Lemon Cake

This dish is a dance that took 12 months to create.  The foundation was simple:  Make a cake.  The rhythm was more challenging:

No animal products… no eggs, butter, dairy.

No refined sugars… no honey, agave, stevia.

No oils… not olive, not coconut, not avocado.

Only whole wheat flour.

And make it taste good.

After 12 months of practicing the steps, this is my dance.

Lemon Cake

Serves 8

2 tablespoons flax meal

½  cup dates, soaked in warm water

1 tablespoons dried lavender buds

½ cup raw cashew butter, no-salt-added

1 cup non-dairy milk

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon turmeric

1/8 teaspoon salt (optional)

1 lemon, zest and juice

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 350.

To make flax eggs:  Combine flax meal with 6 tablespoons warm water.  Whisk together and let sit 5 minutes, until mixture is gelatinous and slimy, like eggs.

To combine wet ingredients:  Remove dates from soaking liquid.  Place in a blender or high-speed food processor with ½ cup of the soaking liquid.  Puree until well-blended and smooth.  Add dried lavender, cashew butter, non-dairy milk, and vanilla.  Puree until smooth.

To make cupcakes:  Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, turmeric, and salt in a large bowl.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry.  Add the lemon zest and juice and vinegar.  Stir well to combine.  Line an 8” round cake pan with parchment (or use a 12-cupcake silicon baking mold).  Pour the cake batter into the pan and spread evenly.  Bake 20-25 minutes for regular cake (10 to 15 minutes for cupcakes).  The cake will be done when it is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool.  Let fully cool before frosting.

Lemon Frosting

Makes 1 cup

1 cup raw cashew butter, or 1 cup raw cashews, soaked overnight and drained

8 dates, pitted and soaked in warm water

1 lemon, zested and juiced

1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric

To prepare the Lemon Frosting:  Place the cashew butter (or soaked cashews), dates, vanilla, and ¼ cup warm water in a high-speed blender or food processor.  Pulse the mixture several times, and then blend until the ingredients are thick, smooth, and creamy.  If needed add 1-tablespoon at a time of water to the blender until the desired consistency is achieved.  Cream can be use immediately or may be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days.    

Freezes beautifully.

Apricot Bean Salsa

Salsa comes down to a few key ingredients: jalapeno, lime, and cilantro.  From there, the possibilities are endless, making it the perfect setting to use summer’s ripest fruits.  Adding beans takes it from side dish to main course.

2 cups cooked yellow eye stueben beans

2 large apricots, diced

1 jalapeno, seeded and minced

1 lime, zest and juice

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

To make salsa:  Combine all just before serving. Enjoy in bibb lettuce cups.

If making a day ahead, layer all of the ingredients in a large bowl, with the beans and cilantro on top.  Toss just before serving.  If you toss any sooner, you beans and apricot will get mushy.

Purple Tomatoes and Purple Basil

Purple tomatoes?  Purple basil?  Sounds like the perfect match.

Serves 4

3 or 4 purple heirloom tomatoes, sliced

1 to 2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons purple basil

Freshly ground black pepper
Place tomato slices on a large plate and fan out.  Splash on the white balsamic vinegar.  Tear apart the purple basil and scatter over the tomatoes.  Grind a few turns of black pepper.

Share with good friends and sunshine.

Butter Bean Leek Soup

Creamy, rich butter beans provide body and texture to this addictive soup.  A classic take on French Vichyssoise, traditionalists will serve chilled.  I prefer it warm, straight out of a mug.

3 leeks (about 1 bunch), white and light green parts only, thinly sliced

2 white onions, diced

3 cloves garlic

1 carrot, diced

1 bay leaf

2 cans (about 7 cups) butter beans, no-salt-added, drained and rinsed

In a large soup pot, combine leeks, onion, garlic, carrot, bay leaf, and 5 cups of water.  Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until leeks and carrot are soft, about 10 minutes.  Add the beans to the pot.  Remove the bay leaf.  Puree half of the mixture using a blender (immersion blender preferred).

Cook a few more minutes to bring flavors together.  Garnish with chopped chives, parsley, or just freshly ground black pepper and serve.

Sweet Cauliflower and Currants

Tiny currants provide bright pops to highlight the natural sweetness of cauliflower and the sweet licorice-flavor of fennel.  Other dried fruits like raisins, diced apricots, or chopped dates would also work well.

Serves 4 to 6

1 tablespoon fennel seed

1 head cauliflower, stem and florets, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 white onion

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup dried currants

2 tablespoons roasted sunflower seeds

Place fennel seeds in a large skillet.  Heat over high heat until fragrant, about 5 minutes.  Add cauliflower and onion to the pan.  Continue to cook until onions and caulifower begin to turn brown, about 4 more minutes.  Add the garlic, currants, and 1/4 cup of water.  Reduce heat to medium.  Use a wooden spoon to scrape up any bit from the bottom of the pan.  Cover and cook over medium heat until cauliflower is tender, about 7 minutes.  If the pan becomes to dry or garlic begins to burn, simply reduce your heat and add more water.

Serve over a mound of brown lentils and garnish with roasted sunflower seeds.

Fear Not Carbs

Recent tidbits in the media have reiterated the strengths of eating a Plant-centric diet.
Check out this fun video featuring some of our favorite diet guru.  Dr. Atkins is on there, as well as the writer of the Paleo Solution and some other low-carb heavy hitters:

Low-Carb vs Plant-Based

I’m usually not one to judge by someone’s personal appearance, but I highly doubt that ripped Cross Fit junkies would be motivated by the Paleo grandfather, Loren Cordain.
Beyond carbs, though, what is most important is eating whole foods.  So many times we think of “carbs” as the refined foods that have added sugars and fats.  We think of processed breads, cookies, crackers, pastries, doughnuts, and fries.  None of these are whole foods.  They have been stripped of fiber, protein, and nutrients and fortified with fats, oils, and flavorings to seem like food.  These are food imposters.

Whole carbs are plants.  They are whole grains (rice, oats, quinoa, corn).  They are potatoes (loaded with fiber, nutrients, and even protein and fat).  They are beans and legumes.  They are fruits.  They are complex, which means the body breaks them down slowly so that it can absorb all of their goodness without spiking blood sugar levels or raising insulin.

Even Women’s Health spent some time to quiet some of the myths of meatless eating:

5 Vegetarian Myths

The coolest thing I like on this list is that a Plant-Based diet is often more diverse then a meat-inclusive diet.  I think back to my chicken days.  The same chicken, 4 different ways, week after week.  Now, I eat all colors and sizes of grains.  I’m cooking beans I never knew existed.  I’m tasting different varieties of dark greens, potatoes, fruits, vegetables, spices, and more.  And if I do eat chicken?  Well, it tastes the same as it always did — boring.

Good luck, Plant-friendly eaters.  Please keep me posted on the progress.  May the plants be with you!

Cool Watermelon Salsa

This beautiful, fresh salsa highlights some of summer’s sweet melons.  Watermelon is a go-to favorite, but you can also use cantaloupe, canary, or buttercup melons for different colors and flavors.

Makes 3 cups, serves about 12 for appetizers

 

2 cups seedless watermelon, diced

1 seedless cucumber, diced

1 jalapeno, seeded and diced (for help on choosing one, check this video)

1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 lime, zest and juice

1 head radicchio (for serving)

Toss together watermelon, cucumber, jalapeno, cilantro, lime zest, and lime juice.  Chill for at least 30 minutes (or better yet, overnight) for flavors to come together.  Portion into radicchio cups and served chilled.

Puree extras for a refreshing gazpacho.

 

Berry Oatmeal in a Jar

Who has time for breakfast?  Make a full supply of these Sunday night for Breakfast-on-the-go all week.  Or, do like me, and chow on these for a post-workout refuel.

Makes 6 jars

3  cups oats (thick-rolled have a nice chewiness)

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1/2 tablespoon grated nutmeg

3 cups berries, any variety, let your nose and eyes choose

6 mason jars (holds at least 2 cups each)

Clean out jars.  Open lids.  Place 1/2 cup oats in each jar.  Combine the cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a small bowl, then even disperse among the jars (about 1 tablespoon in each jar).  If you have Pumpkin Pie spice mix on hand, this will also work.  Evenly disperse the berries among the jars.  Frozen berries or cherries also work.  Add enough water to each of the jars to cover the oats and come almost to the lip of the jar, about 1 1/2 cups.  Screw the lids on the jars, and refrigerate.

To enjoy: Simply screw the lid off the jar, microwave for a minute, stir, then another 30 seconds.  Enjoy warm.

The longer the oats soak in the water, the softer they’ll get.  Feel free to add in chopped, toasted nuts or fresh vanilla seeds for extra flavor.

Enough Protein

“How do you get enough protein?”

That’s one of the most frequent questions I hear when discussing plant-centered eating.  I hear it at the gym, where I work, from medical professionals, fitness experts, fellow cooks, and knowledgeable friends.

My favorite answer “I love broccoli.   Broccoli is loaded with protein.”

But not everyone likes broccoli.  Or they don’t believe me when I say I get protein from broccoli.  You mean in the whole history of humankind, vegetarians were dieing from lack of protein?  Now we know!  Really, though, my question for them is “How much protein do you need?” and then “How much are you getting?”

The tricky part here comes with the math.  Now, I love math and numbers.  Some people don’t.  The simple math:

Let’s take a healthy female.  She’s 140 (64 kg) lbs, moderately active.

She  needs about 1600 calories a day.

RDA is .8 grams of protein per kilogram of weight.  For our healthy female, that’s  about 51 g of protein.  1 gram of protein is 4 calories, so that means 204 of her calories should come from protein (about 8 percent of her total calories for the day).

If you love more math, check out my friend Jeff Novick’s post on Protein Requirements.  He’s a Registered Dietician and takes a calculator to the grocery.  He loves math.

So, back to broccoli.

98 calories of broccoli has 28 calories (more than 28%) protein.  When doing the math, remember 1 gram of protein = 4 calories.  I won’t even get into the fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, or iron that also comes with broccoli.  You probably already know all of that.  If our healthy female ate only broccoli (1600 calories worth!) all day, she’d get 114 g of protein by the end of the day.

100 calories of oats has about 20% protein.  Oats!  A day of only oats would be 69g of protein

Tomatoes.  32 calories of tomatoes (that’s a whole cup of tomato slices!) has 25% protein.  (2 grams of protein = 8 calories.  8/32 = 25%)  A day of 1600 calorie tomatoes? 100g of protein.

I haven’t made a single mention of beans, lentils, nuts, or tofu.  I also haven’t mentioned fake-meat products or processed products.  When we eat food that is stripped of its bran and fiber (aka refined flours, sugars, and oils), we strip it of its protein.  Then we usually pay for it in a bright shiny label that advertises “now with extra protein”.  Pass on the labels.  Eat your broccoli.