Breaking the Breakfast Routine

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Hi friends,

Happy holiday season! I hope you are feeling more peaceful and organized than I am — my To Do Before Christmas list seems to be getting longer not shorter! Still, it’s my favourite time of year and I’m looking forward to Christmas full of family time and good food!

I’ve already introduced you to my friend Kimmy, a holistic nutritionist who blogs at Rock My Vegan Socks. I have invited her to join me at Earthgiven Kitchen with a guest post on healthy eating. Read on below as she shares her tips to break out of a food rut with six gluten-free, soy-free vegan recipes to supercharge your breakfast. Think outside the cereal box! (Especially if it’s full of sugar, salt and additives like many of them out there.) I don’t know about you, but I pretty much stick to the same three options for breakfast: smoothie, green juice or granola. Thanks to these great recipes, I’ll be changing it up! And starting the day off first with a nice glass of warm water and lemon juice. Thanks, Kimmy!

Breaking the Breakfast Routine
guest post by Kimmy from Rocky My Vegan Socks

Are you guilty of having the same thing for breaky, day in and day out? Or do you perhaps grab something in your mad rush out the door after having promised yourself to make time the previous morning as your rushed out the door? I know, I know – you are busy! You have a job to get to, and kidlets to get out the door and breakfast isn’t exactly one of your priorities. I get it, trust me.

What if I helped you get out of that breakfast rut and back in love with the most important meal of the day? I have the magic! I have loads of great ideas for super quick and easy breakfasts, along with a few more complicated ones when you’re in the mood and have time.

Before we get to the good stuff, let’s take a closer look at breakfast and mornings. When you get up in the morning, your body has just finished detoxing after (hopefully) a good night’s sleep. Your body wants a gentle wake up, so instead of jolting it awake with caffeine, try a nice cup of warm water with some fresh squeezed lemon. This will help get your digestive juices flowing. While you’re getting ready, try pausing to drink a glass of water to rehydrate yourself (this helps with energy for the day as well as keep your joints lubricated and help combat dry skin). Try waiting until you feel true hunger before eating your breakfast. This may mean having to take it to go, which is fine, just be sure to eat it in a calm & relaxed environment and to thoroughly chew it. This will give you energy and keep you going until lunch if you just don’t have time for a mid-morning snack. And it’ll keep you from grabbing a doughnut to stave off your hunger.

If you just don’t have time to make breakfast in the morning, make it the night before and take it with you. I adapted this recipe from Oh She Glows’ Easy Vegan Overnight Oats.

Chocominty Overnight Oats

1 medium banana
1/3 cup gluten free oats
3/4 cup almond milk
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 tbsp carob powder
a few drops of mint extract

Before going to bed, place the banana in your favourite breakfast bowl and mash up a banana. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir really well. Pop in your fridge until the next morning and enjoy cold. This one is a nice spin on my favourite chocolate mint combination but is stimulant free.

If you have even just a few minutes in the morning, make yourself a nice, green smoothie. This is also something you could make the night before and have in the morning before you head out (or take with you).

Another important tip for breakfast fare (and all day eating) is the importance of rotating your grains. Do you remember not being able to bring peanut butter to school when you were a kid? It was unheard of when I went to school, but seems to be some sort of epidemic nowadays. Food sensitivities are on the rise and one of the largest contributing factors is overeating a particular food. Switch it up! Don’t eat the same things day in and day out. Try a 4-day rotation with your grains. Have Millet Mondays and Teff-rific Tuesdays. Try some new grains like teff and amaranth and buckwheat, which all make wonderful breakfast options. You could even just have a large serving of fresh fruit for breakfast some days. Get creative and have fun!

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Millet Porridge

1/2 cup millet
1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp maple syrup or agave
cinnamon to taste (optional)
toppings: fresh fruit, nuts, coconut, etc.

Cook up the millet in the coconut milk and add maple syrup or agave. I like adding cinnamon to mine as well. Bring it to a boil then simmer for 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is gone. Put it into a bowl and add some fresh fruit and chopped nuts (I also added flaked unsweetened coconut).

Amaranth Pudding

1/4 amaranth
1 cup liquid (I used 1/4 cup almond milk and 3/4 cup of water)
1/2 tsp maple syrup or sweetener or your choice
topping: chopped nuts, hemp seeds, etc.

Place amaranth into 1 cup of liquid. Bring this mixture to a boil, stirring frequently and then simmer it on low-medium heat for 15-20 minutes until liquid is mostly gone. Add 1/2 tsp maple syrup (or sweetener of your choice) with some chopped nuts. Try adding some flax or hemp seeds.

Green Smoothie

I’m sure you have your own ideas for smoothies, here are a few more for you to consider. Start with some greens (spinach, romaine, mixed, kale), add some frozen fruit, some almond milk and some add-ins (flax seeds, chia seeds, goji berries, hemp seeds, maca powder, lacuma powder, spirulina, cinnamon, carob or cacao powder, coconut flakes etc) and blend away. I always seem to buy too many berries when I head to the market on Saturdays and always have some leftover by the end of the week which I like freezing for smoothies.

Buckwheat Parfait

I love soaking and dehydrating buckwheat as it is so versatile! You can add buckwheat to smoothies, cereal, trail mix or make your own little breakfast out of it. This is coconut yogurt layered with fresh fruit and dehydrated buckwheat. I got this idea from Sarina of course =) Check out her recipe here.

Homemade Cereal (adapted from Oh She Glows)

1/3 cup oats
pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp maple syrup
chopped nuts
topping: fresh fruit

I also got this idea from Oh She Glows. I start with oats and add a pinch of sea salt, cinnamon (careful – if you aren’t used to adding cinnamon, start out small and work your way up), maple syrup and I chop whatever nuts I have on hand (I’m always pretty psyched if I have almonds, pecans, walnuts and cashews all on hand) and mix it with the oats and then add some chopped fresh fruit on top.

Bon Appétit!

The Chocominty Overnight Oats were submitted to Wellness Weekends blog hop.

Frozen Chocolate Banana Bites

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

One of my favourite childhood summer memories was making (and eating) frozen chocolate bananas as a kid. We’d skewer bananas on popsicle sticks and dip into melted chocolate, then roll in chopped peanuts before freezing. I decided to veganize this treat, with assorted toppings. It was a fun activity for the kids who enjoyed every step! Frozen banana has a similar taste and texture to ice cream (you can make awesome soft-serve by blending nothing but a frozen banana in a food processor until it’s the consistency of ice cream).

Frozen Chocolate Banana Bites
bananas
dairy-free chocolate chips (about 1/4 cup per banana)
coconut oil (about 1 tbsp per 1/4 cup of chips)
your favourite toppings: sprinkles, chopped nuts, shredded coconut, etc

Choose bananas that have just ripened so they are not too soft. Peel bananas and slice into pieces a few centimeters thick. I sliced on an angle for wider pieces. Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler on the stove. Add the coconut oil and stir gently until mixed and chocolate is melted. Pour the toppings into different bowls. Line a pan with wax paper.
Pierce the banana slices with a toothpick, dip in the melted chocolate to coat as much of the banana as possible, then dip in the toppings. Carefully set on the pan. Repeat for the rest of the bananas. Freeze until firm.I haven’t used sprinkles in years (have you read the ingredients in grocery store brands?) but I found all-natural vegan “Sprinkelz” by Edward & Sons at Whole Foods and couldn’t resist. They worked perfectly and tasted just like regular candy sprinkles.

It was the perfect summer treat!

Nacho crackers

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Hi, friends! I’ve been post-less for a week, having been on holidays, soaking up some sun and family time at a cottage in Muskoka. It was a wonderful time. We brought our own food with us, but there wasn’t room to bring my favourite food equipment like juicer, food processor and dehydrator, so I made as much food as I could ahead of time, like raw granola, and packed it with us.

I’ve only had my dehydrator for a few months so I’m still amazed at the variety of healthy food I can easily make with it and the taste quality. I’m enjoying making raw crackers in my dehydrator lately. Here’s my favourite so far: nacho crackers!

The idea came from my nacho kale chips recipe, which I selected as my entry for the first Healthy Vegan Fridays blog party this week. Every week there will be a new list of delicious recipes featuring whole ingredients to peruse, so now I know where to head the next I’m looking for inspiration. Check it out!

I also loved these crackers enough to send them to my vegan food swap partner Gabby @ The Veggie Nook this month. Hope she likes them as much as I do! I used to love store-bought crackers, now I can’t believe I ate all that sodium, sugar and preservatives, thinking they were a “healthy” snack. These nacho crackers are about as healthy as you can get, plus they are raw, sugar-free and gluten-free.

Raw Nacho Crackers
2/3 cup raw nuts (I used a mix of Brazil nuts and almonds)
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup ground flax
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped red pepper
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp Spicy Herbamare seasoning
1 tsp agave syrup
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp black pepper

Soak the nuts and seeds in 2 cups of filtered water for at least an hour and preferably several hours. Empty the nuts and seeds including the soaking water into a food processor and combine. Add the celery, red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes and combine again. Mix the nutritional yeast, Herbamare and spices together in a separate bowl, then add the spice mixture and combine again until uniformly mixed. Note: to be truly raw, you will want to choose sun or dehydrator-dried tomatoes and raw spices where possible.

Pour onto Paraflexx sheets and smooth out with a spatula so they are uniformly thin, like giant crepes. Dehydrate at 105 degrees for several hours, until crispy. After about five hours, when they are starting to firm up, flip them by placing another Paraflexx sheet and tray on top of the crackers, flipping upside down, peeling off the top sheet and returning them to the dehydrator on the new tray. You can either pull the crackers out when they are nearly done but not crisp and slice them into rectangles with a knife and return to the dehydrator to finish crisping up, or wait until they are as firm and dry as you like and break them into small pieces, like the ones shown in my photos.

They were great on their own and awesome topped with Tofutti cream cheese and cucumber and olive slices and a dash of black pepper! A perfect summer appetizer.

Almond Fudge Rice Crispy Bars

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

These delicious bars are perfect for a cool treat on a hot day like today. Or any day you’re craving both chocolate and a rice crispy square.

I used a combination of carob and chocolate instead of just chocolate for a few reasons. Carob doesn’t have the caffeine that chocolate has, which makes it a better choice for those with that sensitivity (like me). It also contains plenty of vitamins and minerals including three times as much calcium as chocolate. Also, carob is naturally sweet so you don’t have to use as much sweetener in recipes. I like combining the flavours of both carob and chocolate in these bars but you can use all chocolate if you like. This recipe was inspired by the No-Bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Crispies with PB Fudge from Oh She Glows, one of my favourite blogs.

Almond Fudge Rice Crispy Bars
Crispy rice layer
1/3 cup almond butter
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 Tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup chocolate almond milk
1/4 cup carob powder
2 cups rice cereal (I used Nature’s Path GF Organic Crispy Rice)
1/3 cup chopped almonds or other nuts
1/3 cup carob chips

Fudge layer
1 cup chocolate or carob chips (I used a mix of both)
2 Tbsp coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Chopped nuts or dried fruit for topping

Over medium heat, combine the almond butter, maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla extract, chocolate almond milk and carob powder in a medium-sized pan and stir. When well combined, remove from heat and stir in the rice cereal, nuts and carob chips.

Pour mixture into a greased 6-cup (1.5 L) pan and press down so the layer is even. When cool, place in the freezer to firm up while you make the fudge topping.

In the same stove-top pan, melt over low heat the chips, coconut oil, maple syrup and cinnamon, stirring well. When combined, pour over the rice crispy layer and smooth out using a spatula. Top with chopped nuts or dried fruit (I used walnuts and bananas). Return to the freezer until firm. Slice into squares and serve.

I made these bars the night before, keeping them in the freezer the next day, then moving the pan to the fridge at the start of dinner so the bars wouldn’t be too frozen to cut. They were a big hit!