Tag Archives: walnuts

Energy Drink

April 30, 2014 ioana Leave a comment

There’s one drink that can make your mornings resemble the kind of treat you’d get in a fancy cafe. Except it doesn’t have any caffeine or milk. Yet everybody flips out as if they were drinking cappuccino or milkshake. I think that’s why I’ve ended up calling it energy drink.

To begin with, you have to prepare the nut milk – it can be made from almonds, walnuts, cashews and so on. Use sesame seeds as one third of the whole nut quantity, so you can add up to the calcium intake for the day. After soaking the nuts, rinse them well and drop them into the blender with fresh water. When they start turning into a watery cream, strain it by pouring the entire composition through a nut milk bag. If necessary, fold in more water. You’ll be left with the milk and the leftover pulp, suitable to use in further deserts. Why not prepare 1-1,5l of nut milk, store it in the fridge and have it at your disposal over the next few days?

Once you get the milk done, start adding into the blender one or more of the following ingredients:

bananas
dates/ raisins/ figs or honey
coconut cream
rose water / orange blossom water
fruits tea or masala chai
carob / cacao
ground cinnamon / vanilla/ cloves, etc
any kind of berries (fresh or frozen) – in this case better not mix it with banana or dried fruits
ground flax or hemp seeds

You’ll get a pretty thick consistency, but you can always dilute it to your taste.

With this kind of quantity you’ll enjoy full energy until lunchtime or even later!

dressings, raw, salads

Pasta Delight

April 28, 2014 ioana Leave a comment

Zucchini is something you either love or hate. Some people may feel extremely queasy while others simply relish its rather flabby texture. When I say this, I refer to squash or zucchini tagliatelle because this is how you can make it resemble the traditional pasta. All you need is a peeler to peel off fine layers of squash until you get to the seeds.

The result should look like this

Now think of a nice sauce to accompany the so-called pasta.

You can play around with tahina, mustard and olive oil or simply try out one of the vegan mayonnaises. Another equally healthy alternative is a ketchup made out of tomatoes, olive oil, dates and salt.

Season it as you wish – garlic, basil, thyme, pepper, etc – and add some protein if needed – crushed walnuts, almonds or sunflower seeds, previously soaked and strained.

Gather a few more vegetables that keep a firm texture (pepper, red cabbage, carrots, peas, spring onions or garlic) and there you have your pasta delight!

Adding the greens (dill, rucola, parsley, etc) or some sliced tomatoes at the very end will save them from getting completely mushed into the sauce.

All you have left to do now is slurp, slurp!

I prepared this dish so many times and each time it turns out a little bit different. Hope the pictures serve you well, but above all trust your imagination!

deserts, raw

Energy Balls

April 10, 2014 ioana Leave a comment

There’s one great thing about this desert: you can make it from whatever comes handy. All you need to have is some presoaked nuts and dried fruits, the rest is just improvisation!

I gathered some of my favorite ingredients along with a few tips of how to mix it:

– if you are in a bit of a rush and you don’t have any presoaked nuts, go for those that require less hydrating time (cashews – 4h; sunflower seeds – 2-3h) instead of the ‘time consuming’ ones (almonds or walnuts – roughly 8h)

– if you’ve just made nut milk, you can use the leftover pulp

– extra fat is not necessary, but welcomed; especially when you’re using just the pulp (which is already fat depleted) instead of the whole nuts. go for a bit of coconut oil, cream or butter or, if you fancy chocolate, cacao butter. even tahini works out pretty well.

– dates or figs are the best to go with, but you can also use raisins, dried cranberries or plums. don’t forget to take out the pits 🙂 soak them for half an hour and strain; if you have a high power food processor, you might not need to do this, but consider rinsing simply to have them safe and hygienic

– mix these two base ingredients in the food processor – you should have more nuts than dried fruits or else the composition will turn out too sweet

– grated coconut is necessary as you’ll need something to eat up all the water from the soaked ingredients. otherwise the composition will be too sloppy and you won’t be able to mold it into balls. alternatively, you can use psyllium husks, a good source of dietary fiber which helps in providing a good transit, or plain oats

– now you have to decide on the flavor: you can have choco mint balls or lemony balls, rose water balls or cardamom cinnamon balls, black or white, pink or orange, and so on. just use your imagination!

– always take into consideration that whatever ingredient you might add, the final texture should be doughy enough for you to shape the balls.

– you can make it crunchy by rolling the energy balls over a combination of grated coconut and sesame or poppy seeds. moreover, you can save some roasted nuts and add them either into the mixture or on the surface

list of ingredients

1. base

presoaked walnuts/ cashews/ almonds/ sunflower seeds, etc
slightly soaked dates/ figs/ raisins/ plums/ cranberries, etc
coconut oil, butter or cream/ cacao butter/ tahini, etc

2. texture

grated coconut, psyllium husks, oats
poppy/ sesame seeds or roasted nuts

3. flavor

cacao powder/ carob
grated lemon/ orange peel
rose/ orange blossom water
ground cardamom/ cinnamon/ nutmeg, etc

dressings, raw

Summer Salad

March 28, 2014 ioana Leave a comment

Summer is the best season for tomatoes. Actually, the only one! I’ve always preferred to avoid the out of season tomatoes, as I never know what kind of fake substitutes I’ll get in the supermarkets. I wait instead for the rich tasty ones of august and the crooked sunburnt ones of late september (grown directly in the fields). So delicious!

I usually chop it directly into any kind of salad, but I do enjoy a lot to prepare a tomato based dressing – some might call it a soup 🙂 I mix it in the blender with some of the following: olive oil, mustard, tahina, garlic, fresh basil, thyme or melissa. You can even incorporate hydrated nuts (sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, etc). The result is a rich dense dressing ready to be poured over a fresh greens salad or to be scooped with cucumber, squash or carrot sticks.

Here the beet root surprised me with its heart shaped stems 🙂

You can add zatar or grated orange peel into the greens salad for an even more fresh taste.