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!

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.

Nutty Semolina Italian Bread

I am calling it this because the sesame seeds give the bread a slightly nutty taste, making it, in my opinion a great sandwich bread!

1 1/4 cup of semolina flour
2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
2 table spoons butter
1 1/2 cups of water
1/4 cups of toasted Sesame seeds
1-2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
2 teaspoons of instant yeast

Mix all of the ingredients together in your bread machine (wet-dry with the yeast on top, not touching the water.).

Remember that semolina is a driest type of flour, so you might not want to set it on a dark crust setting just because of how tough it will be.

Salad Time

...Okay it is really hot here. Really muggy and hot. So there is only one thing that I want after running around all day and that is...well everything in my refrigerator.

So as usual I followed my body as I looked through the refrigerator. That really is the beautiful thing about salads; you can put anything in them. As always change whatever you want. If you want sun dried tomato in there, go for it! Toss in some stuff that is about to go bad.

Ingredients:
Salad
2 leaves of butter lettuce hand torn
2 small radishes sliced thinly
1/2 small Haas Avocado sliced
1 Green Onion chopped
Handful of cooked chickpeas

Vinaigrette

1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons Red wine Vinaigrette
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Thyme to taste
Lemon juice to taste

First mix all of the veggies together and place to the side. Then in a small bowl whisk together all of the vinaigrette ingredients. Drizzle over the top of salad.

Herb Garden 101

Alright, as many of you know I live in an apartment which is not the most conducive to cooking hard core anyway. One of the things that gets to me about it (Besides not being able to compost or have a gas stove installed) is the fact that I have no yard for herb gardening.

Herbs and spices are one of the best medicines for a sad boring dinner. There are no limits to how you can change something with just a layer of basil. So I started my own porch side garden in a pot. What I really want is an Areogarden but I don't see myself finding one hundred dollars in the new future. Either way traditional gardening has its own advantages.

Heres what you'll need:
1 medium to large gardening pot
Bag of organic gardening soil
Small bag of sand
4 kinds of organic seeds

Okay, for new gardeners sand might seem weird but trust me. Place a layer of sand about 2 inches thick on the bottom of your pot. This will keep water from running out when you water it and make the soil more absorbent. Next place a layer of the organic gardening soil until about 2 inches from the top of the pot. Don't pack it. You want the soil to be rather fluffy.

Next, divide the pot into four sections in your mind. Place the seeds under the soil about 1/4 of an inch unless the package directs you otherwise. Keep in mind that different plants will need different things so when you try to pick your seeds make sure that they have similar care needs! You can put markers in the soil if you want, labeling the kind of herbs that are in each section. Water, lightly so that you don't move the seeds around and place on your patio.

Depending on your herb you should water daily in the morning or evening. If you live in the south you know this is because less water will be evaporated by the sun.

And there you are! You should have your own little Herb garden sprouting up on your patio in the next 15 days!

Vegan Pasta

I know it has been a really long time. Just having trouble cooking what with the end of school, graduation and trying to find a new place to live.

But after long last I bring to you another recipe for home made Vegan Fettuccine! I am a huge pasta fan. One of my earliest memories is of standing on a chair with my father making our own home made pasta. Of course at the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever to pour the eggs through the little slot on the electric pasta machine and watch it mix.

These days though I go a little lower tech with a hand crank pasta maker that I got for Christmas. It looks like this and you can find one in a lot of home goods stores what you're looking for. it looks something like this one:

Ingredients:
1+ cups of all purpose flour
1+ cups of semolina flour
2/3 cups of water
1 1/2 table spoon Olive oil
Salt

Start by mixing the two types of flour together, creating a well at the bottom. Set this a side.

Mix wet ingredients and salt together in smaller bowl before pouring it into the well. Mix all of these together, if it is two wet add a bit more flour until it not too wet or too dry.

Take out a manageable piece of dough and run it through the crank that does not have holes. Crank until it is the desired thickness. Switch the crank handle and take the long peice of dough. Carefully crank it through, using your other hand or a friends to hold the pasta coming out on the other side. Place it on a floured baking tray until you are ready to boil it.

Unlike store bought dried pasta, this will only take about three minutes to boil through. Boil water with olive oil and salt in it.

Once drained you can top it with salt but I recommend trying it on its own first. I like to chop up veggies like roma tomato's, onion,and garlic with a touch of fresh basil. But to each his own! Enjoy.


Notes that you can save extra by wrapping it in cling wrap and freezing it.