smoothie

This is my submission to this month’s I Am Vegetarian – Hear Me Raw, and this week’s Raw Foods Thursdays.

PS. There is still time to enter my giveaway for Superfood Smoothies here.

Smoked Salmon Sushi Pizza

It is true. I am in a Mixed Diet Relationship.

I often get questions how Rob and I duke it out in the kitchen.

In my corner, I am the whole-foods vegan devoid of white flours and sugars.

At the opposite end, we have Rob, who will eat anything.

Thankfully, we actually don’t have segregated corners.

Before I met Rob, he was eating vegetarian at home. Actually, when Rob met me, I was eating a flexitarian diet (mainly vegetarian with occasional fish but I still ate meat, too). Rob had no clue what he was getting himself into, haha!

One of my friends who is vegan won’t allow any meat into his home.  I am definitely not like that but I could see how dietary choices could definitely divide relationships. Thankfully both Rob and I are more accommodating, as well as our friends and families.

At home, Rob and I eat mostly the same stuff. Mostly vegan, although sometimes Rob eats yogurt and adds butter to his granola. There are some Rob-only ingredients, like the red and green curry pastes in the fridge (they include shrimp, so a definite no-go for me). There are some Janet-only foods, too, because Rob doesn’t really care for them- like my Amazing Grass for breakfast. For breakfast fruit, Rob gets the bananas and mangoes while I relish in berries. Rob loves spicy foods, so if cooking for himself, he usually increases the chilies. If cooking for both of us, they fall more into my own comfort zone (1/2 tsp Aleppo max!). Rob also has a sweet tooth and is pretty content to munch through the rare dessert that I make.

I think we’ve got things worked out pretty well in the kitchen, actually.

Rob eats out way more often than I do, which is where he gets his occasional fix of meat. If we Rob cooks meat at home, it is for our guests.  Rob’s last birthday party kind of had me in a tizzy because I didn’t want to cook meat. Rob couldn’t use the barbecue so grilling was out. Thankfully the slow cooker came to the rescue.

I still contend that while I don’t crave it, I probably miss fish the most. Here I am sharing a smoked salmon sushi pizza that I made for a party with mixed company. While traditional sushi can be finicky to make for a large crowd, making a casserole of sushi pizza is much quicker and easier.

I used the seasoned sushi rice from Yo Sushi and the sushi pizza recipe was modified from Bonnie Stern’s HeartSmart Cooking for Family and Friends. I ended up doubling the recipe to fit a 9″x13″ pan but I probably didn’t have to double it. It made a ton of food. My pieces were a bit big which necessitated using a knife and fork to eat, so next time I would opt for smaller bite-sized pieces, with overlapping cucumber slices.

I am still too shy to try a nontraditional raw take on this for a crowd. If I test-run it first, I may have more courage to try Ricki’s vegan sushi pizza next time.

This is being submitted to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Terry.

Vegan Okonomiyaki (aka Japanese Vegetable Pancake), As You Like It

My first meal after I arrived in Tokyo was okonomiyaki. It was from the closest restaurant to our hostel. We had no clue what we were ordering, pointing to pictures instead from a photo album. All the while, making sure there would be no shrimp (no ebi!). We ended up with an assortment of vegetable pancakes that were cooked up on a hot grill in front of us. Some with more flour, others with different vegetables. I remember one being bright pink (I forget what made it that colour). Once the server noticed we were eating them plain, he encouraged us to try the sauces on the side. To be honest, we left wondering what the hype was about okonomiyaki.

We persevered, though. When we went to Osaka, we tried okonomiyaki again, at a very popular hole-in-the-wall resto. We had to wait in line for 30 minutes, but when we finally snatched a seat in the tiny resto, we were able to watch our cabbage pancakes being made in front of us: thinly sliced cabbage and carrots were mixed with a seasoned flour and dashi stock batter, grilled and then topped with your chosen toppings- most of them with bacon- and then it was slathered with Japanese barbecue sauce (okonomi sauce), and later drizzled with Japanese mayonnaise,  and sprinkled with parsley flakes. A crispy veggie pancake with a soft middle, topped with savoury sauces. Delicious. I was hooked.

Okonomiyaki literally means as you like it. Want yours with veggies? Want yours with sauce? Do you want your toppings in the batter with noodles (Hiroshima-style), or on top (Osaka-style)?

Or in my case, do I want mine vegan? Oh yes! I was bookmarked this recipe immediately from Big Vegan because it used tofu as the base instead of the traditional flour and eggs. While I have made Kevin’s okonomiyaki before, I found it hard to flip and keep intact while cooking. As such, I was thrilled to see this version. While already nontraditional, you bake it as a huge pancake instead of frying it on the stovetop. It took more like 60 minutes to bake but it was delicious. Alone, the tofu-miso-nooch batter was flavourful even before we cooked it. The consistency was a bit more heavier on the batter on the batter-cabbage ratio than I remember mine in Japan, but it was great as is. We would definitely make this again.

My version was topped simply with black sesame seeds and toasted shredded nori, whereas Rob went more all-out with some tonkatsu sauce, kewpie mayonnaise and bonito fish flakes. Remember, as you like it. If you want to try your hand at homemade mayo and okonomi sauces, there are recipes forthcoming in Terry’s new book. I haven’t tried them, though. Big Vegan also has suggestions for wasabi-mayo and tomato sauces. Or go simple like Heidi, who used almonds and chives to garnish her veggie pancake.

I was planning on talking about Mixed Diet relationships in this post, but I think I will save that for my next post.

This is my submission to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes, to this week’s Weekend Wellness and to Cookbooks Sundays.

Sushi Roll Edamame Collard Wrap with Green Onion-Miso Vinaigrette

The point of making a sushi rice bowl salad is that it is easier than rolling numerous sushi rolls. I know, I’ve done it before.

So why would I bastardize a perfectly nice sushi salad by turning it into a wrap?

A collard wrap, of all things, instead of a sushi roll.

As you probably figured out, I like wraps, especially when wrapped with a green leaf like Swiss chard, kale, collard or even Romaine lettuce. Hearty greens don’t go soggy. My leaves are usually small enough for bite-size snacks, rolling up a few for tasty meal. While I also like salads, I preferred this as a wrap. With a wrap, you make sure every component of the salad hits your palate at the same time.

The idea of this wrap came from Appetite for Reduction, after Ashley posted her version. In my wrap, you get your zing from the green onions, the crunch from the carrots and cucumber, the salty earthiness from the shredded nori with a savoury note from sesame seeds all firmed up with a background from coarse bulgur and slippery edamame. The collard leaf keeps it all together. The green onion miso dressing is great within the wrap, and you can always add more if you use it as a dipping sauce. As a salad, the Asian ingredients seem a bit disjointed, but in the wrap, they work so well together.. because you can experience it all in every bite. 🙂

If you are tired of eating delicate leafy green-based salads, consider turning it into a green wrap. Where your greenery is just presented in a different form.

This is my submission to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Rachel and to this week’s Weekend Wellness.

Sushi Bowl with Asparagus and Avocado

I didn’t think I was going to eat any sushi while I was in Vancouver.

But I did.

Trust me, I didn’t succumb to the traditional sushi rolls.

Instead, I had a delicious raw sushi roll at Organic Lives. Completely inauthentic, it was filled with a pecan pate, sprouts, veggies, avocado and mango. With the zippy fruit-based dipping sauce, it was so completely different from any sushi roll I have ever had. The only similarity was that it was a nori roll wrap.

Once the hubbub subsided after I returned home, I was craving a more traditional sushi roll. Without all the hard work of actually rolling the little buggers…

When I visited Japan, one of my favourite meals was eating sashimi at the Tsukiji Market, which is the wholesale marketplace for seafood in Tokyo. With daily auctions, this is where you can eat the freshest fish. The sashimi was unbeatable. I have never been able to enjoy sea urchin anywhere else. So fresh, it was so buttery soft and creamy.

I actually visited Tsukiji two days in a row and sampled sashimi from two different vendors. Both times, I ordered a sushi bowl with an assortment of sashimi. One resto had better sashimi and the other had better rice. The rice was so good, it eclipsed the fish. And I don’t really like rice, actually. I consider it filler in sushi rolls, when I would rather be eating the filling. I tolerate rice for the most part, but here, I learned how great rice can taste.

I have experimented with a few rices since my return, and I still remain partial to a short-grain Japanese-style rice. Recently, I bought the Taiwanese Yih Chuan Aromatic Rice, which has a faint aroma of taro (yes, on sale at T&T). It brings rice to the next level. The rice is nicely flavoured, shaped and most importantly, tastes great.

My whole preamble about rice is because if you are going to make a sushi rice bowl, you should try to use a nice rice! The dressing helps, too. The toppings, too. But let the rice get the spotlight it deserves as it isn’t supposed to be a bland side.

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks, I wouldn’t call this an authentic Japanese recipe, but a lively citrus-flavoured sushi bowl. Top with your favourite sushi toppings such as steamed asparagus, avocado, grilled tofu, and dare I suggest mango? (Mango, next time…). The key to keep this a sushi bowl, and not a rice salad, though, is to include the toasted nori strips. You can buy them pre-shredded, but you could also toast the nori and then cut it into thin strips yourself.

This is my submission to this month’s Healing Foods featuring whole grains, to this month’s Simple and in Season and to Ricki’s new Summer Wellness Weekends.

Savoury Oatmeal with Goji Berries, Nori and Ponzu Sauce

When you eat alone, you may eat things that are odd. Cereal for dinner? I did that one too many times while in university. So quick and easy!  Unless you are making steel cut oatmeal, regular or quick cooking oatmeal falls into the same category: quick and easy meal. Since exploring savoury oatmeal for breakfast, I didn’t think twice about whipping up a batch of oatmeal after coming home from Vancouver and then again for breakfast the next day. I was craving something warm and homey, after eating a lot of raw foods last week.

With Vancouver still on my mind (the sushi capital of Canada), I decided to spice up my ponzu-flavoured savoury oatmeal with strips of toasted nori and goji berries. Seemingly odd ingredients, but all hailing from somewhere in Asia, it worked really well together! The goji berries plumped up nicely and offered a hint of sweetness with some chewiness. The nori brought a comforting sushi-flavour to the dish, the citrus from the ponzu was light and refreshing and the quick-cooking oatmeal was slightly lumpy, but in a good reminds-me-of-rice kind of way.

I have been experimenting with more unusual ingredients lately: maca, delicious! Carob, yup. And now goji berries. Can I blame Tess’ new cookbook all about superfoods? Perhaps… but blame isn’t the right word, praise is more like it. 🙂  While I also believe that common fruits and vegetables are superfoods with all their vitamins and minerals, it is nice to spice things up with new ingredients. Taste is the most important, though, which is something I will never sacrifice (the health benefits of goji berries may be overstated).

But let me share a secret: these wacky “superfoods” don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Even seaweed (nori, etc) and dried mushrooms can be expensive at health food stores. However, people have been eating seaweed and goji berries for years. Head to where they are native to find cheap supplies – and no, I don’t mean China. Head to Chinatown or your favourite Asian grocery store (Sunny!). Here, goji berries may be labelled as red medlar, though, which is why they have gone under my radar until now. Goji berries are so much cheaper, only a buck or two, whereas I know Whole Foods charges a lot more.

While goji berries are a bit lackluster straight from the bag – they taste like a tart cherry in the guise of a dried raisin – they are much better once they are plumped up in the oatmeal. Because they aren’t cloyingly sweet like most dried fruit, this paired well with the savoury nori and ponzu sauce.

This is my submission to this month’s Breakfast Club, featuring berries.