Raw Vegan Wraps.

Healthy wraps for lunch today made with collard greens and zucchini slices as wrappers and two different nut spreads and an assortment of fresh veggies. The spread on the left is the black pepper cashew cheeze (cashews, lemon juice, miso, water, black pepper) from Ani Phyo's raw book. I added yellow miso for some saltiness. The one on the right is the Sun-dried tomato pâté from "You Won't Believe It's Vegan". I didn't have enough sun-dried tomatoes so it's not as red in color but it's got good stuff in it: almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, olive oil, parsley, garlic, lemon juice and black olives.

Hummus, Black Olive Tapenade, Black Pepper Cheeze

To continue yesterday's delicious Mediterranean theme, I made a few things to enjoy today. The rain had gone, leaving a bright, breezy and sunny day in it's wake. I was not going to waste a weekend by staying indoors and not enjoy the beauty. I brought my book and a tray of delicious snacks to the patio.


My tray of deliciousness. I made hummus and I always use the same recipe everytime which is from the "Tables of Lebanon" cookbook. It's creamy, lemony and garlicky and just perfect. I also made black olive tapenade, black pepper cheeze and mint iced tea. And of course with all these dips and spreads, I had pita bread and fresh baguette slices.


Black olive tapenade. Recipe from "The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen". It's made with olives, garlic, dijon, capers, herbes de provence and olive oil. So good. I can see this being used to toss with hot pasta.


Black pepper cheeze from "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen", made with cashews, garlic, lemon juice, black pepper and crushed red pepper.


Mmm, can you imagine?

Salad with Walnut-Cashew Pâté.

I felt like being healthier at dinnertime because for lunch I went out with my husband and had a veggie burger and fries at Johnny Rockets. All that junky diner stuff made me crave something fresh, like a salad. I like to prep my salads in a big tupperware that I can serve myself from during the week. My salad today consisted of romaine, green leaf, red bell peppers, cucumber and celery. I add the tomato before serving. I also made the "Ricotta Cheeze" recipe from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen to put on top. It's not really a cheese, more like a pâté I think. Her recipe requires walnuts and pine nuts. I didn't have pine nuts today so I subbed cashews. It was really good with the salad, especially eaten with the tomatoes because I hate raw tomatoes on their own.

Soup and Salad.

I'm trying to be good and eat soups and salads through out the week. It keeps things light and easy on my schedule as well as my stomach. I try to save the more indulgent foods for the weekend. I whipped up my favorite red lentil soup (sephardic recipe from 'Olive Trees and Honey') and a half recipe of "black pepper cheeze" from 'Ani's Raw Food Kitchen'. It's the easiest raw cheese recipe I think, just raw cashews, garlic, black pepper, lemon juice and water. I used the soft cheeze as a spread on top of fresh tomatoes and persian cucumbers. If you want, you can drizzle olive oil and balsamic or cider vinegar over it. That would be very tasty indeed.

Walnut & Pine Nut Cheese

I'd just like to say before anything, Miso I Love You! This walnut/pine nut cheese is the "Ricotta Cheeze" recipe from Ani Phyo's cookbook. I unfortunately only had unsalted walnuts that were not raw so this recipe is only partially raw! So it's got walnuts, pine nuts, garlic, lemon juice, miso paste and water. I can't say enough how much I love miso paste. I put it in a lot of my cooking and the flavor of this cheese is ridiculously good because of it. (I used red miso by the way.) I also added some dried parsley, dill, black pepper and a no-salt all purpose seasoning. Creamy and delicious on crackers, or raw celery sticks, even german rye bread I imagine. It has a really nice salty, cheesy flavor. I don't think it tastes anything like ricotta cheese but that really doesn't matter. The flavor of this is incredible.



For dinner I made this delicious tomato salad. Now, I usually hate tomato salads but this one was divine with the walnut cheese. I added a drizzle of olive oil and cider vinegar, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Detox Week 3, Day 19

Only two days left not counting today! I've got a huge list inside my head of all the things I want to cook after my diet. Like black bean empanadas, chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, stuffed pasta shells, mashed potatoes and miso gravy, monte cristo sandwiches, veggie pot pie, coffee chip cookies, vegan buttermilk biscuits, pan fried tofu with plum sauce and on and on....

Here are today's eats:


Breakfast: Strawberry, Mango, Soymilk smoothie

Snack #1: a tangerine


Lunch: Ani Phyo's "Save the Tuna" sunflower paté on three grain german bread, celery...


...and a salad tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and sprinkled with sumac...


...and beautiful red strawberries.


Snack #2: Walnut date brownies! Quick tip with these brownies: the "batter" tastes great spread on strawberries!

Dinner: Leftover veg stirfry from last night.

"Save-the-Tuna" Wrap + Yummy Date Cake

I made a batch of Ani Phyo's "Save-the-Tuna" paté yesterday to make these wraps for me and my husband for lunch. It's a sunflower seed paté that has chopped celery, onions and grated carrots. It's really delicious and I'm so pleased that my husband likes it. He says it reminds him of those little Starkist Tuna lunch mixes that comes in a can with crackers on the side. This paté goes very well with crackers by the way.


Along with the paté, I added collard greens, yellow bell peppers, onions (that were marinated in balsamic vinegar), carrots and cucumber.

I haven't had cake since christmas and I've been craving it like crazy. I haven't bought flour on purpose because I wanted to keep away from the temptation to bake. But today I was desperate and I had exactly 1 cup of flour left in my pantry, which was the perfect amount to make date cake! And luckily I bought a package of dates a few days ago so I was good to go. This cake is seriously moist and really sweet and just gorgeous.




Look at that! Recipe for the cake is here. Be sure to sub soymilk for the milk!

Black Pepper Cheeze

Another raw recipe from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen. I loved the sunflower paté so much (it's all gone now.) that I had to try another delightful spread from this book. I chose the black pepper "cheeze" recipe because I had everything for it (cashews, garlic, lemon juice, black pepper) and it was easy to whip up in my blender. I also sprinkled some crushed red pepper and dried parsley into the cheeze for some color. This stuff is really really thick and creamy and tasted very cheese like. The cashews give it a very rich flavor. I really don't know how else to eat it besides spreading it on stuff. I didn't have any crackers so I put some on cucumber slices and topped them with olives. I really wish I had crackers because it was difficult to spread this on the cucumber. It was sliding off from all the moisture. So if you decide to ever make this, bring out the crackers!

Sunflower Seed Paté

I was inspired by "Smoothie's" post over at the PPK forums the other day to make this. Apparently she was up at 3 am eating sandwiches, one of which was sunflower paté on ryebread. It sounded so good so today I pulled out Ani's Raw Food Kitchen and found a recipe for "Save-the-Tuna Paté" which consisted of sunflower seeds, lemon juice, garlic, carrots, celery, onion and dulse flakes. I didn't want a fishy flavor so I left the dulse flakes out. I had some on ryebread with radish and later I will have some on top of salad. Mine came out more orange because I used too many carrots and a little sour because of too much lemon! I think my lemon was way too big. But it still tasted good and I will make it again in the future.


It came out very nice and creamy yet still with texture.


My lunch.

Edited to add: The recipe for this is online at the Happy Cow forums. It's here and is the second post. (You'll notice it says to use carrot pulp. I don't have a juicer (yet) so I just used 2 grated carrots.)