Creamy Avocado and Dill Dressing

While I haven't written a post about my family's garden so far this spring, the plants are growing strong. I have been busy with school and wasn't able to help plant the garden, so I haven't taken much notice to what has been going on back there.  My Dad has gone to the homeland (Italy) for a bit and I have been left in charge to take care of the garden so I have been spending more time watering and monitoring the growth of the plants. We have had lots of lettuce and in a few days we will have some garlic scapes and kale. We may also have some zucchini which I think is crazy! That plant has grown more overnight than I could ever have imagined, along with fast growing fruit under those blossoms.

With all the fresh lettuce I have been incorporating lots of big salad into my meals. My go-to dressing is just to drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then add some crushed black pepper and sea salt. When I have some more time, I like to try out new recipes which have a few more ingredients but have much more interesting flavours. Last summer I was hooked on this dressing. I recently made this potato salad from Oh She Glows and tried out the extra dressing on a regular old salad. It was fantastic! This really inspired me to get working on a dressing that I have been wanting to make for a while, a creamy avocado dill dressing inspired by a dressing from a vegan restaurant in Montreal, Aux Vivres. To be honest, it has been a while since I had this dressing and I can't even remember what it tasted like, but it definitely incorporated dill and avocado. The following recipe is probably far off from the inspiration but was tasty none the less.

Creamy Avocado and Dill Dressing
1 avocado
juice of 1.5 lemon
3 tbsp chopped fresh dill
salt and pepper to taste*

1. Blend altogether in a food processor

If you love lemon, you will love this dressing. It tastes even better the next day so if you can make it ahead of time, do it! The lemon prevents the avocado from turning brown so the dressing stays a lovely green colour. Now, normally I don't add much salt to my food but this time I have to say, do not skip on it. I sprinkled some salt and pepper on the resulting salad and it was definitely needed. It helped to round out the lemon a little bit. The dressing was good to spice up a salad of just lettuce, or of black beans and cucumbers. This would also work well as a dip for veggies or crackers as it is fairly thick in consistency.

I hope everyone is enjoying the weather and all of the fresh produce that comes with it!

Omega-3 Loaded Vegan Overnight Oats

Considering how often I eat overnight oats (averaging 5 times per week for the last 2 years) it is amazing I have only mentioned them twice, once in passing, and once with a recipe. I have my favourite version, which includes banana, oats, ground flax, chia seeds, unsweetened almond milk, and almond butter. I have substituted banana with raspberries and blueberries, I've added shredded unsweetened coconut, chopped almonds, hemp seeds, cinnamon, jam, and vanilla extract, and I've also come up with an 'overnight oats in a flash,' where you cook some oatmeal in the morning, allow it to cool, and then add all the fix in's just like overnight oats.

Have you heard about the importance of omega-3's fatty acids? While I have always been a fan, lately I have read more into the subject, particularly the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio (Maybe one day I will write a post about it but not today). Let's just say it made me really want to up my omega-3 intake. Omega-6 fatty acids are everywhere and you really need to put in some effort to increase omega-3 consumption, especially being a vegetarian and not eating fish. Vegetarian sources include nuts, flax, hemp, and chia seeds. The best sources which have much more omega-3 fatty acids than omega 6's, are flax and chia. Hence why I like to load my overnight oats up with those seeds. Which lead to this version of overnight oats.

Omega-3 Loaded Vegan Overnight Oats
Serves 1

1 banana, chopped
2 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp ground flax seeds
2 tbsp large flake rolled oats
1 cup non-dairy unsweetened milk (Soy or almond work well here)
1 tbsp almond butter

1. The night before, mix together the first 4 ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
2. In the morning, give the mixture a stir and add some more milk to reach desired consistency.
3. Top with your choice of nut butter.

The picture looks gastly but anyone who has tried overnight oats knows they taste much better than they look. The great thing about overnight oats is they are so customizable, everyone has their favourite recipe. I don't make my oats like this every day (chia seeds are expensive and consuming 2 tbsp a day would put  me in the poor house) but it is just another variation you should give a try!

I don't normally include (or even calculate) nutritional information but his recipe here has an awesome nutritional profile for breakfast and I thought I would share it.

Nutritional Information:

calories              450
carboydrate       50 g
     fiber             15.6 g
protein              12.6
fat                     24.8
     saturated      2.2 g
     omega-3      5.7 g
     omega-6      4.0 g

Strawberry Rhubarb Baked Oatmeal

For Mother's day, our family was all over the place, but came together for dinner to celebrate Mom. I saw some rhubarb in the store (the plant in our garden is not quite ready) and knew immediately that I had to make a dessert for this dinner. After all, strawberry rhubarb flavoured anything's is Mom favourite. I made a strawberry rhubarb crisp which was fantastic. I used this gluten free recipe from Gluten Free Goddess with a few modifications: almonds instead of pecans, oats instead of quinoa flakes, sucanat instead of brown sugar; and it was marvellous! It made me love rhubarb, something I was always not a fan of. I had some left over strawberries and rhubarb that I didn't want to go to waste, so I put together this baked oatmeal recipe. A more wholesome breakfast version of the dessert crisp.

Strawberry Rhubarb Baked Oatmeal
Serves 6-8

1.5 cups steel cut oats
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp dried ground ginger
1/4 cup good quality coconut oil
2 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup chopped strawberries
5 cups milk (I used unsweetened almond)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large casserole dish, whisk together the first 4 ingredients.
3. Melt the coconut oil and pour over the oats, mixing well to combine.
4. Add the fruit and milk and stir.
5. Bake for 1 hour and then allow to cool to room temp. The oatmeal will be runny when removing from the oven, but will thicken up as it cools down. I liked the consistency once cooled down before refrigerating. Refrigerating thickens it up even more but becomes soft again once heated in the microwave.

This oatmeal was delicious! It made a great breakfast for my Mom and I during a busy week. I would definitely added another cup of strawberries if we had some. This oatmeal is not very sweet so a tsp or two of maple syrup would be nice along with some chopped nuts. Since I have been eating oatmeal for breakfast nearly ever week day for the last...I don't know...3 years?!?..I am always looking for new ways to make it. This was my first baked oatmeal and I was definitely a fan. Lately I have also been making a new variety of overnight oats which actually has very little oats. Stay tuned for that recipe. Hopefully it won't be weeks before I get around to posting again. This Master's thesis thing really gets in the way of cooking/blogging ; )

Polenta with Rapini, Portobello Mushrooms and Avocado

I have been eating a lot of simple meals lately. As spring approaches I am trending toward fresh vegetables and lots of greens. While this recipe still has comfort food written all over it, usually saved for the winter months, it comes in handy for rainy days like this week is bringing. I have had a large bag of course cornmeal for a while and have been meaning to make some polenta. This post on Seasonal Ontario Food inspired this oven baked variety. It is a very hands off way of making polenta which I am sure will become my standard method for making polenta now. I find that polenta goes really well with salty and garlicy foods. It also goes well with hardy greens. This hardly classifies as a recipe, but is a great starting point for using polenta if you haven't made it before. Try it and then make it yours!

Polenta with Rapini, Portobello Mushrooms, and Avocado

Serves 3

1 cup course cornmeal
4 cups water
1/2 large bunch of rapini, chopped (or other hearty greens like kale)
3 portobello mushrooms, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 avocado, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Mix water and cornmeal in baking dish and bake for 1 hour.
3. Give the polenta a stir to ensure doneness, and bake for another 10 minutes if needed.
4. While finishing the polenta off, add mushrooms to a pan and heat over medium heat.
5. Once mushrooms begin to soften and release water, add greens and garlic. Sauté until greens are wilted and mushrooms are cooked.
6. Top polenta with greens and some chopped avocado.
7. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

Why I Don't Eat Meat

Something I tend not to talk about too much on this blog is vegetarianism. Back in May 2011, I mentioned that I was no longer going to be eating meat "for the time being". During my trip to Italy in August 2011, I had meat/seafood, but other than that animal flesh has not knowingly crossed my lips. Animal flesh. It sounds weird to write it like that, but that is what it is. Some people cannot stand the thought that the protein on their plate used to be a living and breathing animal. This is how disconnected we have become from our food.


I haven't written about my reasons for becoming vegetarian on this blog as I am always afraid of offending people. But I have decided to share my reasons today, as I am not afraid anymore. Every month of my vegetarian 'journey' has come with some more insight and development of my opinion on the issue. Some of this results from reading the news, watching a TED talk, reading a new book, or simply thinking things through. One book I recently read, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer really got to me. Most of the facts and figures in the book were not new to me, but the way the book was written instilled me with a little bit of empowerment. It made me want to spread the word, share the facts with those around me, start a revolution, and start a protest. Now, the urge to protest and start a revolution died off quickly, but the urge to spread the word has not. I used to be afraid of offending people around me by sharing my opinions, but I realized I cannot go on this way. So here it is...my journey through a changing relationship with eating animals.


My estrangement with meat began about 6 years ago when I moved out of residence and started cooking on my own. Looking back I would hardly consider it cooking but I did make my own meals. I loved salads and simple meals. Meat was rarely in the picture. It was expensive and took some serious skills to cook. Skills I didn't have at the time. I also never felt very comfortable handling raw meat. My chicken was usually grilled to oblivion and then tossed in a salad to get the job done. A couple years later this aversion got worse. I became aware of the bacteria present on meat and issues of food safety after one of my coop work terms. Handling meat became a bigger aversion to me. I would only eat meat after thorough inspection for doneness and I would never order meat at a restaurant. After all, "I don't know what goes on back there". As I got older and started getting more into cooking, I tried to overcome this 'fear' of raw meat. I did this by purchasing a whole chicken. I wanted to deconstruct and use every piece of that damn bird. I did use every piece of that bird, including the bones to make a homemade chicken stock, and then I disinfected every surface that chicken may have touched. I still had a problem.


That same year I started watching movies about food. Food Inc. in particular struck a cord with me, exposing the harsh realities of the factory farm industry. I had never seen these images before. The use of antibiotics and steroids, the close quarters of the animals, the rate of disease in the animals slaughtered for food, and the struggles of the family farm because of the influence of the food industry in policy making. While this affected me greatly, I still wasn't ready to make the jump to vegetarianism. I rarely ate meat, but I didn't want to give a title to my diet, experience the social awkwardness, or the separation. Although, rarely ordering meat at a restaurant already caused some social awkwardness with my group of carnivorous male friends. The next year I started reading books. The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defence of Food, Locavore, Food and Fuel, and Food Inc. All of these movies and books opened my eyes to what the state of the food industry was. I didn't like it, not one bit.


After watching the movie Fresh I finally decided to become a 'vegetarian'. It was a big step for me to make that classification. A classification I never wanted to make. "One day I would eat meat, but not right now, not with the way it is done," I said to myself. But I kept this to myself for the most part. Very few people asked questions, or noticed for that matter. And that was the way I liked it. I took comfort in the fact that I was making a difference. I was one more person not consuming factory farmed meat, one less person handing over money to that industry, reducing the demand for meat just that little bit.


Now, I am not an animal rights activist. I don't think it is wrong to kill an animal for food, but the way we are doing it is wrong. Not just the killing, but the raising, the feeding, and the breeding is wrong. It is morally wrong, wrong for our health, and wrong for our environment. Here are some simple facts to show my point:


1. Agriculture accounted for 24% of the methane emissions in 2009, a 20% increase from 1990, mostly due to beef cattle and swine. (National Inventory Report 1990-2009: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada - Executive Summary)
2. The inappropriate use of antibiotics in agriculture is a driving factor in the presence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in humans. (WHO) This has some big and scary consequences for our future.
3. Animal husbandry uses up 30% of the land on earth, including the land required to produce their feed. 40% of the world grain is used to feed animals which are not even supposed to eat grain. Imagine we used that land to feed people? (Archive of Internal Medicine)
4. Animals are kept in such close indoor quarters they can hardly move. Chickens are given less than 1 square foot of space (if they aren't in a cage). Not that they can stand anyway. The average broiler reaches maturity at 6 weeks with a body weight their frail sick bones can't keep up.
5. Industrial agriculture contributes to almost 50% of the waterway pollution in the United States (Sustainable Table).


Agriculture is literally destroying our world. 


Forgive my inner hippie for saying this but eating is one of the most intimate interactions we have with the world. We take the food produced by the earth and we put it inside our mouths. It moves through our body as it gets broken down, fermented, transformed and absorbed, literally contributing to the building blocks of our body, or taking part in metabolic activity. If there is one thing we should care about in this world (beyond those that we love) it should be what we eat. 

Happy chickens whose eggs tasted amazing, like no egg I've ever tasted before.

For me, that means not eating meat and very little animal products. This will inevitably shift again one day, maybe even introducing meat back into my life when I have the means to buy healthy meat directly from a farmer for special occasions(I'll have to stop being a student first). But only time will tell. 


One thing is for sure, saving our planet will require a large shift in the way our current food system works. There are so many people out there making changes and fighting for sustainability and a brighter future. It is really inspiring and I hope to one day be able to make a difference. For now I will continue to eat vegetarian and I will publish this post. If this post inspires just one person to eliminate meat from just one of their meals it will have been worth it.


Thanks for reading! For being so patient, I promise to post a yummy vegetarian recipe this week. :)

Black Bean and Tomatillo Twice Baked Potato

As I went to write this post I realized it has been about a month since my last. At first it worried me when I started posting less frequently in 2012 but I have gotten over with. I use this blog to share my recipes (and recipe finds) with my friends and family and only posting when I am really feeling a recipe keeps this place real. Speaking of keeping it real, I have been working on a post for the past little while that I have yet to publish. There is no recipe, there are no pictures of food but I feel like it belongs here. When I feel it is ready I will share it and I hope you accept my recipe-less words when the time comes. Now, onto the recipe that broke the Food for Fuel silence!

It was the result of picking up some potatoes at the farmer's market, not really having a plan for them. I have made these potatoes twice for a difference audience and all have approved. This recipe is easy, ready under an hour, and packed with flavour (and fibre).

Black Bean and Tomatillo Twice Baked Potato
Serves 4-6

6 potatoes (I used red skinned ones but you could use your fav)
1 can black beans, thoroughly rinsed
1 avocado, chopped
~1/3 cup salsa verde (to taste, I don't know how much I added)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees C.
2. Poke potatoes with a fork and wrap in foil, bake for ~45 minutes (depending on the size of your taters).
3. Once the potatoes are cooked and cooled enough to handle, carefully peel off the skin on the top to discard. Scoop out the insides of the potatoes and add to a bowl with black beans, and avocado.
4. Mash the potato with the beans and avocado until mixed. Add the salsa verde and mix into the mash, tasting along the way to ensure the desired amount of flavour.
5. Scoop stuffing into the potatoes pressing down to pack down the filling. Fill the potatoes well exceeding their limit. You will still have filling left over.
6. Bake potatoes for 10-15 minutes until tops begin to brown.

Don't mind the blur...

The salsa is the star of the show here. The potatoes will only taste as good as your salsa. Use a good quality flavourful salsa, or make your own! I used the President's Choice Black Tomatillo Salsa. It is very good. I would also recommend the original variety. The avocado is also necessary, it adds creaminess that would normally be accomplished by dairy (cream or sour cream). Feel free to add other veggies as well. I tried adding a bit of corn which worked well. I also foresee bell peppers or green onions working well.

As the weather warms up and BBQ season begins, I really hope you give these a try!

Tahini Chickpea Stir Fry

I know I haven't posted a new recipe in a while, but I finally have something worth posting about. I did something the other day that I used to do almost every time I cooked. I just 'went with it.' I have been following a lot of recipes lately and not really just going with my instincts and cooking with what I happen to have on hand. I want to get back into doing this and while I had one failure initially, I hit a winner with this chickpea dish. I worked with the winning combination of chickpeas, tahini and lemon in my favourite dip, hummus and these ingredients delivered.

You may also notice the use of coconut oil instead of the usual olive oil. I have been doing this as of late for two reasons. I won't go into too much detail because I am thinking of writing a post all about it, but the reasons are 1) I don't trust the quality of EVOO and 2) high heat isn't really that good for EVOO and coconut is such a stable oil, which does not make the dish taste at all coconuty. Win-win situation.

Tahini and Chickpea Stir Fry
Serves 2-3

1 tsp coconut oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
4 mushrooms, chopped
1/2 large head of kale, chopped
~1 cup cooked chickpeas
1.5 tbsp tahini
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp nutritional yeast
avocado

1. Heat coconut oil in a pan on medium heat. Add onion and cook for 5 minutes until soft.
2. Add bell pepper and mushrooms and sauté for about 5 minutes.
3. Add kale and chickpeas and heat until kale is beginning to wilt and vegetables are cooked.
4. In the meantime whisk together tahini, lemon juice and nutritional yeast. The nutritional yeast thickens up the sauce so do not add if you like the thinner consistency. The sauce also thickens in the pan.
5. Add the sauce to the pan and stir to completely mix and heat through.
6. Serve topped with chopped avocado.

I knew I liked this dish upon initial taste, but I knew it was blog worthy when my Mom enjoyed it. She liked the lemon and tahini combination with alongside the chickpeas tastes a little hummus like. You can always adjust the tahini and lemon ratio to suit your taste, and of course change up the veggies. But whatever you do, don't leave out the chickpeas.