Friday, June 11, 2010

Home Made Artichoke Pesto (Photos Updated!)

I loooooooooove pesto and miss it a great deal. So I took an old pesto recipe I had and made it vegan. Sad I forgot to put my memory card back into the camera through so I will have to remake it and post more pictures later. On the bright side Donna was filming me while I did it so there should be a movie of it soon too.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of artichoke hearts, drained
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp of Olive oil- to make it more of a sauce like consistency you can always add more
1/4 tsp or red pepper flakes
Bunch of fresh basil leaves
3 Tbsp of Nutritional Yeast- this should have a flake like look about it and be a creamy yellow. It is a great source of B-12

Take all of these ingredients and place them in your food processor. Blend well but stop before cream. There should be a good deal of texture left.

Now if you only use two table spoons of olive oil the mixture can be scooped out of the processor and shaped so that it can be used as a spread on crackers, bread or dehydrated veggie chips. Since this recipe is raw when not added to a cooked ingredient it is a perfect snack for a raw vegan. If you use more you can toss it in with a bunch of fresh pasta and mix.

Again I am so sorry about the photos and I will make it again as soon as I can and put pictures up!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Update on my herb garden!

Well as many of you know I started my own herb garden on my balcony. I just wanted to update on it with some pictures of how it is growing and doing now! I'm really excited about it and cant wait to have fresh herbs all of the time.

So anyway! Heres how it looked before: I know small and just starting to grow...but here is what its looking like now!
All grown up right? Well getting there anyway. The cilantro is taking over everything but the basil is coming up nicely and thats something I was worried about.

Kale Chips


Ah Kale, yet another thing that I didn't know about until turning vegan. Yummy Yummy Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium. You can put it in anything and it has a permanent place in my nightly love, smoothies.

So when I found this recipe I was really excited and I think that you will be too. Its simple and fast.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of Kale, de-stemmed and torn into pieces
1 table spoon of apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar.
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Pre-heat your oven at 350 degrees while you take all of the ingredients and mix them together in a bowl. You can also add different seasonings if you want for your own flavor of chip!

Spread them out on a baking tray and place in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until crispy and chip like.