Food From The Garden

This evening for dinner, I made my second quinoa pasta. My grandparents  got me a couple boxes of the Ancient Harvest brand when we got together earlier this week. It's my go to brand for my quinoa and like I said in a recent post, I think it's really cool that it comes in pasta form! The funny part is that after I ate the pasta, I saw in my Instagram feed that Lauren Ginger (@laurenginger) from naturallylauren.com made the same pasta for dinner tonight too. What a small world! Quinoa is a wonderful superfood and I sneak it into a lot of things. It's the meat on my nachos, I like it in salads, and Gardein brand meatballs are actually made using quinoa. The benefits of quinoa are not just from the culinary standpoint that it's easy to use. There are even more health benefits including but not limited to: 1. Quinoa is a complete protein and is high in protein. Proteins are made from what are called amino acids. There are plenty of amino acids that the body can produce ...

I have been trying to do away with refined wheat products in favor of whole wheat and gluten free options. The one thing that makes that difficult is that I come from a family of pasta lovers and growing up, it was (and remains) a staple in our house. We will never be caught without a shelf in the pantry devoted to pasta and various sauces. Knowing that I was not ready to give up my pasta in taking up this mission, I decided to try various whole wheat and gluten free pastas and see which one I like. My first one is quinoa based because I love quinoa in my salads so I thought it would be fun to try it in pasta form. This one is the Organic Brown Rice and Quinoa Penne from LiveGfree, voted best new product by consumers in 2017. My family is very supportive of me in my endeavors to be a successful vegan (my mom actually helped me start this blog!) so I decided to sometimes have some family members try some of the things I've been eating and share their thoughts (and mine) on the blog...

If there's one thing I look forward to in the morning (let's face it, I'm not a morning person) it's a smoothie. I love smoothies. Açai is a new favorite. After having several açai smoothies using the powder from Wegman's, I was ready to try the frozen form and see which one I like better. I'm not sure if it's because they're frozen but the frozen form takes forever to blend so I had the blender going long after the rest of the smoothie was of a uniform consistency. So it's not for the impatient but good things come to those who wait so this is a good patience exercise. In terms of the final product, I loved it. I like that the flavor is much more pronounced with the frozen form than with the powder form. Trader Joe's never disappoints! So please do yourself a favor and give frozen açai a fair chance. You will thank me later!

One day, when I was eleven years old, I was at my grandmother's bingo night. I really liked the coconut macaroons that one of my grandfather's coworkers had made a couple days prior and let me try, so my grandfather said I'd need to try a Mounds bar next time we go to bingo (they sell a lot of processed foods at the bingo hall). So I did, and then proceeded to have an Almond Joy bar. That Almond Joy bar turned into several Almond Joy and M ounds bars because I love coconut, chocolate, and almonds. However, they both have milk in them which means Iwill not be consuming the ones I ate at bingo but that doesn't mean I have to sacrifice the flavor by which my middle and high school years are characterized. With the help of coconut flakes, almond milk, and cacao powder, it's not hard to turn my frozen banana and almond milk ice cube base into the nice cream I wish I could have made all those years. Any nice cream is fairly simply to make because it's not rocket scie...

So this is an original recipe of mine that's fairly easy to do but demands your full attention. Trust me. I've had one too many disasters in the kitchen when I did this one the first few times. Probably not the best recipe to do if you have to leave the kitchen unattended for even a second. However, if, like me, you find cooking therapeutic and are looking for an unrushed meal to prepare, this may be just what you're looking for. For you gluten free folks, this is gluten free as is. If you're nut free, suggestions for adaptations to make it nut free but just as amazing will be at the bottom after I discuss the recipe Ingredients: 1. A pack of rice noodles 2. Half a block of tofu, chopped or diced 3. 6 or more green onions, chopped 4. 4tsp peanut butter 5. A handful of chopped almonds 6. Himalayan salt 7. Garlic powder 8. Grated ginger or 1tsp maca powder 9. Red pepper flakes 10. 2tbsp coconut oil Procedure: 1. Prepare rice noodles according to package instr...