Pepper Paints

Thursday’s Quarter Recipes

This is the best “salad” I have ever had!! It is from The Pioneer Woman’s recipes. I changed it up a little bit to fit my taste-I’ll add in on the original recipe where I added or deleted ingredients.

Warning—-this makes 2 tons so you can feed an army or half the recipe!

Asian Noodle Salad

1lb linguine cooked, rinsed and cooled—-The first time I made this I used 1 lb of rice noodles but found that to be way too much noodle for me so the second time I used a smaller 1/2 lb package of rice sticks and it was much better. It was more like salad with a few noodles instead of noddles with some veggies! Some day I will get around to ordering kelp noodles and substitute these in this recipe!

1/2 to 1 head sliced napa cabbage

1/2- to 1 head purple cabbage

1/2 to 1 bag baby spinich

1 red, 1 yellow and 1 orange pepper sliced thin

1 small bag of mung bean prouts

3 (or more!!) sliced scallions

3 peeled and sliced cucumbers

lots (2 bunches for me) of chopped up cilantro

cashews

Dressing:

juice of 1 lime

8 T olive oil

2-3 T seseme oil

8 T soy sauce

1/3 c brown sugar –I used a large spoonful of honey

3 T fresh ginger chopped (I used more)

2 cloves garlic–again more

2 jalapenos (be careful when chopping!!)

Mix together salad ingredients. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Mix with tongs Top with cashews

Hint if using rice noodles-cook them for only a few minutes and taste DO NOT OVER COOK-rinse them repeatedly in cold water so they don’t become a sticky mess.

Also I added some Chinese hot garlic oil to my bowlful to make it super spicy!! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

If you have a recipe to add to this weeks quarter recipes be sure to leave a link in the comments to your recipe post.

Thursday’s Quarter Recipe

Remember I used to post recipes on Thursdays and invited readers to join in the fun and link to recipe on their blogs on Thursdays? Well let’s try again!! If you need the whole sorted explanation of why I chose to call them quarter recipes you can read about it here.

So here is my meager but tasty and healthy recipe for this week.

We enjoy smoothies many mornings. On this day we mixed up a couple of frozen bananas, about 3 large handfuls of spinach,  some orange juice, a couple of tablespoons of goji berries, a couple of tablespoons of chia seeds, and a whole lot of frozen blueberries in my VITA-MIX.

I keep my chia seeds in the freezer, that’s why they look sweaty.

This may be a green smoothie, but the blueberries really make it more purple.

If you have a favorite recipe to share (it doesn’t have to be raw) leave a link in the comments to your blog’s recipe post.

Or think about joining in next week. Because I have the world’s best salad recipe to share next Thursday! (I have been eating it for days)

Thursday’s Raw Recipes

So while on our trip I did bring lots of fruit and veggies and nuts and seeds, I also ate lots of cooked foods too. I ate and tasted lots of stuff I wouldn’t usually eat or make  here at home and I didn’t get sick or feel terrible like I thought I would. It was fun, it tasted great and now I’m home and back to eating healthy.  I know in the long run I would feel bad and while at home I don’t walk nearly as much as we did while visiting these big cities, which I think made a huge difference in the food not just sitting in my belly.  All things in moderation!

I had really wanted to go here on our way into to Philly , but it was a bit out of our way. While in New York I scrolled through the list of raw restaurants (-yes I said list-there are several, and unfortunately here in Ohio there is only one), to find one conveniently located. I was really excited about possibly going to Sarma’s Pure Food and Wine,  but after reading the reviews of the cost decided on Quintessesnce.

The menu was full of salads, soups, smoothies and lots of raw entrees and appetizers. We decided to try a few desserts.

Ginger had a coconut cream pie with a carmel sauce-It was really light and tasty.

Molly had a strawberry-banana smoothie

I had a chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. One bite of the cake and it was way too rich for me. Too many nuts and coconut oil. But the ice cream-OMG. If you are local and you have ever had Jeni’s salty carmel real ice cream-let me tell you this tastes just like it! It was too die for! I wish I would have gotten just a bigger scoop of ice cream.

It was a cute little place. We ate outside. Makes me wish we had more raw food choices and a more walkable city here in Columbus.

If you have a raw recipe to share this week, please add the link to your raw post in the comments.

Thursday’s Raw Recipe

“Cheesy” Stuffed Peppers

From the book EAT SMART EAT RAW

Trying new recipes has helped me to realize that I really don’t like food that is puree’d -like baby food. I know I have texture preferences. I hate pudding, I like to chew my food.  I like the taste of this recipe, just not the texture. So next time I will only blend up part of the ingredients and leave some to stir in.

13oz of corn (I used frozen-thawed, technically not raw, so this is a better recipe for summer time!)

1 1/2 carrots

small bunch of parsley

1 T ground flax seeds

2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp miso

2 T nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp red chili

2 garlic cloves

1/2 onion

4 oz orange juice

2 large peppers

I put everything except the peppers and OJ into my Vita-mix. I puree’d all and then gradually added the OJ. Only use as much juice as you need to. You want this to be thick but no lumps. Fill the peppers.

OK so I would reserve some corn and parsley, onions,  chilis and maybe some of the pepper  to chop up and mix into the puree to add some crunch to the filling.

Cheesy stuffed peppers and kale salad Mmmmm!

Thursday’s Raw Recipe

I see lots of recipes that use young coconuts. I have bought one before, but it spoiled before I could use it-(like it sat in my fridge for 3 months!)   So I bought another recently without a plan in mind. I had some left over fresh pineapple and thought it would go really well with the young coconut. That was if I could get the darn thing open!!!!  Several knives later I remembered seeing directions in a cook book for opening young coconuts.

By the way, this is the first raw cook book I ever bought-at least 3 years ago. And do you want to know why I bought it-because who wouldn’t want to look like Sarma and Matthew! I thought if I ate raw food I would look just like them. Call me gullible or stupid. But marketing works.

Finally I was able to open the coconut and pour about 2 cups of water out of it!

Into the vita-mix it went along with the cocnut meat I was able to scrape out of the inside. This is fresh not dried coconut-so it’s a little different.

About 2 cups diced pinapple

1 orange-with the white still intact

2 frozen bananas

6 dates-which you may want to add less. I think my blades need sharpening so most of the dates are still in a clump at the bottom of my vita mix

1 cup frozen blueberries

splash of vanilla

The taste was like summer!  It didn’t have a super strong coconut taste and it wasn’t too sweet. I froze what was left for a sorbet for later.

If you have a raw recipe to share add the link to your raw recipe blog post in the comments or just type the recipe out in the comments. Thanks for playing along!

Thursday’s Raw Recipe

I have Matthew Kenney’s book EVERYDAY RAW checked out from the library, with many recipes bookmarked. Baked Macaroni and Cheese is one that I marked.  I like a recipe book with pictures-so much more appealing! So I am sure I picked this recipe because it looked so good. And it was good, while I was eating it. But after a small bowl full I was finished. This dish is way too rich for me. I felt heavy and full and sort of sick after eating it. The recipe makes a lot of sauce and I thinned it out some with water too.

But I think I have come to the conclusion that there are no substitutions for cooked food. Just like fake meat is sort of bad if you are expecting it to taste like meat, same with cheese and dairy alternatives. I think fom now on I am going to stick with fresh raw foods that aren’t trying to mimic a cooked food.

Here is the Oh so easy Mac and Cheese recipe.

Cashew Cheese Sauce

Blend or process the following until smooth

1 3/4 c cashews soaked for 1-2 hours

2 T lemon juice

2 T water (or more to thin)

1/2 c olive oil

1 t sea salt

1/4 c nutritional yeast

1/4 med shallot

1/2 t chili powder

pinch of cayenne and turmeric

1/2 clove garlic

black pepper to taste

Process 4-5 yellow squash through spiral slicer. I used a peeler to make long strips. Roughly chop and lightly salt and set aside for 30 to 45 mins.

Pour sauce over “noodles” and spread into casserole pan

Top with finely chopped walnuts and sprinkle with chili powder and paprika

You could definitely add something green to this dish-chopped spinach, kale or broccoli.

If you have a raw recipe to share leave a link in your comment to your raw recipe post or if you don’t have a blog simply add the recipe to the comments! Thanks for sharing!!

Thursday’s Quarter Recipe

Raw Chocolate Cupcakes with Raw Chocolate Frosting

These were so rich and tasty!!! The photo does not do them justice. I am still learning indoor lighting obviously.

The cupcake recipe came from here. She has many more delicious desserts that I can’t wait to try!! But I do want to know about the safety of those silicone cupcake liners. ANybody have any info on them?

Here is the recipe:

1 cup walnuts

5 dates

Process these in the food processor and then add the following and process again

1/8 cup raw cocoa

1 t. coconut oil

1 t. vanilla

1/2 t. almond extract

1/4 t. salt

Form into balls and drop and mold into cupcake pan.

I did 1 and 1/2 recipes and it made 24 mini cupcakes. Which are just the right size for these rich treats.

Again-sorry for the bad photo!!

For the frosting I loosely followed a recipe and added some extras.

1 T raw cocoa

1T coconut butter (I used solid oil)

dash of salt

squirt of vanilla

some maple syrup to thin it out and sweeten it up

some raw dry coconut to thiken it to desired consistancy

Again I did 1 1/2 this frosting recipe.

I know some people avoid cocnut oil because of the saturated fats but it is very digestible and the body quickly metabolizes it for energy. According to “RAWSOME” :  “Coconut oil contains both short and medium chain fatty acid. In lab tests, the med. chain fatty acids have shown effective against flu, measels, sinusitis, food poisining, urinary tract infections, hepatitis c, and candida. Coconut oil is antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and antiprotozoal. It helps stimulate thyroid, normalize blood sugar levels, decrease seizures and relieve chronic fatigue.”

Sounds good to me!

If you want to add a raw recipe to this weeks Quarter recipe, leave a comment here with a link to your post containing your raw recipe! Come on play along!!!