Strawberry Orange Spinach Salad with Pecans

Spinach fresh from the Spring garden doesn't need any embellishment, but I made this oil-free and pretty strawberry-orange dressing for it tonight that was light and naturally sweet.

In food processor, pulverize 1 orange.   Add 1 tsp chia seeds, 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, and 3-4 strawberries.  Add water as needed to consistency.  I added about 1/4 cup water.

Dice 1/2 a red onion and slice a few strawberries onto the raw spinach leaves. Add salad dressing.  I was going to add pecans but didn't remember until after I starting eating it. It was good either way.

If just orange juice was used, the chia seeds would act as a gel to hold the dressing together.  By using the whole orange, the chia seeds weren't needed for that purpose, but are still good for nutrition (rich is omega 3 fatty acids- the good kind).

Vegan Cornbread

I have finally created a cornbread recipe I like, by combining the best of two vegan cornbread recipes.    It was moist with great texture warm out of the oven. It was basically this vegan-cornbread from healthy family and home combined with the flax seed and water technique from vinogirl's vegan cornbread on food.com

• 6 T water 
• 2 T ground flax seed

1. Boil water in a small saucepan, add ground flax seed, and simmer 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

2. In medium bowl, combine and set aside:

• 2 cups cornmeal (non-GMO)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 T aluminum-free baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (pink himalayan if you have it)

3. In another bowl, mix together:

• 1.75 cups almond milk
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
• 1/3 cup coconut oil (melted in the 8x8 pan while the oven is preheating).
• 2 T maple syrup or other sweetener

4. Add the flax seed mixture to the wet ingredients and then mix wet and dry ingredients together. Batter will be thick.

5. Transfer to 8 x 8 inch baking pan that has been slightly oiled from the coconut oil.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes.

Juicing and Recipes to use the Leftover Vegetable Pulp

The pulp from the first vegetable juicing this week went to feed the worms busily making compost. Tonight I decided to make something with the second batch of juice. Half a cup went into a millet and cherry tomato salad because I cooked 3 times as much millet as I needed the other day.  1.5 cups went into a quick bread recipe (which was not very good) First the juice recipe.

The basic Recipe for Beet/Carrot/Ginger Juice

1/4 bunch of fresh parsley (optional)
a few cups of kale, dandelion greens or stems, beet greens or stems (optional)
5 carrots
1 small - medium beet
3 -5 celery stalks
1 cucumber
1 apple, cored, medium
2 inches fresh ginger

This will produce 25-30 oz of juice.  Drink half right away, chill the rest and drink within 12 hours.
It also produces about 2 cups of vegetable pulp. I ran it through the food processor to smooth out some dandelion stems and it turned a beautiful red-purple color.

Not knowing what I was doing I made the first millet recipe I saw which called for cooking 2.5 cups of millet in 4 cups of chicken broth.  The recipe that said this would serve 6 produced 10 cups of millet!

After we each ate 1/2 cup of millet with olive oil, parsley, lemon juice and were not impressed, the rest went into the fridge and I did a little research about millet. 1 cup dry = 4 cups cooked which is still about 6 servings-millet is dense.  Fortunately there are lots of things to do with millet, if not vegetable pulp and millet.

Millet, Beet-Carrot Pulp, and Tomato Salad

• 3/4 cup leftover millet cooked in chicken broth with olive oil, lemon and parsley, cold
• 1/2 cup beet-carrot pulp leftover from juicing
• fresh parsley
• olive oil
• rice vinegar
• orange cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

This salad was much better than the original plain millet recipe with just olive oil, lemon, and parsley.  However, this is not something I would repeat again. One or two servings was good for a lifetime.  Same for the Quick Bread.  Vegetable pulp is really best served to the worms.

Beet-Carrot Pulp Quick Bread 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9" bread loaf pan.

In one bowl, combine

• 1.5 cups flour  (I used 1 c white whole wheat and 1/2 c white flour)
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 T flax seed flour (because I did not add any oil in next step. I did not add oil because I knew I would put butter on my slice!)

In another bowl, stir to combine

• 1/4 - 1/2 cup mashed banana (almost 1 whole banana) or similar amount of applesauce or oil
• 1/4 cup ginger sugar (or other sweetener, such as white or brown sugar, honey or agave or stevia blend)  Next time, add a little more sweetener, up to 1/2 cup.
• 2 T blackstrap molasses 
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 cups vegetable pulp
• 1/4 cup coconut milk (or any milk type liquid)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or other nut)- add nuts after combining with the flour.

Stir the dry mix into the wet mix.  It will be thick, but a little more milk may be needed to get the flour to combine.  Stir in 1/2 cup chopped nuts. Bake 45 minutes or until done.

The molasses made it very dark, it would have been a prettier red color without the molasses, but blackstrap molasses has iron and other nutrients I wanted to include in the bread. The quick bread came out a little too "virtuous". It could benefit from a bit more sweetener. Although it was moist, it was a bit dense and has the texture that breads can have without oil or butter. On the other hand, because it isn't fabulously good, we won't be tempted to eat more than 1 slice at a time.

Inspirations for this recipe came from the NYTimes for the enormous amount of cooked millet, Erin at Plantoeat.com for ideas for using juicer pulp, especially her link to the whole-wheat-zucchini-or-carrot-bread receipe, and also to hillbillyhousewife for her pulp bread recipe that confirmed for me that I could  add milk and replace the oil with bananas.  I decided to also add flax seed flour to replace 1 T of oil.  It is my fault that I used less sweetener and than both these recipes and to use black strap molasses because I thought that since my pulp had sweetness from the carrots, beets, and apple, which a regular zucchini recipe would not have, that it would be sweet enough. It is not sweet at all, which is a good thing after all.

Sometime when I have pulp and have time, I want to make Genas Juice Pulp Crackers.  Although Gena used a dehydrator to make the crackers, at Plantoeat, she wrote that she uses her oven at the lowest possible setting for 12 hours to make them almost dry, then cuts them with kitchen shears, and then bake another hour or two until crispy. Change spices to suit preference.

Thai Bok Choy Salad with Ginger Peanut Sauce

This recipe came from here- thai-bok-choy-salad with ginger peanut dressing, except I did not add ramen noodles, sesame seeds or peanuts.  I did marinate the chicken in her Ginger Soy marinade from another of her recipes, but it is not necessary.  The day I made this I happened to have exactly 1 cup of fresh coconut milk from a green Thai coconut that I had finally gotten around to opening.  I put all of the coconut flesh (which is very little) with a bit of the coconut water in the food processor and it made 1 cup coconut milk-just enough for the dressing.

Thai Bok Choy Salad
5-6 cups thinly slice baby bok choy (or chinese napa cabbage)
6-8 radishes, thinly sliced
2 carrots, julienned
2-3 green onions, thinly sliced
2-3 cups cooked chicken (optional)
Optional: halved grape tomatoes, bean sprouts, cucumbers, jicama

Thai Ginger Peanut Dressing
8 oz light coconut milk
1/4 natural peanut butter
1/4 T fish sauce
2 T Thai red curry paste
1 T brown sugar or honey
1 t rice vinegar
1 t lime juice
2-3 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 T soy sauce
1/2 tsp Sriracha sauce or cayenne

Vegetable Tian

 I just realized that I had not posted the prettiest vegetable dish made from the 2012 garden. 

I made this Vegetable Tian Sept 9, 2012, when for the first and only time ever, our garden produced a green zucchini, a yellow squash, and tomatoes, all with the same diameter.

Underneath the summer squash and tomatoes are sautéed onions, garlic, and sweet red pepper (a little salt and pepper). On top, fresh thyme and rosemary drizzled with olive oil.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes at 350-375 degrees, remove foil, add a sprinkling of fresh grated parmesan cheese on top, and bake for 10-15 minutes more.

This tasted wonderful-so fresh! Most recipes taste great when the ingredients are picked from the backyard garden minutes before cooking, but this one is especially pretty. Its good looks didn't stop the two of us from devouring almost the whole thing at once.

Update: Aug 22, 2013.  While not quite as equally sized as last year, today's garden brought forth one yellow squash, one green zucchini, one striped zucchini, and some tomatoes that were sort of close in size.  It is in the oven now. mmm.

March of the Penguins

I made these cute appetizers several times between Christmas Eve and New Years Day.   They take a lot of time to assemble, but it goes quicker if you cut all the olives and roasted peppers and let them dry on paper towels while you cut the carrot feet and beaks, and then assemble in assembly line fashion.  The penguins are sitting on turnip skis or ice floes in 1 picture. In the other picture, they are adoring a Broccolini Christmas Tree!  Cream cheese at room temperature with a little butter added and a few seconds in the microwave will help it spread easier into the penguin's olive tummy. Large olive for  body and small olive for head.

Raw Beet Salad

My raw beet salad is so simple - lemon juice and parsley with shredded beets.  There are other recipes out there that have a more traditional dressing with olive oil, perhaps dijon mustard or garlic, but I like the acidic balance the freshly squeezed lemon juice provides to the sweetness of the beets without any other mediators except fresh parsley.  A very healthy, simple, quick salad.