Sunday, August 31, 2014

Dairy-free Veggie Primavera

Gluten-free pasta of your choice  
Veggies: 
2 carrots, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
1 zucchini, angle-sliced
1 yellow squash, angle-sliced
2 scallions, sliced
5-6 cloves garlic, sliced
olive oil

Primavera Sauce: 
3/4 - 1 cup cashews
1 small onion, chopped
2 t. turmeric powder
2-3 cloves garlic
handful of basic leaves, if desired
salt and pepper to taste 
prepare your veggies
first, lightly sauté the garlic and shallots in olive oil
then add in the remaining veggies, and add water to nearly cover them.
cooking at high temps kills enzymes really quickly so simmer, if time permits
When the veggies are tender, pour the sauce made in a high-speed blender over the veggies and cook another 10 or so minutes. Sauce will thicken on its own.
After the sauce and veggies are ready, mix them into the pasta.
I can't eat mushrooms or the marinade, but I made them for others at the table to have a fuller Italian-like meal. 
Homemade almond milk and my meal (minus the marinated mushroom)
I realize that cashews are NOT on my systemic candida diet; however, I was also feeding other people (hence, the marinated mushrooms) and since I've been very careful with my diet, eating cashews once in a low amount probably isn't going to hurt me. I did carefully choose cashews that didn't look discolored though so hopefully with minimal mold that they are known to have.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Veggie Juice Pulp Crackers

When making veggie juice with a juice extractor, the fiber of the plants has mostly been removed to expedite assimilation of vitamins and minerals of the straight juice, but there's no reason why the squeezed vegetable fibers, also rich in vitamins and minerals, need to be tossed. The bulky plant fibers can be added to other ingredients to make bread, crackers, crusts, pot pies, and to retain their full vitamin B count [heat kills vitamins B & C], they can remain in their raw state, so even raw foodists can utilize this veggie juice "waste".

I especially like making crackers with the juice pulp. Unfortunately, this time I didn't find any zesty sesame leaves in the market because they add a delightful zing to crackers, but the parsley works pretty well for added flavor. And btw, I juiced the cucumbers last to better flush out the juicer but, as I wasn't too sure about the cooked flavor of cucumbers, I refrained from using the cucumber pulp, not that there was much anyway as the cukes are high moisture.






After juicing all of the leafies and the cukes, I refrigerated the juice for the veggie juice cleanse. Throughout today and tomorrow I will alternate on a tall glass of water and a tall glass of fresh veggie juice. There are times when a person needs to clean out their intestinal tract, and I really need this as I've been bloating a lot, even after eating foods that I've previously eaten and digested really well. We'll see if this juice cleans flushes the GI tract some.
Veggie Juice Pulp Crackers 
2 1/2 cups millet & quinoa & flours mixed (made in Blendtec)
1 1/2 - 2 cups vegetable pulp
1 cup roasted buckwheat
1/2 - 2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water
2 t. garlic powder1 1/2 - 2 t. sea salt (use some for dusting the tops of the unbaked crackers)
After pressing the cracker dough into a greased and flour-dusted pan, lightly dust the top of the pressed down dough with flour. Bake at 250F for 30-35 minutes.





And here are some crackers I previously made with dark green leafies which included a lot of sesame leaf pulp. Wow, were these ever tasty! Wish I wrote this recipe down, but the flours used were quinoa, millet and flaxseed. It was very similar to the one above, but something besides the zesty sesame seed leaves made it much better. 


Here's another pulp cracker using pumpkin seeds, millet and quinoa for the flours. I skimped a bit on the added salt because the packaged pumpkin seeds were incredibly salty. These crackers turned out pretty good, especially because the veggie pulp was loaded with sesame seed leaf refuse. It's obvious I used quite a lot of the pumpkin seeds for this recipe, but actually it was a bit much. It needs more flaxseed to hold it together better and to add a deeper flavor. I think the flax flavor is very complimentary to the zestiness of the dark green leaves, which, because of a lot of sesame seed leaf pulp, can be rather bitter.