Vegan in paradise

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

As I shared in my last post, my family and I spent a wonderful week on the Mayan Riviera over Christmas. This post is all about the most important part: the FOOD!

One of the reasons for choosing the resort was the quality and diversity of the food choices. Having been there before as a vegan, I remembered the excellent meals. To me, I don’t feel like I’m on vacation if I’m not getting great food!

There are several restaurants at the resort but we enjoyed the two buffet restaurants best. It was pretty easy to find healthy, delicious vegan food at each meal, but if we didn’t find anything that suited our fancy, we could ask the chef to make us what we liked. Most appreciated!

Typical breakfast: whole wheat toast with peanut butter, cashew-raisin granola, fresh fruit and fresh juice.

The fresh juices were new this year and each morning there were nearly a dozen different juices to choose from.

Below, a mix of cactus and beet that was surprisingly delicious!

Typical lunch: spinach salad with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and cranberries drizzled with olive oil, sauteed veggies, chips, guacamole and salsa. Fresh fruit for dessert.

For snack: a virgin banana daiquiri on the beach!

Typical dinner: rice with red beans peas and corn, roast potatoes, garlicky sauteed veggies and fresh fruit.

For dinner, if we hadn’t found enough vegan legume dishes (their bean dishes on the buffet usually contained pork), the staff seemed quite pleased to make us whatever we wanted. One night it was spicy black beans with roast tomatoes and broccoli…

Another night our custom meal was an amazing white bean stew with carrots and spinach, so delectable that we ate it all before I thought to take a photo of it. On Christmas I was craving pizza so the chef made pizza dough from scratch and topped it with re-fried beans, broccoli and mushrooms — delicious!

There were always loads of desserts, but very few seemed to be vegan. One night I had a delicious tart that appeared to be vegan; another night they had baked apples and cinnamon. Pineapple and melons were my typical dessert.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the amount of healthy, delicious vegan food at the resort. The restaurants were heavy on the white stuff (white bread over whole wheat, white potatoes over sweet potatoes, white rice over brown rice), but I’m sure that’s what most people want when they are on vacation so they were appealing to the masses.

The first meal I made when I came home was everything I missed when I was away: brown rice, tofu and kale! A square of dark chocolate for dessert.

It was a wonderful vacation, but it’s always nice to come home again, even when it’s leaving the tropics to come home to this!….

I am submitting this great day of eating to What I Ate Wednesdays.

July in the garden

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

I love summer. I look forward all year to my summer garden and I’m one of those people who love the heat

Here is a photo of the harvest I was collecting daily in my garden last July, currently my blog header. Is that a gorgeous sight or what? I was so proud of my homegrown food.

This year…. the vegetables are not so great. My spinach and rhubarb are done for the season after a meager harvest and the rest of the vegetables are doing poorly. The peppers and zucchini aren’t up yet, still just flowers, which could be a pollinating problem, or too much heat. I’ve chatted with neighbours with vegetable gardens and they are reporting the same frustrations.

I tried two cauliflower plants this year; both ruined by heat and caterpillars, see photo of all the eggs in the cauliflower. Gross.

On the positive side, we are reveling in a plethora of raspberries right now.

I’ve been making raspberry smoothies, raspberry jam, raspberry muffins, and of course, just eating them fresh off the canes.

Strawberries are doing well too this year. I moved them to different location than they were last year, and that has resulted in less ants in the containers. Growing my own fruit and vegetables makes me deeply appreciate organic farmers; keeping insects away with no pesticides is quite a challenge.

The Saskatoon berries never came up, too much damage from the animals in the spring; hopefully we’ll get a good harvest next summer. For the first time in a dozen years, our mulberry hasn’t had ripe fruit by June, the berries are still small and white, though they look like they’ll be ready to eat in a week or two. The herbs are hanging in there with the heat. We finally had rain this week, which was desperately needed, my rain barrel was just about empty.

Anyone with tips for organic fruit and vegetable gardening? I’d love to hear your comments.

Because the pink dinosaur told me to

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Vegansaurus, for those who aren’t in the know, is a popular lifestyle blog that I love for blending the adorable with great info and plenty of snark. Mosey on over to check out the cool stuff they’ve got going on. Their pink dinosaur mascot challenged its readers to try new foods this month and it sounded like a swell idea to me.

First up: Longan Fruit.

Once shelled, they look and taste very much like lychees. The internet tells me they are from South Asia and that longan literally translates into “dragon’s eye” because it resembles an eyeball when the black pit is exposed. They were sweet but I wasn’t a big fan of the texture. Now I know what a dragon eyeball tastes like. My family found it tedious to shell them, which goes to show how spoiled we are that we’ll pay for fruit to fly all the way the from South Asia (sorry about the carbon footprint) and then our patience is too low to spend 30 seconds shelling them without feeling annoyed by the time we pop the fruit in our mouths. So we have to meditate appreciatively on how cool it is that we have the privilege to be able to find exotic foods year round in our Canadian grocery store (…where they are mislabeled logan berries).

Satsuma. No surprise it’s a citrus fruit in the orange family like mandarins and tangerines. We bought satsumas of the Miho Wase variety, from South Africa. I also ate this food raw just as it is. The sweet taste is very similar to an orange, plus seedless and easy to peel. Delicious! Wish I could grow these treats in my back yard.

Now to find something local I haven’t tried before:
Garlic Scapes. These came from an organic Mennonite farm just minutes from my home. Garlic scapes are the edible curly leaves of a garlic bulb that sprout before the bulb is ready to harvest. They taste very much like the garlic bulb itself, so it’s a pretty strong flavour.

What to make with these little shoestrings? I found a recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto in the awesome cookbook Ripe From Around Here by jae steele, who also lives in Southern Ontario. She has posted the recipe on her website here.

The pesto keeps for a week in the fridge, so a few days later I used it for pasta sauce. With veggies and some vegan sausages, it made a great, hearty meal.

Garlic Scape Pesto Pasta
One recipe of Garlic Scape Pesto
340 g dried pasta (I used one package of Tinkyada rice pasta)
olive oil
6 mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 large pieces of kale, stems removed, thinly sliced
2 vegan sausages (optional; I used two Tofurky kielbasa sausages)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

While the pasta is cooking, sautée the mushrooms and kale in a small amount of olive oil over medium heat. Drain the pasta and return the empty pasta pot to the stove. Add the pasta to the pot and spread around to warm, then add back the cooked pasta, then veggies and sausages. Let stand in the hot pot a few minutes to warm through. Serve sprinkled with nutritional yeast and a few cracks of black pepper. Serves four. This dish is gluten-free with rice pasta.

When was the last time you tried a new food?

June in the garden

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

First strawberry.

Roses and clematis.

The raspberries are just coming out now. The Saskatoon berry bush shows no sign of producing this year, perhaps too much damage from the rabbits and ground hog. No mulberries yet either which are normally ready by mid-June.

Henry enjoys the salad bar.

My first year attempting to grow cauliflower. The above picture was taken two weeks ago. Unfortunately, my cauliflower turned purple in last week’s heat wave (and it’s not a purple variety cauliflower). I learned after the fact that I should have blanched the curds when they appear by covering them with the leaves so they could finish growing in the shade. Lesson learned for next year!

Rhubarb. Hm, what shall I make? Muffins?

Spectacular peonies! They smell heavenly too.

Roses in an up-cycled tea tin.

Beautiful basil in my herb pot.

Zucchini blossom. Can’t wait to enjoy their veggies in a few more weeks. The spinach has been out for a few weeks though I just have three plants of them. The peppers barely have buds, so we’ll have to wait a while longer for them.

How goes your garden so far?

Tofu Ricotta and Vegetable Lasagne

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

I’ve been tweaking my lasagne recipe for years, as I come across new ingredient ideas. For example, the great tip to add balsamic vinegar to lasagne sauce came from the now-defunct Looneyspoons cookbook by Janet and Greta Podleski; I think it’s the balsamic vinegar that makes the sauce so awesome.

The other good piece of advice with lasagne is to let the lasagne rest for at least 10 minutes after coming out of the oven so the filling can set. I sometimes do not let it rest because I am impatient for hot, delicious lasagne, and then the filling runs out when I slice into it and it falls apart. (Said in my mom voice: so do as I say, not as I do, okay?)

I like my lasagne with broccoli, red peppers and mushrooms but you can use whichever veggies you like best. There is a lot going on in this recipe so if you like a simpler lasagne, feel free to omit the sautéed veggies or the Ground Round or the Daiya.

Tofu Ricotta and Vegetable Lasagne
1/2 to 1 pound lasagne noodles
2 cups of chopped fresh baby spinach, washed and rinsed well
1 package (16 ounces) firm tofu (not silken)
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1/4 cup non-dairy milk
vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Juice from 1/2 a lemon (about 2 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp minced fresh basil (about 20 leaves)
salt + pepper to taste
1 can of tomato sauce
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 cups chopped veggies like red pepper, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms
1 package of Yves Original Veggie Ground Round
1 package of Daiya mozzarella cheese (optional)
Italian seasoning

Boil the lasagne noodles, drain and set aside. On the stove, cook the garlic cloves in a small amount of oil for a few minutes on medium heat until golden. Add spinach to the pan and cook until just wilted.

To make the ricotta, place tofu, sugar, milk, garlic, shallots, lemon juice, basil, pepper and salt in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth and creamy. Add the spinach. Taste to see if you want to add more salt or pepper.

In a large fry pan, sauté vegetables until they are just cooked. Add the tomato sauce, reserving about one cup of plain tomato sauce for the top and bottom of the lasagne. Add the balsamic vinegar and let simmer a few minutes. Add the Veggie Ground Round, stir, and set veggie-tomato mixture aside.

Cover the bottom of 9 x 13-inch baking dish with a thin layer of plain tomato sauce, then a layer of noodles. Follow with half the tofu filling then the veggie-tomato mixture, then a sprinkling of Daiya, if you choose to use. The above photo is cheese-less lasagne; the photo below is lasagne with Daiya used throughout and sprinkled on top. Repeat until the top layer of lasagne noodles, and top with plain tomato sauce and a sprinkling of Daiya, then Italian seasoning.

Cover with aluminum foil and cook at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Remove the foil for the last five minutes to crisp up the top. Remove from oven and let rest for at least ten minutes for filling to set before cutting.

This dish is gluten-free if you choose rice noodles.

May in the Garden

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Newly planted vegetables: spinach, red pepper, zucchini, cauliflower, celery, and cilantro. Perennial herbs from last year: chives and lavender. Chives are the heartiest thing in my garden. They last until late fall and are the first to come up in late winter. Most of our veggies are in containers and this works well for us with our small backyard for many reasons: being two feet off the ground makes it less likely for rabbits, groundhogs and other animals to destroy them, I can easily switch up which veggies I want to grow each year, I can control the quality of the soil and I can easily move them around the yard to maximize sun exposure.

Fruit that will be ready to pick later this summer: strawberries for the fifth year (one plant from last year actually survived; the rest are new), raspberries for the eighth year (last year’s harvest was about 1,000) and Saskatoon berries for the second year (last year’s harvest was a pitiful two; our resident groundhog destroyed much of the bush so we hope it recovers well this year).

Pot of Italian herbs: basil, parsley, etc.

Newly planted cauliflower

What to do with an old metal gazebo we don’t use anymore? We upcycled the legs to hang our strawberry plants and to deter animals from coming in the garden. We also used a piece as a rose trellis:

By the way, the rose above is called Breath of Life and will be in full bloom in about a month. It grows like a weed and has the nastiest thorns but the prettiest pale pink blooms. If you want a hardy, climbing rose bush that will grow quickly up a wall or arbor, it makes a good choice, but it’s a beast that can take over your garden if you don’t cut it back regularly. Here’s a pic from last year:

Breath of Life rose

Can’t wait to begin harvesting fruits and veggies this summer!

Morning Green Juice

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Sarina @ Earthgiven Kitchen

Morning Green Juice
1 apple
1 pear
1 lime
1 small piece of ginger (about an inch cube)
1 handful of spinach
half a bunch of kale
2 large carrots
1 sweet potato

I throw everything into my Breville juicer and have the healthiest breakfast ever in less than a minute. It doesn’t look the prettiest, but I promise it’s delicious! You can throw almost any kind of fruit or vegetable into the juicer, no exact recipes required. Beets, broccoli, oranges, lemons, watermelon, cucumber, celery, etc. Wash all fruit and veggies very well before juicing, but you don’t need to peel them (except foods with toxic peels like oranges) or remove stems. We choose organic as often as possible for produce. For a list of the Dirty Dozen (food to always choose organic, being the most contaminated produce), check out EWG’s list here.

I did learn that not all juicers can juice all fruits and vegetables, for example, my beloved Breville is a centrifugal juicer, so I can’t juice things like wheat grass that requires a masticating juicer. And soft fruits like bananas need to be pureed, not juiced, so save them for smoothies. To learn more about the kinds of juicers out there, check out this article: http://www.harvestessentials.com/whatjuicisri.html.

You can drink the juice on its own or throw it in a blender to make a smoothie with bananas, frozen berries, coconut water, coconut oil, raw cacao powder, vegan gelato, cinnamon, Vega protein powder, nuts, seeds, non-dairy milk…. there are endless combinations.

I’ve certainly found that I have more energy on days when I have green juice for breakfast. My kids happily drink green juice too, so long as there’s not too much ginger. If you haven’t juiced vegetables before, you’ll be surprised at how sweet they get when you juice them, so there’s really no need to add sweetener.

To learn more about the benefits of juicing, check out Kris Carr’s amazing book Crazy Sexy Diet. You can also read this article on her site about the benefits of juicing.

Update August 18, 2012: I am submitting this recipe for the Wellness Weekend blog party, which links vegan recipes with whole unprocessed food. I would say this is the healthiest recipe I’ve posted so far!