Sunday Cooking Club
I hadn’t meant to go on such a raw food kick lately, but I planned my last cooking class a few months ago, thinking it would be warm by now. Raw foods are so excellent in the summer months when the temperatures are high and the vegetables are fresh from the farmers market.
But no. It’s been cold and rainy in Boston. At least the vegetables are fresh and delicious like they should be! And since we sprouted some wheat berries last time, now we’re gonna use ‘em.
Before I go into the recipe, let me first answer this burning question:
What’s the deal with raw foods?
This is basically what my friend Leigh asked at last week’s (Un)Cooking Club and I’m glad she did because sometimes I forget to explain WHY I eat the way I do. So here goes.
Raw food enthusiasts eat a plant-based diet never heated above the temperature at which the live enzymes die – around 118 degrees. I have experimented with raw foods and learned some cool preparation techniques, and I appreciate the value of eating living foods. On my 2 months of raw food last year I gained a ton of energy, cleaned out my digestive system big time, and felt amazing. But it wasn’t something I could keep up in social situations, nor was it something that felt appropriate for me as the weather cooled down in for a Boston winter. Anyway, it felt like an amazing detox.
Raw foods contain the necessary enzymes to break themselves down during digestion. Therefore, it’s a very efficient process and your body does not need to do as much work. That, combined with eating so much fiber and so many nutrients…well, heck. It feels pretty darn good. I lost about 9 lbs. in the first few weeks I ate raw. That was not good because I was getting married soon and wanted to fit into my dress! But I will say, I never felt hungry, I ate all I wanted and still lost that weight. Interesting.
So maybe it’s adding a salad to dinner, or learning to make buckwheat crispies for breakfast. However you do it, adding raw food into your diet could be a very good thing.
Last Sunday I held an (Un)Cooking Club where we made an appetizer, main dish and dessert all from raw, living foods. And they were delicious! And inexpensive. Sweet.
For the main dish recipe I’m sharing today, you need to have sprouted wheat berries for a few days prior. You could also use sprouted barley, kamut, spelt or whatever you like. And if you’re like “forget it, I’m not sprouting anything!” then you can use cooked whole wheat berries. This salad will come out great either way.
Mediterranean Wheatberry Salad
2 cups wheat berries, sprouted
1 tomato, chopped
1 can black olives, sliced
3 Tbl. fresh basil, sliced
1 tsp. fresh oregano, chopped
5 sundried tomatoes, chopped
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbl. olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
Mix everything together in a big bowl. Serve cold or room temperature.
What are your thoughts on eating raw foods?
June 19th, 2009 | digestion, raw foods, recipe, Sunday Cooking Club, vegan, whole grains | 8 Comments »
To prepare for May’s Sunday Cooking Club I made a huge pot of chickpeas for trial runs of our menu, and then another big pot for the day of! So…I’ve been eating chickpeas every day straight for the past few weeks. As testimony to how versatile and delicious chickpeas are, I’m STILL not sick of them!
Here’s what was on the menu for Cooking Club:
-Garbanzofish (aka Chickpea of the Sea)
-Dill-Basmati Rice Pilaf with Chickpeas
-Homemade hummus with variations
-Whole wheat pitas
We cooked up garbanzo deliciousness and spent the afternoon discussing why eating beans is the way to go if you are not so keen on the way animals are generally raised for food. Thanks to Jennifer who recently saw Food Inc., we had plenty to talk about!
The first recipe we made was a pilaf from Veganomicon. I may eat some animal products, but I do appreciate a good vegan recipe. And this was! The only thing was that I totally forgot to add the chickpeas! What kind of person runs a cooking class about garbanzos and then forgets to add them to the main dish? Oy. We may have gone the whole afternoon without noticing if Janeen hadn’t piped up while eating…”So, are there chickpeas in this?”
It was still good, sans chickpeas. If you don’t have Veganomicon, it’s a great cookbook with lots of excellent recipes that everyone can enjoy. One day I want to write a cookbook like that!
Next we made a quick batch of one of my favorite recipes – Garbanzofish! This stuff is great. Everyone was onboard with the idea of using chickpeas instead of tuna and adding celery and pickles. But when I pulled out the nutritional yeast I got a few weird looks. No fear, the recipe came out great. Instead of making sandwiches, we served our garbanzofish on cucumber circles as little appetizers.
Last came hummus – something so easy to make that I never want to buy it from the grocery store again! We started with a basic hummus recipe:
Hummus
2 cups chickpeas (cooked or canned)
1/2 cup tahini
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled
juice of 1 big or 2 small lemons, plus zest
salt + pepper to taste
In blender or food processor add all ingredients. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Add water as needed to create smooth consistency. (If you’ve cooked your chickpeas, reserve the cooking water to use here.) Try 1/8 cup of water to start.
Then we turned this basic recipe into Italian and Indian variations:
The regular hummus went in the middle of the server shown above. For italian variation, we added 5 sundried tomatoes, 2 handfuls of fresh basil and crushed red pepper. For indian variation, we omitted tahini and added 1” fresh ginger, 1/2 cup plain yogurt and 1 Tbl. garam masala. The Italian was the undisputed winner of the bunch! Or maybe I’m biased…
I can’t say enough how fun it is to cook with everyone who comes to Cooking Club. It’s much more about the community and conversation than it is about getting the recipe perfect or chopping that onion like a pro. (Or remembering to add the chickpeas…) If you are in the area, I hope you’ll join us on June 14, 2009 for June’s Sunday Cooking Club. This one is going to be very special for summer – a RAW food menu! Space is limited so sign up now!
May 7th, 2009 | beans, Boston, recipe, Sunday Cooking Club, vegan, vegetarian | 6 Comments »
Have you decided on a recipe to enter into the Mom’s Real Food Recipe Carnival yet?
The recipe I am sharing with you today definitely is not a family recipe whatsoever, so it’s good that I already shared my mom’s Eggplant Parmigiana! In fact I’m not sure I ever had pitas growing up. They were sort of outlandish in an Italian family. We had plenty of bread and pasta but this particular configuration of flour and olive oil never took place.
So, for the past few weeks we’ve been eating a LOT of chickpeas in order to test hummus recipes and such. (Later this week I will post about Sunday Cooking Club and all of this month’s fabulous garbanzo recipes.) With so much hummus in the house it occurred to me that we really needed some pitas. I remembered seeing Vered’s homemade pita and thought…hey, I can do that!
Well…haha…not so fast. I started with a very basic pita recipe that called for Instant Yeast. But I’m not much of a bread baker. I thought yeast was…yeast. I picked some up at the store in those red packets my mom always had. This was a big ol’ PITA FAIL. Apparently I got Active Dry Yeast which needs to be activated in warm water or something. It’s actually not active at all otherwise. Confusing! It should be called “In-Active Dry Yeast.”
Next try went a whole lot better. I found the Instant stuff and this made all the difference. Rise, dough, rise! And it did. We thoroughly enjoyed our fluffy warm pitas with homemade hummus and cucumber slices one day, sprouts and swiss chard the next. They were so, so much better than store bought pitas. If you have a few hours and want to impress your family and friends (and yourself!), give these suckers a try.
Whole wheat pitas
adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman
3 cups whole wheat bread flour (plus more for flouring countertop)
3 Tbl. olive oil
2 tsp. instant yeast
2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 cup water
1-2 Tbl. melted butter (optional, but seriously, go for it!)
1. In food processor, combine flour, oil, yeast, salt and sugar. Turn machine on and add 1 cup of water through feed tube.
2. Process for about 30 seconds until dough forms a ball. You might need to add a little bit more water to help it along but you don’t want the dough too wet or sticky, just slightly so.
3. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for a few seconds to create a ball. Place in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.
4. Split dough into 8 equal smaller balls by dividing in half, then each piece in half, then each of those in half again. Let rest for at least 20 minutes, covered with plastic wrap or a towel.
5. Roll each ball out with a rolling pin until it looks like a pita. By this I mean it isn’t too thick and it isn’t too thin. Go for less than 1/4″ thickness, but more than 1/8″. Let dough disks rest for another 20 minutes.
6. You can bake on cookie sheets at 350 degrees or cook on the stovetop in a heavy skillet. Cook on first side for 2-4 minutes, then flip and cook another 2-4 minutes. The goal is for each pita to puff up at some point during the cooking process, creating the ‘pocket’ inside. If they don’t rise they are still good to eat but you won’t be able to cut them in half and stuff ‘em.
7. Brush pita tops with melted butter. Enjoy!
Now that this month’s Cooking Club is over I can get off this hummus kick but I still have a lot of leftover chickpeas in the house. What to do? Look forward to more recipes this week using everyone’s favorite legume! Then I’m going to start experimenting with raw foods as we look forward to June’s (Un)Cooking Club. Join us!
May 4th, 2009 | baking, beans, recipe, Sunday Cooking Club, vegetarian | 18 Comments »
Cooking club has been a blast so far as we explore whole, natural foods and new ways of cooking ‘em up. But in celebration of summer and the availability of so much fresh produce, June’s Club will be based on eating raw food. Yes, all raw! You do not need to be a raw foodist to eat more raw food and summer is the perfect time to learn how. It’s more than salad! We’ll discuss some raw food theory but focus on how to incorporate raw into an otherwise cooked diet.
Cooking club will be on hiatus for July because I’m just too darn busy next month. Been meaning to come cook? Do it now!
Sign up now using the PayPal forms below, or email me for more details at michelle@findyourbalancehealth.com.
June 14, 2009
(Un)Cooking with Raw Foods
11:00 am – 1:00pm
Menu (tentatively, based on Farmer’s Market availability) will include: Salmon Pate Wraps, Mediterranean Grains and Banana Ice Cream
Location: Medford, MA near Tufts University
Note that you must register in advance to receive the address of the event.
Cost: $30 in advance through PayPal/$35 cash or check at the door
April 23rd, 2009 | Sunday Cooking Club | 2 Comments »
Sunday Cooking Club’s first meeting was held, and it was tasty fabulosity! Thanks to all of you who joined in on the fun. For those of you unable to make today’s Club or who live too far away (*sniff sniff) to be here, I thought I’d recap the day’s events. Maybe you’d like to start a chapter of Sunday Cooking Club where you are! (Suddenly this is starting to feel like a sorority…hmmm… Let’s move on, shall we?)
The day’s conversation kind of went like this:
-Cute retro aprons.
-What a fresh, uncooked butternut squash looks like (quite phallic, in this case.)
-Big knives.
-How to cut an onion without crying.
-Melissa and Janeen found out they have both lived in Atlanta.
-yogaHOPE, an organization bringing yoga to underserved women.
-Lots of sweet potato chopping.
-Janeen’s demonstration of how to properly hold a knife while cutting.
-Buying a brand new couch with your boyfriend.
-Being newly single and doing new things, like running and playing drums.
-Soaking beans to make them less gassy.
-Grand, the store Wendy owns in Union Square, Somerville, MA.
-Canola oil vs. olive oil and deciding the best oil to use is the one you have on hand.
-What is escarole? What is kale? What’s the difference?
-Cats who fight but are lovely and cute.
It’s like you were there, right? Except you didn’t get to eat the delicious food we made. Sadness. Why not sign up now for Sunday Cooking Club on May 3, 2009?
So, as you can see, there’s no way a group is going to get together to cook and not talk about, well…everything else! And that’s just how it should be. Cooking is traditionally a way people came together, like our ancestors gathered around the fire. It’s my intention with Cooking Club to make food preparation a little bit more like traditional times. We used whole, natural ingredients and the community aspect was very important. We learned a lot from each other – which is good because I’m no Martha Stewart!
As a health counselor, I hear over and over from people that they have sugar cravings. Today’s menu was designed to incorporate sweet vegetables and help eliminate those cravings. Tomorrow, (or the next day, let’s be honest) I will share some recipes from today, and talk about how you can save money cooking with whole, natural food.
Time’s running out! Have you entered to win a free Kripalu vegetarian cookbook? Contest ends April 8, 2009 at 10am EST.
April 5th, 2009 | beans, Boston, Sunday Cooking Club | 11 Comments »
It’s been one heck of a busy but awesome week. For not working, I sure am working a lot. I’m starting up my business officially as Find Your Balance Health Counseling and Yoga. Like I mentioned before, the site will be up soon but until then all my blog posts will remain here on Blogger. (Conveniently, because you are already here.) And at the end of this post there is an invitation for all of you in the Boston area to come to my new Sunday Cooking Club and some info about an awesome yoga retreat with my friend Lauren.
Despite all the work, I’ve made time to cook. Max really loved these burgers, declaring them the best thing I ever made. Wait, what? What about my homemade raviolis? My soups, my cookies? Well, I have to agree these were amazing. I ran across the recipe on Gourmet magazine’s website, but of course changed a few things to keep costs down.
The biggest change I made was to serve the patties over whole rye instead of sandwiching on rye bread. Call me crazy but it worked out great, and sauerkraut was a perfect match to round out the meal. You might look at this and say, “Hey Michelle, Miss Health Counselor, where’s the vegetable?” And I will tell you, it’s ALL vegetable, baby.
Mushroom Kasha Burgers with Chipotle Mayonnaise
adapted from Gourmet Magazine
For rye:
2 cups whole rye kernels
4 cups water
1 sheet nori, finely cut with scissors
olive oil, apple cider vinegar, tamari and S+P to taste
For burgers:
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup coarse kasha (whole roasted buckwheat groats)
8 oz portabella mushrooms, including stems
24 oz. white mushrooms
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup finely chopped red cabbage
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon tamari
1 and 1/2 cups panko or breadcrumbs, divided
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup ghee, butter or olive oil
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Tabasco chipotle sauce, or any spicy sauce you have
1 cup sauerkraut
1. Optional but recommended: Soak rye in a bowl of water overnight with a splash of vinegar. Drain and rinse before cooking.
2. Add rye to a pot with water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until all water is absorbed, about 1 hour. While you wait, prepare the burgers.
3. Bring water to a boil in small pot, then stir in kasha. Cover and reduce heat to low, then cook until kasha is tender and water is absorbed, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cool.
4. Break mushrooms/portabellas into a food processor and pulse until finely chopped, then transfer to a bowl. You may want to do this in batches.
5. Cook onion and red cabbage in butter in a large skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 min. Add chopped mushroom mixture, garlic, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until any liquid mushrooms give off is evaporated and mushrooms begin to brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer mixture to a large bowl, then stir in kasha, parsley, tamari, and 1/2 cup panko. Mix well. Cool 10 minutes, then stir in egg until combined.
6. Get a cookie sheet ready. Put remaining 1 cup bread crumbs in a shallow bowl.
7. Form mushroom mixture into a 3/4-inch-thick patties (3 1/2 inches in diameter), then dredge in panko, knocking off excess, and transfer to cookie sheet. Chill patties in refrigerator for about 1 hour.
8. Heat ghee in cleaned skillet over medium-high heat, then fry patties, turning over once, until deep golden, about 4 minutes total. (You can also use oil but I prefer ghee which has a higher smoking point and creates less drama with the fire alarm). Carefully transfer patties to dishes or a platter. They will be soft, but if they crumble its ok, they still taste good!
7. Meanwhile, whisk together mayonnaise and chipotle sauce. Add oil, vinegars and seasoning to the rye once it’s done cooking and stir well. Serve burgers over rye with chipotle mayo on top and sauerkraut on the side.
Serves about 4.
Ok, onto the invitation for all of you in the Boston area! I am going to start hosting a Sunday Cooking Club, held once per month. The upcoming dates are April 5th and May 3rd. If you are interested check out http://findyourbalancehealth.com/sundaycookingclub.
And you are all invited to check out my friend Lauren’s yoga retreat for June 25th – June 28th. It will be held in New Hampshire at Newfound Lake. If you’d like more details see her website or contact Lauren at info@laurenegavian.com.
March 18th, 2009 | recipe, Sunday Cooking Club, vegetarian, yoga | 12 Comments »
Don’t get me wrong, Mac-n-cheese and Lemon Chicken are glorious meals! But if you’d like to learn something new, save money and try healthier options, then come hang out at the Sunday Cooking Club. We’ll cook together, then lunch together. You’ll leave with the recipes and confidence to recreate them yourself using whole, natural ingredients. Sign up now using the PayPal forms below, or email me for more details at michelle@findyourbalancehealth.com.
May 3, 2009
Thank Goodness for Garbanzos
11:00 am – 1:00pm
Menu will include: Chickpea of the Sea appetizers, Gorgeous Greens Pilaf, and Homemade Creative Hummus.
Location: Medford, MA near Tufts University
Note that you must register in advance to receive the address of the event.
Cost: $30 in advance through PayPal/$35 cash or check at the door
This event was a success, thank you to those of you who attended!
June 14, 2009
(Un)Cooking with Raw Foods
Get details here
March 5th, 2009 | Sunday Cooking Club | No Comments »
