January 2014

Our dear friend JL Fields of JL Goes Vegan has a wonderful blog of recipes, articles, advice and coaching on all things vegan. She is an invaluable source of information, an amazing person and someone we are so fortunate to call a friend.  While she is hard at work finishing her second book, she has enlisted some of her “favorite authors, chefs, business owners, and bloggers to share ‘Quick Tips’ with you – simple and easy ideas to make your vegan, vegetarian or veg-curious journey even easier! Print-friendly, if you want to keep the tips on hand you can clip them with Evernote or print and stick on your refrigerator!” We are honored to be the inaugural guest bloggers for this feature.  We offer some of our tips for worry free vegan hosting. Read it, print it, send it to your friends and family.  This is a great piece for anyone who is

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This is one of those “all in one” type recipes, somewhat like a casserole where everything is contained in one package. Here, eggplant acts as a shell to contain a filling of cheese, pasta, vegetables and TVP. If you don’t like TVP, you can use any kind of vegan crumbles you like, just skip that part of the preparation steps and toss the crumbles in when you are preparing the filling. You’ll want to keep this in your make ahead or weekend recipe file. Grilling the eggplant takes a little work but when you open the springform pan at the end and have a beautiful dish to serve, it is all worth it. And really, grilling eggplant slices is not that hard. Just be sure the eggplant slices aren’t too thick, you need them to be bendable after they are grilled. You also don’t want them too thin or they

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Ribollita literally translates to “reboiled.” Like much Tuscan cuisine, the soup has its origins as a peasant food. It was made by reheating the previous day’s soup and adding in stale bread to thicken it and give it a more stew-like consistency.

I love crunchy  salty foods: potato chips, pretzels, popcorn, pita chips. If it is salty and goes crunch, I am there. As a healthier alternative to chips and such (which are just empty calories) I often turn to kale chips to satisfy my need for crunch. Even people who claim to not like kale will like these. Prep Time: 5 minutes Cooking Time: 20 minutes Ingredients: 1 head kale, washed and thoroughly dried 2 tablespoons olive oil Sea salt, for sprinkling Half a lemon (optional) Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. 2. Remove the ribs from the kale and cut into 1½ inch pieces. Toss in a bowl with the olive oil.  Spread into a single layer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt. 3. Bake 10 minutes and turn the leaves over. Bake for an additional 10 minutes or until the kale is crispy. 4. Serve

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Our Pine Bark is the perfect combination of sweet and salty, crispy and crunchy, and is just really good.

January 8, 2014

AGABAAG

Written by Posted in Beans, Grains, Greens, Recipes Comments 8

AGABAAG (pronounced “ag-uh-bag”) is simply an acronym that I came up with for “a green a bean and a green.”  It became my go-to lunch item last month when I started my “December detox and diet”.  In December, I lost 11 of my 22 pound weight loss goal and having a super-filling, healthy, protein and fiber loaded lunch item like this played a critical role in achieving that success. The idea of eating a grain, a bean and a green is certainly not new nor is it my original idea. I first came across this when eating at Real Food Daily in Los Angeles, California. Real Food Daily has a section on its menu called “basics” wherein you can decide to combine two, three, four or more of the items under these different food groupings. When dieting, I tend to default to the old weight watchers points program because it’s

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Michael and I traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for New Year’s week.  This was our first trip back since 2006 and our first time there as vegans.  In general, we have found  Mexico to be quite a vegan-friendly travel destination, as long as you can communicate in Spanish, ask questions and make requests for food prep modifications.  Puerto Vallarta (PV) is no exception to this rule. As always, we checked the listings on HappyCow and PlantEaters before travelling so we had an idea of the lay of the vegan landscape.  We arrived on a Sunday night and most of the vegan-friendly places we knew about were closed by the time we were settled at our hotel and ready to go get dinner.  Thankfully, Planeta Vegetariano was open.  Unfortunately, HappyCow had it listed in the wrong place on their map(that happens a LOT on Happy Cow) and our taxi driver had

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