Daikon Noodle Spring Rolls

In order to make vegetable noodles, like daikon or zucchini noodles, you will probably need another gadget.

It's a Joyce Chen Spiralizer. I can't believe I forgot to mention it, because I use the thing weekly. It turns root vegetables into spaghetti like noodles - it's awesome. A great way to eat more vegetables.


So, Daikon noodle spring rolls!

I got the idea for using Daikon to make noodles from a recipe at GoneRaw.com. Someone mentioned making them and adding Umeboshi plums - which sounded heavenly to me. I don't have any Umeboshi plums available, but I do have Ume Plum Vinegar. So, I decided to put the Daikon noodles in spring roll wrappers, with Ume Plum vinegar , cilantro, and fresh Mung bean sprouts.

Tomatillo-Avocado Sauce Over Stuffed Banana Peppers

this is an adaptation of the first raw food dish I ever prepared. I got it from Tanya at www.freshtopia.net, so all credit is due to her and her amazing vlogs preparing delicious stuff.

here are her basic ingredients, then I'll tell you how I modified it.

"Zesty Tomatillo Sauce:
1 1/2 C tomatillos, chopped
1/2 a large avocado
1/4C sweet white onion, chopped
1/4C cilantro leaves
1 clove garlic
1/2 a large jalapeno
1t cumin
1t agave syrup
1t stoneground mustard
Sea salt to taste
Optional 1T olive oil or water to thin

Kickin’ Cashew Ricotta:
1C raw cashews, soaked 1hr. and drained
1 clove garlic
Juice of 1 lemon
1T nutritional yeast
2t cumin
1t chili powder
Sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste

1 medium English cucumber for the wrappers"

Blend the cashew filling ingredients in your Cuisinart, then put them in a bowl, and blend all the tomatillo sauce ingredients in the Cuisinart. Use your mandoline to thin-slice the cucumber the long way, then put a dollop of cashew filling on one end and roll it up, pouring the sauce overtop.

So, the first time I prepared this recipe I did it exactly by the book, and it turned out fabulous. Then I decided to try it with banana peppers instead of cucumbers because it seemed to suit the south-of-the-border theme the recipe has. If you use banana peppers, be sure to get the seeds out, or they are freakin' hot. Maybe that's okay with you, but they are too hot for me with the seeds.

If you want to take it a step further and don't want to eat a raw banana pepper (!) de-seed them and then blanch them in boiling water for a minute or two , to soften them up. Follow the recipe for the tomatillo sauce and the cashew filling to the letter, and then fill the banana peppers with the cashew filling , pouring the tomatillo sauce over them when you are ready to serve.

it's delicious. I eat this about once or twice a month, sometimes using raw cucumber wrapping for the cashew filling, and sometimes using banana peppers. Whatever you decide to do is totally delicious.

Nifty Kitchen Gadgets Worth Having

There are a lot of nifty kitchen gadgets out there. Quesadilla makers, yogurt makers, egg cookers, deep fryers, special grills, and so on.

I'm not talking about these. I'm not talking about the kind you get from Grandma for Christmas , tuck inside a cabinet, and never use. (However: MY grandma sent me a Magic Bullet, and I use that thing almost daily.)

I'm talking about some inexpensive must-haves for your fresh-food, healthy kitchen. Ready?

• Several sharp knives. They don't have to be fancy, just sharp. You can buy a sharpener for non-serrated knives.
  
• A Cuisinart. I promise - this is the most expensive thing on the list. Healthy food shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. (Yes, I'm going to continue to re-iterate that.) However, since eating fresh, whole food ingredients means you're giving up on factory-processed foods, you're going to have to do some processing yourself (minus all the icky chemicals , preservatives, and gross stuff like corn syrup.) Hence the need for a cuisinart.
• A Magic Bullet. This thing is a miracle worker for chopping up small amounts of things, or creating ultra-smooth dressings when you only want a cup and don't want to dirty up the whole cuisinart or blender. AND, you can store your creation right in the little cup you made it in; the thing comes with several and they all have lids. It's rockin'. I can't tell you how much they cost because mine, as I mentioned above, was a present from my Grandma.
  
• A smoothie-maker or blender. My smoothie maker is great because it's tough; it was only $30 but it's made to chop ice and fruits, so it doesn't self-destruct the way some of the cheaper blenders do when you toss in fibrous or hard things. It also processes fairly well.
  
• A dehydrator. But.....only if you are interested in learning to make dried-fruit, soy-jerky, flax crackers, raw-food breads, and raw-food taco shells and raw food corn chips and OKAY.... there are a lot of healthy, delicious reasons to have a dehydrator. You can get a corny little Ronco dehydrator for about $35 at Target, and it's what I use. I know that serious raw-foodies will get an Excalibur and spend $200 and up on the thing, but my little Ronco trucks along just fine and turns out some pretty delightful stuff.
  
• A Mandoline. This is basically a vegetable slicer. When you eat as many uncooked vegetables as you're going to be eating, sometimes slicing with a knife gets taxing. Or sometimes you want a super-thin french fry cut, and so on. You can make ultra-thin, uniform slices very quickly with a mandoline (and I got mine at Target for $9), so they are very handy.
  

So that's all I have in my kitchen as far as special gadgets goes. There are others that are nice-to-have, i'm sure, such as a Champion Juicer or a VitaMix. But some of us are just not, for the foreseeable future, going to be in the market for a six-hundred dollar blender, and I don't want the many wonderful raw food recipes I have discovered , modified, or created, to be unattainable to the masses. So I'll do without, and so can you (if you want to) .

You don't need a Vitamix to be healthy.

A Word About the Economic Side of Vegetarian and Particularly Raw-food Preparation

One of the concerns I hear a lot about eating healthy is "But it costs so much!" Well, there's two arguments to present in response to that, and one of them which is often heard is:

• Argument 1: eating healthy, while expensive, is an investment against the cost of future disease caused by unhealthy eating habits.
  

Screw that. Throw that argument out the window. Because in my experience, while it may be true that the TIME you spend planning and preparing healthy food is far greater, if you are frugal or even simply a pretty careful shopper, you won't spend any more on fresh, healthy food than you do on the "Standard American Diet" fare, and in fact you'll probably spend less.

My commitment is to create healthy, satisfying meals that will cost you under $12 (per dinner) , that will serve three, and will usually have leftovers.

Some Do's and Don'ts that are helpful. I've learned these by trial and error, so they are vetted by experience!

• DO plan a weekly menu on the day of, or the day before, you shop. This one is crucial.
  
• DO continue to shop at the store or stores you can afford.
  
• DO save your trips to specialty-stores for after you have already purchased everything you can at your regular store.
  
• DO find your local farmer's market, or community-supported agriculture program, or food co-op and consider shopping that way instead. Sadly for many of us, such things are not available where we are so you have to make do with what you've got.
  
• DO consider growing some of your own food. Even apartment-dwellers can grow tomatoes in pots, and can sprout all sorts of seeds and legumes.
• DO invest in some good cookbooks, and get to know web sites online that will provide you with healthy new dishes. I will be providing links and suggestions too.
  

And the Don'ts....

• DON'T think you *have* to buy everything organic (unless you want to and can afford to!). While organic is great, and preferred, it's just not a cost option for everyone. Fruits and vegetables can be washed. The benefit you're going to get from just switching to fresh healthy foods is a good enough start.
  
• DON'T think you *have* to give up cooked food. There are ways to cook food in which the nutritional value is preserved (for the most part, with minimal loss of nutrients). In fact, some foods such as tomatoes and carrots actually increase in nutritional value, when cooked. While I prefer raw, it's just not always possible. so don't guilt yourself.
  
• DON'T shop when you are hungry!
• DON'T make the mistake of over-purchasing fruits and vegetables. I know, it all looks so good, and you're so excited about eating healthier so you just go crazy in the produce department! You will be surprised how much one or two vegetables will make. And if you run out mid-week and have to go back to the store, oh well . At least those ten zucchini you were thinking about buying didn't turn to goo in your crisper drawer .
• DON'T continue to purchase non-healthy items, even as a "treat". This is really, really hard. "Oh, one bag of M&Ms. One bag of potato chips.... What harm can it do?" It may take a while to un-do your various addictions to non-healthy foods, but until you can find healthy substitutes that replace your old cravings, just keep trying not to revert to un-healthy habits. You will probably fail at this a lot. I did, and I still do. But then I just keep trying. Because that stuff is not only bad for you- but it's expensive! It's better to spend your food dollars on the healthy stuff, and snacks will literally eat up your food budget very quickly.
• DON'T believe everything you hear. Do your homework; learn about nutrition using nutrition science as your basis. There are a LOT of wacky ideas floating around out there, and they aren't necessarily going to improve your health. The best nutrition health comes from a little learning, common sense and following a few simple guidelines.
  

I think that's all I have to say about that for now.

Kitchen Staples

In order to be able to consistently prepare healthy food, there are few basic staples that your kitchen should be stocked with. For me, those include the following:

• A variety of spices sealed in glass jars ( it's cheaper to buy them in bulk and put them in your own container) such as, oregano, tumeric, cumin, dill, celery seed, basil, thyme, tarragon, coarse-ground black pepper, coriander, cardamon, oinion powder, bay leaves, & rosemary. To name a few.
• A brand of extra-virgin olive oil that you like (and can afford on a regular basis, because after all, the goal here is not to bankrupt yourself)
• Fresh garlic cloves
• Lemons
• Red Star nutritional yeast
  
• Sesame tahini
• Bragg's Liquid Amino Acids, and/or Tamari, and/or Nama Shoyu, and/or regular old soy sauce
• Some type of vegetarian soup stock. You can make it yourself if you have a lot of time, or you can get a low-sodium powdered kind at Whole Foods (my preference) and there are a few nice cubed/concentrate versions as well. Try to go low-sodium.
  
• Honey and/or Agave Nectar
  
• if you're interested in making desserts and treats, I recommend picking up a glass jar of David Wolfe's Sunfood brand of raw cacao powder. It's a bit spendy at around 30 bucks, but it'sa big jar, it will last forever and I have found it delectable in so many things, that it's completely worth the investment.
• Gluten flour if you are interested in learning to prepare Seitan, and gluten agrees with you.
• I always keep a little tofu around
• I always keep a little soy-cheese around
• Raw nuts , seeds and legumes, in glass jars: mung beans, garbanzo beans, lentils (red and green) , flax seeds, split peas, non-toasted buckwheat, sunflower seeds, cashews and almonds.
• Some kind of salt. While I don't recommend eliminating good old Morton table salt (people need iodine) completely, it's fun to have some of those gorgeous, exotic salts around like "himalayan sea salt", and "celtic sea salt". They are very high in trace minerals and are good for you in moderation (as long as you dont' have high blood pressure.)
• Some kind of non-dairy milk. Whether you make your own almond milk or buy Vitasoy is up to you, but it's good to have some around.
• apple cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar.
  

Some things you won't need:

• Cream, milk, or butter (cheese is always optional; same with yogurt)
• eggs
  
• Meat
• Canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil , crisco, etc.
  
• Sugar
• white flour
  

I think this about covers the basic pantry items. There are many others, but this is a good "basics" list.

Welcome

Welcome to Fresh and Healthy Vegetarian!

I decided I wanted to write a food blog (not that there aren't already ten million out there) because, as a vegetarian, I love to create and share recipes. But the one thing I've noticed is that most vegetarian blogs are strictly one style of vegetarian cooking or another: vegetarian with dairy, vegan, or raw-food vegan, and ne'er the triad shall meet. Obviously, there are levels of restriction which become deeper with each type of vegetarianism. This would make it useless for a raw food vegan to peruse a straight-vegetarian or even a vegan food blog.

That being said: my intention as a vegetarian is to eat as much fresh, healthy food as possible. I don't really think I would be happy restricting my diet completely in one way or another, but at the same time I feel there are deep benefits to eating raw-food, and vegan, as the majority in my diet . But I'm simply not going to give up a nibble of cheese once in a while (why should I when they put it out free at Whole Foods on Sundays?) .

As long as I realize my intention of eating a majority of fresh, healthy foods, I then also realize I don't really have to be completely restrictive (unless I want to be at times, for varying reasons) .

So my food-creation style is a mish-mash of mostly vegan and raw-food vegan styles of cooking. But don't be shocked to see the odd crumble of feta cheese in a dish once in a while. It's rare, and I always provide an alternative, but for some of us, eating raw-food or vegan 100% of the time just isn't realistic or even wanted. For my cooked recipes I will always try to be creative enough to write it for a raw-vegan as well. I like to convert recipes, because sometimes I feel like eating a dish one way and other times, another.

So this blog is my chance to explore eating a majority of fresh, healthy food. Let's see how it works out.