Veggie Pesto Pasta (Vegan)

I absolutely LOVE the simplicity of summer foods.  I love being able to spend time outside enjoying the warmth and sunshine and not spending heaps of time in the kitchen.

For years I stayed away from most pesto's because they typically have some form of dairy in them.  Several  years ago I started experimenting and making my own fresh pesto with basil from my garden, and freezing it for the winter.  Simple, easy, and delish!!

Pesto is one of those things that is so versatile.  I like using it on pasta, pizza, and sandwiches.  It's just so good.

Pesto (vegan style)

• Fresh Basil
• Walnuts (I like the creamy texture these give pesto..pine nuts are the traditional option but they are so expensive and when making a big batch walnuts are more cost effective and I would argue better)
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Sea Salt (to taste)

Put all ingredients in food processor or blender until desired consistency is reached.  You may have to add a little splash of water if it gets to thick.  

This is one of those recipes I don't measure exact amounts and instead play and add and taste as I go.  Everyone's tastes are so different.  We love heaps of garlic so I would add lots of it but for some that would be to much and overpowering. So I like to encourage experimentation! See what tastes good to you and your family.  

Often I will toss a couple kale leaves into my pesto batches as well.  This is perfect for giving it an even more vibrant green color and to add the nutritional power punch of extra leafy greens.  Our motto around here is that you can never have to much kale.

Another optional addition is nutritional yeast, which is not the same as your regular yeast that you bake with.  Nutritional yeast can be found at health food stores and is great for it's supply of B vitamins.  It also helps create a creamy texture and adds some additional goodness.

Pesto is fabulous to make in big batches and freeze for use in the winter months. I just pour it into ice cube trays and freeze.  Once frozen I pop them out and put them in ziploc bags for use throughout the year.  One little tip is that it may be best to put a few cubes of pesto in a snack size bag or smaller bag and then put those bags in the bigger gallon ziploc bags.  I've found sometimes when I put to many cubes in the big bags, they start to stick together and become a little harder to break apart.  So separating them is helpful and makes it a lot easier to pull out a few at a time when needed.  And remember with pesto, a little goes a LONG way. 


The following is one of our family favorites of the summer.  It's easy.  It's loaded with goodness.  My kids eat it and love it.  My husband and I love it.  Everyone's happy!


Veggie Pesto Pasta

• Pesto
• Veggies of choice (this particular one we did kalamata olives, sun dried tomatoes, broccoli)
• Pasta ( We personally love the Tinkyada brown rice pasta varities)

Cook pasta.  Lightly steam veggies if needed.  Once pasta has been strained put in large bowl and mix in pesto tossing until pasta is well coated.  If I'm using sun-dried tomatoes I like to add some of the soak water from the tomatoes to the pasta because when it mixes with the pesto it gives the sauce an amazingly creamy texture.   Then add your veggies and you have yourself a very veggie loaded meal.

This is also quite delicious served with some bruschetta  and your favorite bread. 

Chocolate DIVINE Ice Cream (Vegan)

 

I know I've mentioned my love of ice cream before but it has become this fun little hobby of sorts.  I love playing around with making ice creams that are actually nourishing and good for me and my family.  It's quite exciting when one comes together well and my husband says "this is better than regular ice cream."  That's when I know I've got a keeper! The one I'm going to share with you today has been our favorite the last couple weeks.  We've made it more than a few times!

I will add a disclaimer here.  I haven't given this to my kiddos.  I learned the hard way that cacao doesn't work for them.  Cacao is raw chocolate.  It is full of amazing antioxidants and is considered a super food, because it is raw and unprocessed.  This is good news to those of us that love chocolate! 
Cacao has some 'energizing' qualities to it.  I made my girls a healthy, sugar free, cacao pudding one night and was so excited to give it to them.  They of course loved it.  The part I didn't love was that they were up until 2:00am!  Wide eyed and ready to go! Lesson learned the hard way.  No more cacao for my kiddos.  I've even had to be very careful when I consume cacao around my nursing times because for a while eating anything containing cacao and nursing my little one would completely ruin her nap time or create a middle of the night waking.  So that's the disclaimer. The GREAT news is that if your in need of little pick me up with out wanting to reach for the coffee or processed chocolate this could be your answer.

I usually try to share recipes that aren't to labor intensive and don't require too many kitchen gadgets.  As busy mama's it's enough trying to run after kiddos and have quality time with them.  We want to feed them healthy, wholesome foods but not have that consume us, right?  Well a lot of these ice creams honestly do turn out better with an ice cream maker.  You can always freeze them in the freezer after blending them and wait until they've frozen to eat them.  I have just found that an ice cream maker produces a much better product.  We actually were given our little ice cream maker by some friends who got 2 for their wedding.  At the time I hadn't really gotten into making ice cream yet but I thought why not, they are giving away a kitchen gadget.  Well thankfully we took it! I LOVE it.  Another set of friends had one that they kept seeing appear at a family white elephant gift exchange, and finally they realized they could actually use it.  So you never know!  Ask around. Someone may have one in the basement they are just waiting to give away.  Or I know Costco has a double (or at least they did a year ago) for a very reasonable price.  (I believe it was under $40 but don't quote me on that).  It's worth the investment if you've opted to go dairy free or you just love ice cream that can actually be good for you too.

I hope you enjoy!



Chocolate DIVINE Ice Cream

*1 can chilled coconut milk (a couple hours in fridge)
*1 frozen banana
*1/4 cup cacao (or substitute cocoa of choice)
*1 1/2 tsp vanilla
*1/2 cup coconut oil
*1/2 cup agave (or maple syrup or raw honey)
*frozen raspberries
*vegan chocolate chips (or regular if you prefer)

• Mix Cacao, Coconut Oil, and Agave together in blender until you get a chocolate syrup like consistency.
• Add Coconut milk, banana, vanilla.  Blend until smooth.
• Add to ice creamer maker and process.
• During the last 5 minutes add frozen raspberries and chocolate chips.  

Cherry Tomato Salad

I'm on a serious tomato kick right now.  I can't seem to get enough.  I'm just loving me some yummy organic tomatoes!

At the first bite of this salad, my 2 year old (almost three so I want to say 2 as much as I can before she turns 3!) proclaimed, "Mommy this is delicious!"  Ok any time my little one says that, especially lately, I take mental notes.

I had remembered seeing something like this in a Vegetarian Times magazine a couple years ago.  We needed lunch and I had all these beautiful tomatoes sitting on my counter.  So this is another one of those things I just threw together and didn't measure out exactly so enjoy experimenting and putting your own personal touches on it!  I hope you enjoy it and find it as tasty and delicious and my sweet Norah did. 



Cherry Tomato Salad (Vegan & Raw)

Cherry Tomatoes (add different sizes & colors) (I used around a quart of tomatoes)
1/2-3/4 cup Fresh Basil
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 Avocado
1 Cucumber
1/3 Sweet Onion

• Chop some cherry tomatoes in half and others in quarters.

• Puree 1/4-1/2 cup basil, garlic, and olive oil in blender or food processor, making a pesto of sorts. Making the pesto thin enough to stir and coat tomatoes.  Depending on how many tomatoes you use, you may have some leftover pesto, which can be added to sandwiches, pastas, or salad dressings.

•  Toss cherry tomatoes with pesto.  Allow to marinate for up to 30 minutes. 

•  After tomatoes have marinated mix in onion, cucumber, avocado, and additional chopped fresh basil.

 Add a fresh vegetable juice and you have yourself a tasty, delicious lunch to sit on your deck and enjoy a beautiful summer afternoon!

Fresh Roasted Tomato Soup

Have you been to a local farmer's market lately?  This is one of my absolute favorites times of year.  The sun is shining, we are practically living outside, and the amount of fresh, local produce is just pure amazing!  If you wandered along the aisle at any farmers market as of late, you would have surely noticed the amazing abundance of tomatoes.  All different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Traditional and Heirloom varieties.  It makes my mouth water every time I am present at the market.  We have a little backyard urban garden with several tomato plants, and yet I still usually end up coming home from the market with more tomatoes.  My girls are slightly addicted to cherry tomatoes.  In fact, rarely do any of our garden's cherry tomatoes make it inside.  The girls just stand out there and pick and eat them.  Snack time in the garden.  I won't argue with that!

This past weekend we had a couple cooler, rainy days.  It was a nice change of pace to just snuggle on the couch with the girls and relax a bit.  I noticed though that I wanted something a little more warming for dinner.   So I decided to create a tomato soup from the fresh tomatoes we had sitting on our window sill.  It's was fabulous.  Local, fresh, and perfect for a cool, rainy Saturday evening.

Fresh Roasted Tomato Soup

~6 large tomatoes
(I used an heirloom variety along with a couple traditional varieties I had sitting on my window sill)

~1 onion, chopped
~4 cloves of garlic
~3 TBS Rice flour (or flour of choice to basically help thicken)
~2 cups of vegetable broth
~1-2 TBS Succant
~Fresh Basil to taste

• Slice tomatoes and arrange on  jelly roll pans. Add garlic. Lightly drizzle with olive oil. 
• Roast tomato and garlic mixture at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.  (Enjoy the AMAZING smell!)
• Remove tomatoes from oven and allow to slightly cool
• While mixture is cooling, saute onion.  When onion begins to slightly change color, add flour and mix well.  Slowly begin adding vegetable broth until mixture becomes smooth and without lumps of flour.
• Puree tomatoes and vegetable broth mixture and succant in batches, until all combined. 
• Warm entire mixture and allow flavors to simmer. 
• Top with fresh basil (I had some purple basil left from our CSA share that week and it was divine!)

 I served this with a special treat of grilled goat cheese sandwiches.  My girls LOVED it. The freshness of the soup was unbelievable!  If another rainy, cool day settles in, I hope you and your kiddos can enjoy a garden fresh soup that warms and comforts you.  Enjoy!

Almond Butter Banana Roll-Ups

I love raw almond butter.  Raw almond butter has such a sweet delicious taste.  My girls love it too.  We use it on pancakes or french toast for breakfasts. I will occasionally add it to smoothies or ice creams or granola.  It's just that good!

Raw almond butter certainly isn't the cheapest thing to buy.  I've seen so many recipes and it seems very easy to make your own, but it's on that list of things "I think I'll get around to one day!"  We usually stock up on our favorite raw almond butter whenever we make it to a Trader Joe's.  But really any nut or seed butter will work for these easy lunches.  Find what your kiddos like.  If you haven't introduced nuts to your babe there are some fun seed butters out there.  Sunflower seed butter is one my kiddos like.

One of our favorite easy lunches is unsalted rice cakes with almond butter and homemade strawberry jam or sliced bananas.  It travels well.  It's easy.  Great lunch for those days of lounging on the beach or at the pool.  Add a side of sliced fresh veggies and you've got a pretty wholesome, easy lunch for your little one.  

These roll-ups are becoming a fan favorite at our house.  I think my husband and I enjoy them as much as the girls.


Almond Butter Banana Roll-Ups

Tortillas ( I like sprouted grain tortillas)
Almond Butter (or nut or seed butter of choice)
Banana
Raisins

 
Spread almond butter on tortilla.  Add 1/2 banana (we also tried this with a couple roasted bananas which was divine!)  Top with some raisins (ants on a log style).  Roll up and serve.  If you have a young kiddo, a nice adaption is to roll it up and then cut it up in smaller pieces with kitchen scissors.  Yummy, easy goodness!

 My youngest loves to open it up and dissect it and eat it individually!

I hope you enjoy an incredibly simple, delicious lunch/snack!!!

Chia Seed Pudding

We've recently discovered Chia Seeds. This little food has become a new exciting addition to our whole foods way of eating  (I try to avoid the word 'diet' because it just brings so many negative connotations with it).   When I first started buying chia seeds it made me smile as I added them to my smoothies because I couldn't help but have the "ch-ch-chia pet" song dancing through my mind. 

As I've learned more about them they indeed are powerful enough to have their own little jingle.  Chia is an edible seed that comes from the desert plant Salvia hispanica, which is a member of the mint family.  The plant grows abundantly in southern Mexico.   Chia seeds are very rich in Omega 3 fatty-acids.  Chia seeds are richer in Omega 3's than flax seeds, which makes it the highest vegetarian source of Omega 3's.  Some experts even claim that these little seeds are more abundant in Omega 3's than some sources of fish, and you don't have to worry about the levels of contamination in the seeds unlike in the fish sources.

These seeds are a great balance of protein, fiber, carbohydrates, and fat. Chia comes from a Mayan term meaning strength.  Chia seeds contain approximately 20% protein.  They are often considered among athletes to be an endurance food, and were referred to as " Running Food" by the Aztecs.  

Another great perk is that these seeds don't need to be ground for the body to absorb and assimilate all of their nutrition.  Not only this but Chia seeds are raw and unprocessed and also are a great source of antioxidants!  A super food that can easily be added to salads, smoothies, granola bars, cereal, dinners, baked goods,...possibilities are endless!  They can be found at a local health food stores and on several sites online. 

We recently discovered Chia Seed Pudding.  It's so good.  Reminds me a bit of tapioca pudding which as a kid I wasn't found of the texture but there is so much goodness in this recipe that it's divine!  My girls and my husband gobbled this up so quickly the first time I made it that I was lucky to sneak in one bite!

Chia Seed Pudding  (adapted from Rawmazing.com)

Pudding

• 1 3/4 cups cashew cream (see below)
• 1/2 cup chia seeds
• 1/2 cup maple syrup, agave, or raw honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup strawberries, sliced
• 1 cup blueberries

1. Mix together cashew cream, chia seeds, agave, vanilla and cinnamon. Set aside.

2. Slice strawberries.

3. When chia pudding has thickened up (about 5-10 minutes) stir in sliced strawberries and blueberries (or whatever local fresh fruit you happen to have)

4. Keep refrigerated.

Cashew Cream:

• 2 cups cashews, soaked overnight in the refrigerator
• 2 cups water, filtered

1. Drain and rinse cashews.

2. Combine with filtered water in blender (I used a high speed blender) and blend until smooth.

3. Refrigerate

If your wanting a true RAW dessert you can omit the vanilla or use actual vanilla bean and use raw, local honey.  It's really is divine! A great snack, dessert, or breakfast to serve the kiddos with a power house of  nutrition.
Enjoy!!

Veggie Patties

I love cooking. I love being in the kitchen.  However, sometimes I just need a break and need something easy to put together for dinner.  Something that hasn't required much planning or prepping. Something that can travel well or that is easy for a sitter to feed the girls.  Easy.  Well this is one of my favorite "go to" meals for those days.

Now granted this recipe does require a bit of cooking and prepping one time, but then you can freeze them and have lots of easy meals stored away for those days when you need an easy meal for your kiddo.  We've chose to not buy boxed, processed food and instead focus on whole foods.  Well whole foods require some cooking, prepping, cutting, chopping, etc.  It's a little more work than just grabbing those easy boxed meals off the shelves at the stores, but it's so incredibly worth it.  You and your kiddos will be thankful for the work and time you've invested in your family's health!!  To start your kiddos off on a healthy path with whole foods right from the beginning is such an incredible gift for their long term health.  Not to mention that it keeps you as the parent healthy and well.  If as parents we feel well, we are more likely to have the energy to keep up with our kiddos and interact and play with them, which of course is priceless time.  I have found when I'm being intentional with caring for myself I am more present and patient with my girls.   I've also quickly realized the times when I'm not balanced because I tend to get frustrated quicker over smaller things, and I feel like I've lost all patience.  This is always a good reminder for me to check in and evaluate my self and what's happening.  So all that said please take time to check in today and ask yourself if your taking good care of you!

So now on to veggie patties...

I was inspired by our favorite local restaurant to create these. They have amazing black bean sweet potato burgers.  I figured I could experiment a bit and create something that would be wholesome and healthy for my kiddos and make a great meal with lots of hidden extras in it.  It works great for our family because I think my girls could live on raw veggies and fruits, which is fabulous but they need some other nutrients as well.  So I load these up and they make a great vegetarian dinner and/or finger food for a younger baby (just adapt recipe to foods baby has been introduced too).

I don't have a specific recipe for these, which is what makes them so great.  You can really use what you have on hand to make these.  They can also be adapted to be specific to what your kiddo enjoys.  Another great perk of these veggie patties is that you can add some extras into them that might be challenging to get into your kiddos food otherwise.  I'll share with you what I did for this batch but get creative and experiment. 

Veggie Patties

2 roasted sweet potatoes (so they are soft and easy to mix up)

1 cup cooked quinoa ( I started with 1/2 cup dry quinoa )

1 cup black beans

kale

shredded zucchini

parsley

rolled oats or rice flour (basically just something to help bind them)

ground nuts or seeds ( I like to use ground sunflower seeds)

(dried spices, Mrs. Braggs Soy Sauce, tomato paste are good options to give flavor as well, especially for adults!)

I just toss everything in my food processor and let it do the work of mixing it all together.  Keep an eye on the consistency and add enough of the oats or flour to make sure the mixture will start to thicken slightly.  You'll want to have it thick enough that it won't just fall apart when you begin cooking. 

Now this is where things get messy! I use wet hands and make little patties on a lightly oiled baking sheet or skillet. 

If baking I usually bake at 350 and check every 5 minutes.  Typically with in 10-15 minutes they are browned enough on the bottom that I can flip them over and finish cooking on the opposite side.  When flipping it's important to gently press them down so that the middle will cook as well.  Another 10-15 minutes usually finishes it up.  Cooking time will depend on what all you have in them.

I prefer to cook them on our skillet.  It takes a little longer because there are a few rounds but I can keep a closer eye  on them and make sure they don't get burnt.  They also don't tend to be as crumbly when I cook them on the skillet.

Eat plain or top with avocado, goat cheese, tomato, organic ketchup, or sprouts.  Serve with another side of veggies and you can be assured your kiddo has had a heaping amount of veggies in that meal!

The last batch I did made 20 burgers.  I tossed the extra ones in a ziploc baggie between layers of wax paper and froze. 

There you have it.  A whole foods veggie patty that you can serve your kiddos for a wholesome, easy meal!