Category Archives: Vegan

The Best Skiing Trail Mix

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Today’s post isn’t really a recipe so much as just kind of a thing I do.  I love to go up skiing and near Vancouver we’re absolutely spoiled with wonderful places to go. I had my first day out at Cypress Bowl a week or so. It was what they call a bluebird day: lots of snow and some sunshine and blue skies.

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There was a break in the clouds at one point while I was on the lift and with winter wonderland all around me I saw clear through to a furry-looking green island in the ocean. I badly wanted to snap a photo for you but would certainly have dropped a glove.  And, well, about the snow it was… truth be told… sort of so-so, much like myself in my 20′s: a bit too thin and a little icy. Isn’t it wonderful how open we are to having a good time just because we happen to be doing something different? Talk to me about snow conditions like this in late February. Quite a different story. Quelle powder snob. Anyway, my favourite foodie thing about a ski day, next to my lunchtime glass of wine in the lodge of course, is this very simple trail mix. It goes something like this:

Take a nice, fat caramel-y Medjool date. Remove and discard pit. Insert small square of fine-quality dark chocolate.  Place four or five in a ziplock along with a handful of raw nuts. I prefer almonds. Insert ziplock in pocket of parka. Share at the top between schussing slopes and munching moguls.  What I love about this is it can only really be a winter trail mix as the chocolate melts out of the date in the summer. Really, that’s what I love about skiing too, it’s a way to embrace and enjoy the season rather than just waiting for spring to start. After all, you can only have a bluebird day in the winter. I’m wishing you one today. Happy Wednesday!! xo Jasmine
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Brussels Sprout and Beet Pickles

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At a restaurant recently our cheese and charcuterie plate was served with a sweet little pile of pickled Brussels sprouts and a dab of grainy mustard. What a revelation! For starters, they were so unexpected that they woke up my eyes’ palate letting me know that I wasn’t in for just any cheese plate. It’s sort of like when you look at a painting of flowers and take pleasure in the fact that the artist painted particular flowers that you can actually identify as a geranium or nasturtium or whatever. That’s what I liked about  Brussels sprout pickles, they are just so specific.

What I didn’t like about the ones they served me at the restaurant is that they were a little discoloured at the core.

Anyway, I wondered if I added beets to my version of Brussels sprouts pickles if it would just dye the whole mixture magenta thereby disguising any discolouration. I just made a small batch of five jars or so. I’ll have to give them a couple of weeks to colour up before I know whether my plan worked. Either way, they are extremely tasty and I’ll enjoy scooping one up with a hunk of goat gouda. I  doubled the spicy vinegar recipe below and will use the rest as a  base for winter salad vinaigrette.

Brussels Sprouts and Beet Pickles
Adjust the amount of vinegar mix to the amount of produce you have
Makes 6 one cup jars

Ingredients
About 4 cups Brussels sprouts, the smaller the better
About 2 cups beets
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 cup filtered water
 2 tbsp pickling spice, placed in a tea ball or wrapped in a cheesecloth bag
1 tbsp kosher or pickling salt
3 tbsp dark sugar, I used coconut palm sugar but any brown sugar will do
Peppercorns, for garnishing jars
Whole bay leaves for garnishing jars

Directions
Sterilize and heat jars using your preferred method. Heat new lids in warm but not boiling water.
In a medium saucepan place cider vinegar, salt, sugar and pickling salt and tea ball or cheesecloth bag. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. Keep warm.
Boil beets until tender. Leave tap root and top of stem intact in order to prevent bleeding. Allow to cool and then slip the skins off. Cut the root and stem off and slice into bite size pieces. 
Cut Brussels sprouts in half lengthwise, slicing off a little of the tough stem at the base.  
Toss Brussels sprouts and beets together in a bowl. Place a few peppercorns and a bay leaf in each jar. Spoon vegetables into hot jars up till the jar’s lowest thread. Pour in hot vinegar. Carefully wipe lips of jars, top with hot lids, tighten rings fingertip tight. Process in boiling water for 30 minutes. Allow to cool undisturbed for 24 hours. Good for about a year.

Crazy for Calcium: Sesame Kale Salad

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A lady can never have too many recipes for kale.

I’m on a bit of a fitness kick at the moment. I’ve been doing Tracy Anderson’s dance based mat workout most days of the week. I love it. I’m only using two pound weights but it’s so hard I feel like I’m giving birth with my arms. Then one day a week I’m doing Yogalosphy with Mandy Ingber. A pop culture note about my regime: Tracy is Gwenyth Paltrow’s trainer and Mandy is Jennifer Aniston’s trainer and both of them have had relationships with Brad Pitt. Weird, right? Look, I’m doing hundreds of leg lifts a week, I have to think about something.

I love kale in the springtime. I love kale in the fall…

Anyway, despite the wretched word combo title, the Yogalosphy DVD is really good. Mandy has kind of a cute crackpot sense of humour and leads the video on some gorgeous dock in LA with bright blue sky overhead and birds streaking past which is a great distraction from that fact that this woman really, really hurts me. I’m not sure what it is. I don’t even feel like I’m working that hard when I do the DVD but the next day I feel like I have the flu and it hurts to step off the curb.  Something must be working.  Anyway, because moderate(ha!) exercise can help one absorb calcium I thought I’d supercharge my stores with this satisfying salad. I’m a fan of vegan calcium sources like leafy greens and sesame seeds because I feel I don’t digest dairy well. It doesn’t matter how much of a mineral or vitamin a food contains, if I’m not digesting it, I’m not absorbing it.  Plus, as you know I’ve never met a kale salad I didn’t like(e.g. here and here) and I thought it was about time for a fresh riff. Happy Monday everyone. Do something good for yourself today. xox Jasmine

Sesame Kale Salad
Serves 2

2 Tbsp Sunflower Oil
1 Tbsp raw unhulled tahini  I know this is a pain to find but the nutritional benefits of tahini made with unhealed sesame seeds make it so worth it. In Canada, you can order it here. My US friends can get in on the action here.
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon Bragg’s Liquid Aminos or wheat-free soy sauce
1/4 cup of sesame seeds or hemp seeds
4 cups kale leaves, stems and ribs removed, broken into bite-sized pieces.

Directions
In a small bowl whisk together the sunflower oil, the tahini, the lemon juice, the sesame oil and the Bragg’s or soy sauce. Pour over the kale and massage well into the leaves with clean hands. Toss in the sesame or hemp seeds. Allow to stand for 20 minutes or so so that the kale wilts a bit. Serve and enjoy.

Vegan Indian Creamed Spinach

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Isn’t this a strange little plate? I found it in a rummage store.

It’s cleanse time! Have you ever noticed that with summer comes a lot of sugar? Not that I regret a single mouthful of sour cherry and chocolate gelato or even one of the 300 juice-squirting peaches, but most years by about this time I notice that my skin and I are both a little tired and my sugar cravings have gone from mildly bratty to full-blown obnoxious. For me, that means a cleanse is in order. The timing is perfect: there’s still lots of gorgeous, locally grown produce, I’m not yet struggling with the vastly-reduced light we experience in the wintertime here on the ‘wet’ coast and the slight chill in the air makes me feel energized and alive, rather than just chilly.
This spinach recipe is great for getting started on a cleanse. It’s adapted from a website of meticulously sourced international recipes that I absolutely LOVE called whats4eats.com. The original recipe is great but I wanted mine to be vegan. The coconut milk isn’t on my cleanse(no tropical fruit, no canned foods) so I left it out this time. If you want to do the same, you may want to consider reducing the spices if you’re not used to them. I love them, so I added extra, particularly turmeric to help my joints stop creaking and popping and cayenne as it’s a powerful detoxifyer.  Served over brown rice, this dish always makes me feel luxuriously light yet satisfied and like I’m not missing a thing. Wishing you a clean and delicious week. xo Jasmine

Vegan Indian Creamed Spinach
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 lb spinach, chopped and washed
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 tbsp ginger, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp virgin coconut oil
2 teaspoons coriander powder
1/3 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4-1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper(optional)
1-1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup filtered water
1/2 cup coconut milk

Directions
Over a medium-high flame melt coconut oil. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently till onions are translucent. Reduce heat to medium. Add ginger, garlic, salt, coriander powder, turmeric powder and cayenne if you are using it. Stir continuously for 2 minutes. Add water and spinach and bring to a boil. Cover and cook until spinach is wilted, 4-5 minutes. Now If you’re smart you’ll wait until the spinach has cooled before blending it. Needless to say, I’ve never done this. I put on a big apron and my sunglasses to protect my eyes from splatters, tilt the pot to make the spinach deeper and blend it up right in the pot with my hand blender.
Like, I said, you can always cool, blend and re-heat. Either way, stir the coconut milk into the hot spinach and serve. Dee-licous!

Smoky Cashew Enchiladas(Vegan, Natch!)

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I love me an enchilada. Last week I had a craving that would just not quit. We seem to be short on Mexican restaurants here in Vancouver so I was forced to wade out into the enchilada-making frontier.

I decided to make them vegan because generally I find cheese easier to digest if I just eat it with a glass of wine rather than in a complicated dish. Having said that, I had some leftover sauce and tortillas and I made a pan with chicken and chèvre inside and chèvre on top. The chèvre sort of collapsed into the sauce. Not to put too 2004 a point on it but they were OFF. THE. HOOK. I might consider making miniature ones for a party sometime.

Anyway, the smoky cashew ones were delicious also. The main thing I learned about enchiladas, though is that I don’t need to eat them for three days in a row.  The tortillas are of course corn and since I served the enchiladas with a corn salsa I really felt like I had ODd on corn. Though corn isn’t normally a particular trigger for me, it is a common allergen and it just made me feel sort of puffy and sleepy after I had eaten them for more than one meal. So, in short, I will make this recipe again but only when I’m feeding a crowd because I don’t think I need to eat that much corn at more than one meal. I’m going to ixnay the orncay for a good while.

The sauce I used was adapted from this Martha Stewart recipe. I always turn to Martha if I need a recipe for something I’ve never made before. Say what you will about her, she’s never wasted my time or my money: her recipes always work.

So the sauce was good. Is it the last enchilada sauce recipe I will ever need? Likely not.  I think it’s one of those things that could be really, really amazing if you developed the right version. If anyone has a good enchilada sauce recipe they want to share I would LOVE to see it.  I made Martha’s vegetarian by using chicken stock and a substituted white Hungarian peppers and a red pepper for the poblano, seems we’re pretty short on Mexican produce up here as well. Hope you have a wonderful week. If you like this post, by all means, please pass it along! xo Jasmine

Smoky Cashew Enchiladas
Makes 8 Enchiladas

Ingredients
1 recipe enchilada sauce, cooled
8 corn tortillas
1 avocado, sliced and tossed in lime or lemon juice

1/2 cup fresh raw corn kernels(optional)
8 black olives, pitted and chopped(optional)
1 tsp fresh oregano(optional)

2 cups raw, unsalted cashews, soaked at least 2 hours and rinsed well
1 teaspoon hot smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
Juice of one lemon
1 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp filtered water

Directions
To make cashew filling:
In a food processor or blender combine cashews, paprika, salt, lemon juice, cider vinegar and filtered water. Blend until very smooth. 

To assemble enchiladas:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix, corn, olives and fresh oregano together.  Get a medium-sized lasagne pan ready. Dip a tortilla on the sauce, place 3-4 tablespoons of cashew filling on top, roll up and place in the pan. Repeat until the filling is gone. Pour sauce over the finished enchiladas until they are almost covered. Freeze or re-purpose the remaining sauce.  Cover the enchilada pan and bake until sauce bubbles, about half an hour.  Top with sliced avocado and corn and olive mixture if you choose. Serve warm with a green salad.

Mourning Food: Cashew Cacao Breakfast Pudding

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Sorry I haven’t written in awhile.  I’ve been preoccupied with the illness and subsequent death of a dear friend.  Bill was the father of my boyfriend, Bill Jr. but he was also one of my favourite people on Earth. One might expect a certain amount of gruffness from a World War II Navy veteran and former Olympian soccer player who raised racehorses but whether in word or in deed Bill always found a way to say ‘I love you.’.

He teased constantly and creatively but always with the utmost gentleness. He used to slip me tiny chocolate bars from his secret stash before breakfast. His one good eye would look left and right, furtively, like an actor in a spy movie, his hand barely making contact with mine as he handed off the contraband foil-wrapped square. That gesture spoke to the measure of his generosity; Bill loved chocolate and when he loved a food he really loved it. That was part of what made him such a joy to feed.  His three favourite foods, in order if I’m not mistaken, were:

1)Chocolate
2) Beets
3) Lobster Bisque

I cooked his favourites as often as I could. He was the only person I’ve ever cooked for who I feel really understood and accepted how much love I’m trying to express when I prepare food. I don’t know why I felt that way.  Maybe it’s because when I made something especially for him I could tell he was enjoying more than just the taste.

The last thing I made for him was creme caramel. I called my mother in Edmonton and made her read the recipe down the phone to me. It’s from her 1950-something New York Times cookbook and it’s what she always serves to ailing seniors. It’s a bland, slightly sweet egg and milk custard with a little caramel sauce at the bottom. It tastes like the past. Bill was having trouble swallowing then and not eating much at all but we all hoped that if he ate just a few more bites of anything he might get strong enough to come home.  I thought he might eat a little more of something homemade or maybe if I flatter myself, because I had made it for him. Probably I just needed to feel like I was doing something for him. He managed a few heroic bites. It’s funny the things you regret when the bell rings and the time’s up for do-overs but I keep thinking if I had another chance I would make him chocolate mousse.

Bill died on a beautiful sunny Ohio day at the end of August. I held his hand while he watched his last sunrise. In an instant, the smile on his face when he opened his eye and saw the first rays taught me everything I will ever need to know about sunrises or maybe anything.

After the sun came up, Bill used his last bit of strength to form the names of his other son, daughter and wife to Bill Jr. and me. Once he knew they were on the way he totally relaxed. It’s seems so trite to underscore that that is what really matters at the end of the day but it’s so damn true: the people you love. I think that’s what they mean when they say live every day as if it was your last. They don’t mean spend all your savings and tell off your boss. They mean: Smile at the sunrise. Make sure the people you love are around you, then relax. I wonder if I can let it be that simple.

When an elderly person dies, Bill was 86, people want to say things like ‘Well, so and so lived a long, full life.’ as though just because something is in the natural order that means it isn’t sad. I’ve said that myself. Boy, is it ever a different story when it’s your elderly person. We’re not so keen on the ol’ natural order then because we aren’t sad for him we’re sad for ourselves.  We’re sad for the unrepeatable shape of the hole in our lives and because suddenly 86 years isn’t very long after all.

The funeral is over. Taps sounded on a bugle and a heavy, folded flag was presented to Bill’s wife Catherine from a grateful nation. When a life ends, the jagged edges are not tied up with loving words and ceremony.  The grieving has only begun.  The sadness lays a damp hand on my shoulder at surprising times: walking down the street, waiting in line at customs. I’m not really even aware I’m thinking of Bill until I feel the tears start to fall. I can only imagine the tumbling ocean of sad that stretches in front of his family before they wash up on the other shore. It’s a necessary journey; still, I wish them swift passage.

It would take a greater segueway than I am capable of at this hour to tote this mess of a post around to a recipe so I’m not even going to try. I haven’t really felt like cooking, or writing for that matter because I knew I needed to write about Bill’s passing and I just didn’t want to face it. Yesterday morning though, I did feel like eating this sweet but wholesome raw cashew-date pudding I make from time to time. It’s raw vegan comfort food. At the last moment I got the idea to add some cacao powder and topped it with some Jim Beam Cherries. It was delicious.  As it turns out my buddy was onto something: eating chocolate at breakfast is a really good idea.

I miss you today

Cashew Cacao Breakfast Pudding
Serves 2 for breakfast, 4 for dessert

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups raw cashews, soaked at least two hours and then rinsed
4 dates, soaked at least two hours, pits removed
1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt
3/4 cup water or nut milk  Use the date soak water to make up some of this.
3 tablespoons raw cacao powder(optional)

Directions
Blend all ingredients in a food processor until very smooth. If it’s too thick add nut milk or date soak water one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reach. Top with fruit and serve. Keeps up to five days in the refrigerator.

Sugar Pumpkin and Black Bean Salad With Ginger Lime Vinaigrette

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This salad almost didn’t happen because the sugar pumpkin was just too darn cute. Will you look at that thing?

You don’t want to eat it! You want to dress it up in a knitted hat or something. I tried that. Then I ate it. It was damn good.

I think the pumpkin would give me its blessing. The salad I sacrificed it for is a delicious and healthy weeknight meal. I threw it together in twenty minutes when I came in starving after doing the Grouse Grind, a super-tough rite-of-pasage Vancouver hike. The dressing made me bay at the moon so I made another batch right away.
If you like this post, please share it with a friend or two. Have a groovy Wednesday.

xo Jasmine

Sugar Pumpkin and Black Bean Salad With Ginger Lime Vinaigrette
Makes two salads

Ingredients

Salad
Half a small sugar pumpkin or squash, seeds removed and sliced lengthwise like a melon
5 green onions, chopped rough
Four big handfuls of chopped greens  I used swiss chard and romaine from a friend’s garden
1/2 an avocado, sliced into 6 pieces
1 cup black beans

Directions
Place pumpkin in a steamer. Turn element to high, steam for about ten minutes or until soft. Remove from heat. Allow to cool slightly, it will cool quickly. Once the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, cut the flesh away from the skin and discard the skin. Add green onions  and toss.  Place two handfuls of greens, 1/2 cup of beans and three avocado slices on each plate. Divide pumpkin mixture between the plates. Divide dressing between plates. Enjoy!

Dressing
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger
2 teaspoons lime zest
juice from 2 limes
2 teaspoons Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
3 tablespoons olive oil  

Directions
Whisk all ingredients together.

Golden Beet Salad with Basil Vinaigrette

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Golden beets with kohlrabi, goat cheese and basil vinaigrette

I know it seems a shame to make a beet and goat cheese salad in the ripe and juicy fecundity of summer when come wintertime nearly every North American cuisine restaurant with the slightest bit of fancy has some variation on the beet salad. Normally, there’s no variation at all: some roasted beets, a knob or two of goat cheese, a pile of greens and perhaps a skiff of toasted pumpkin seeds. I’m not complaining about that;  I almost always order it. What else am I going to eat in the winter?  A caprese made with tomatoes from Mexico? Look, if there’s any Mexico travel to be had in the winter it’s going to be me on a flight to Mexico, not my damn tomatoes headed in the wrong direction.

What I love about this beet salad is that it could only happen now, in these brief and precious couple of months where the long winter rains are forgotten, Vancouver is paradise and I wouldn’t get on a plane to Mexico if you paid me.

This salad simply could not exist in October or November. These light, pretty one-bite golden beets are just not around then. Beets in winter need to be cut; they’re heavier, earthier and bloodily sustaining for the lengthening, cooling nights. As for the basil, it’s a buck forty-nine a bunch which means I can jam it into a salad dressing with such joyous generosity that I’ve almost used too much, as if such a thing were possible in the continent of Basil, in the continent of Summer. Thank God and Goddess for too much. Summer is about nothing if not too much. Too much sun? Too much black forest gelato? Too much time off? Never. Soaking in too much is what helps us not feel afraid in those inevitable times of not quite enough.

I rest my case for my little salad. Wishing you much too much on this summer Monday. xo Jasmine

Golden Beet Salad with Basil Vinaigrette
Serves 2 with some leftover salad dressing
This salad really only has two necessary ingredients: roasted beets and the vinaigrette. I added some fat little kohlrabi matchsticks for crunch and some goat cheese because well, old habits die hard.

Ingredients
8 bite sized golden beets
olive oil

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drizzle olive oil over beets and place them in a covered casserole dish. Roast until they reach desired tenderness. Depending on the size of your beets this will take at least 50 minutes. Check frequently after an hour.  Allow to cool thoroughly and then remove skins if desired. Normally I like to leave skins on because they contain so much fibre and other nutrients but golden beets are so gorgeous without skins I can’t resist serving them that way.

Basil Vinaigrette
Makes about 11/4 cup
Ingredients
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 basil leaves, packed tight
3/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic

Directions
In a blender place rice vinegar, basil and garlic. Blend until garlic is fully pulverized and mixture is smooth.  Then, with blender running pour in olive oil in a thin stream.  Keeps for about a week in the refrigerator. Bright green color will darken slightly after a day or so. Drizzle over roasted beets, salads, cheese, fish or onto warm bread.

Young Collard and Crimini Mushroom Tacos

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This is the kind of summer brunch that fills me up but still leaves me feeling light and frisky enough to want to put on my bikini.

Typically, I’m not a huge fan of using collards for wraps at most times of the year. They’re just too darn tough. I want a sandwich, not a personal challenge. However, at this time of the year I can usually find young, local, just pulled from the dirt collards in the tenderest pale green. Those I can work with, as demonstrated by this summery vegan brunch. Some pretty Swiss Chard might make nice taco shells too.

I’ve made an avocado-walnut sauce to add brain-loving Omega 3s and a sweet corn salsa for texture but you can feel free to just make one of those, or make none of those.

Raw Corn Salsa and Avocado-Walnut Sauce posing prettily on my favourite beach towel.

A little dollop of regular salsa, hummus or sliced avocado would work just fine. Whatever. Just make it. Eat it. Get your trunks on.

Will you get your cute behind to the beach already! The sun’s almost setting!

If you like this post, I would be most appreciative if you shared it on Twitter or Facebook.

Young Collard and Crimini Mushroom Tacos
A light lunch for two
Ingredients
4 large collard leaves
3 cups sliced crimini mushrooms, stems removed Crimini mushrooms are baby portobellos
2 teaspoons crushed chipotle pepper
1/4 cup plus one tablespoon boiling filtered water
1 clove garlic, grated fine
1/4 cup cilantro leaves, optional

Directions
Soak chipotle pepper in boiling water for at least half an hour, water will turn the color of soy sauce. Strain pepper out of water reserving both soaked pepper and water. Prepare two plates with two large collard greens per plate.

 Heat medium sauce pan on medium-high flame. Add 1/4 cup of chipotle soak liquid and the garlic. When mixture bubbles, reduce heat to medium and add mushrooms. Cook about five minutes or until mushroom have absorbed the liquid and are quite soft. Remove from heat. Spoon mushroom mixture onto collard greens, top with corn salsa, avocado-walnut sauce and cilantro. Serve with lime wedges and salt to taste.
Avocado-Walnut Sauce
Ingredients
1 ripe avocado
1/4 cup walnuts  Feel free to soak and rinse the walnuts to increase their nutritional value but then reduce the water to 1/2 cup plus two tablespoons
Juice of 1/2 lime
2 garlic cloves
3/4 cup filtered water
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Directions
Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.

Raw Corn Salsa
Makes about twice as much as you need for the tacos but is wonderful to have around as a side for other dishes.

Ingredients
Kernels sliced from two cobs of corn
3/4 cup finely chopped red onion
Zest from 2 limes
Juice from 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon chipotle pepper that has been soaked in hot water for at least 1/2 hour and then drained
salt to taste

Directions
Mix all ingredients together and stir well.

Tahini Kale

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A smashing summer lunch of Tahini Kale, a wedge of sheep’s feta and a few sun dried olives

I can’t believe I feel like eating kale again. Come springtime, I swear if I see one more sturdy dark leaf of it I’m going to just snap and rip it all out of the garden. Well, that is actually the plan for my kale plants in the spring anyways but I’m always a little surprised at the rage that bubbles forth when I actually do it.

Then, just as predictably around, oh, now, I start to feel all cravy for it, like I’m not as healthy as I could be if I just got my hands on my old friend Curly Green. Actually it works out perfectly because this is when kale starts getting really good again. Summer is perfect raw kale salad eating weather because the leaves are far less fibrous than they’ll be in the fall. While wearing a white eyelet sundress, I much prefer nibbling delicately to gnashing lustily. Nature is so wise.

The kale I made from this recipe tastes a bit similar to a salad I buy at Whole Foods but with a few more flavour notes.  I take issue with the fact that Whole Foods doesn’t remove the ribs from their kale leaves. I find the ribs difficult to negotiate when eating out of those little cardboard containers plus it’s unpalatable and heavy and since you purchase by weight there you pay for those near-inedible green tubes.  Naturally, I wrote them a weirdo letter about this. I didn’t hear back. I just know they laugh about me in their staff room. I don’t know why I’m getting so peevish about this. Maybe it’s time to move on to…oh, yes…the recipe!

This makes enough dressing for one large bunch of kale.   This same kale was also quite delicious grilled( just trim the stems but leave the ribs in, allow to marinate in dressing for at least two hours, place on hot grill, 30 seconds a side, edges will be charred)
or as chips(rip into bite size pieces and dry in low oven, 170 degrees, four hours, you can do it faster in a hotter oven but you’ll lose nutrients).

Have a smashing Wednesday. See ya next week. xx

Tahini Kale
Serves 4
1 large bunch of green, curly kale, ribs(!) and stems removed
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon raw tahini  Try to find tahini made with unhulled sesame seeds; the nutritional benefits are far greater
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
Juice of 1 organic lemon
2 medium cloves garlic
2 tablespoons warm water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Directions
Place prepared kale in a large bowl. Place tahini, lemon juice, garlic, water, salt and cumin in a blender and blend until smooth. With the blender running, slowly pour the olive oil through the whole in the blender lid. Once mixture is very smooth, pour over prepared kale. Mix well with clean hands. Serve immediately or allow to marinate. Will keep 2-3 days in the refrigerator.