Vegan dinner: grey pea burgers with roots and avocado mayonaise

I'm so sorry that I dont have a photo of the soo delicious dinner we ate yesterday. It was too dark for taking good photos and I have already digged in on the plate before I realized I had a good recipe to share. Really embarrassing... I will post a photo nex time, because I'm sure I will make this recipe again.

Grey peas is a very old crop that the vikings grew as one of the daily grocery staples. It is filled with proteins and minerals. The pea is smaller than the usual pea and is patterned like a birds egg, very beautiful.

Grey pea burgers
 serve 4
3,5 dl grey peas or green lentils.
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes, soaked in warm water
fresh basil leaves ca 7
1 garlic clove
1 small onion
1,5 tsp vegetal buillon powder
1,5 b- yeast powder
salt and pepper

Baked vegetables
Swedes, parsnip, potatoes, carrots in the amount for 4
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes

Avocado mayonaise
2 ripe avocados
0,5 dl rapeseed oil
stenches of tabasco choose your own amount
1 pressed lime
salt and pepper

Soak the peas (or lentils) in plenty of water over the night. Boil the peas on low heat for 15 minutes.
Peel the roots and chop in big chunks and bake them in the owen for 40 minutes in 200 degr C, with some ground pepper and rapeseed oil. Peel and chop the garlic and onion finely fry in a pan with a little oil on low heat. Strain the boiled peas pour in the mixer with the other ingredients and mix.
Heat a frying pan with vegetable oil (rapeseed oil). Spoon up some pea mix and roll burgers and fry. Fry the burgers in quite a high temperature for a minute per side. If you fry too long the burger will be soft and falls very easily apart. Set the burgers aside on a serving plate and keep them warm.

Throw in the soaked dried tomatoes in the owen on top of the roots the remaining 6 minutes.

I didn't rinse the mixer from rests of pea mix, because I thought it just added some extra filling and spared me some time. Mix all the engredients for the mayonaise except the oil. Pour slowly the oil during mixing in the blender.

Hopefully the roots are baked and ready to be served with the burgers and the mayo.
The burgers and the mayo can also be served like a hamburger between breads with some fresh salad. Hm, thats what I'll do next time and post a photo of it.
I hope you'll try this recipe. My fellow who can be a bit picky with vegetables and loves meat, he loved this dish (the best dinner I have eaten for ages, he said).

I use cold pressed rapeseed oil because of it's perfect balance of fatty acids and it adds a mild nutty taste to the dishes.

Below is a photo of the flower of grey peas. It has a lovely two toned purple that changes colour after one day.

Vegan and gluten free cookies

This is a nice treat made of almond pulp and yellow pea flour. 

350 ml almond pulp

150 ml pea flour

1 tsp baking powder

mix these ingredients toghether in a bowl

carefully melt

100 gr coconut oil

add a large tbsp of honey to the melted coconut oil. And pour the mixture in the bowl and blend thouroughly to a soft dough. Add some chopped dried apricots. 

Take a tbsp of dough and roll balls, put them on parchment paper and press them down. Bake the cookies in a owen preheated to 175 degrees C for 15 minutes. If the cookies feels moist. Lower the temperature and let them dry for another 15-20  minutes.

Breakfast smoothie

This is my breakfast for today. A banana chokolate smoothie.

2 dl homemade youghurt

1tsp cacao powder

3 dried apricots (eco)

1 peeled banana

 Mix everything in the blender and drink. As I didn't put the apricot in water first there were some chunks left after mixing, but that gives just the smoothie another dimension.

The youghurt is homemade from milk with added bacteria from fit line. This batch were made just by taking 50 ml from the first batch added to the next. If you buy youghurt with living bacteria in the store you can do the same with that.

Juicing

We didn't get a single apple last summer, it was so rainy and cold. This summer, on the other hand has been so sunny and warm and my appletrees are almost breaking of the weight of apples. A good thing is that the apples of my 3 trees doen't get ripen at the same time. I have three different sorts and they have different purposes.

I can highly recommend to juice the apples and store it in the freezer to get good summer vitamins during the whole winter.

It is important to rinse the apples first to get rid of bug and eventual dirt. Another note; I pick my apples from the trees, not the ground.

The apples doesn't need peeling, cut them in chunks and remove kernels and the little twig.

When juicing, you get a foam on top and sediment at the bottom of the can. Skim the juice and try to avoid the sediment when pouring up in bottles for the freezer. 

For serving, you can add a third of water. I have to add a little sugar as well to get the children to drink.

My juicing machine looks like this, the brand is OBH Nordica. Waste comes out to the left and the juice in the can to the right. It is a bit limited when using. For example you need to stop adding apples and rinse the clogged strainer/separator every other minute.

If you don't own a juicer or can afford one, at least here in Sweden, there are farms that have juice presses where you can leave your apples to get juice in return for a fair price.
I'ts a huge problem here (well for me) were people don't bother to take care of all the fruit but they buy their juice and jam in the store instead, weird or what?

Todays Green smoothie

Todays green smoothie comes entirely from the garden. The apples are ripen and the rest, sallad, kale and sugarsnaps has been harvested for a while.

The ingredients on the tray gives two small bottles of green smoothie

Here's a little snapshot of the next years crop. Broad beans, blue peas, sugar snaps and grey peas. It is very easy to harvest and save peas and beans to sow.

Grow your own "bamboo" sticks

Ok, it's not exactly bamboo sticks. It's rather the function of them I describe. The candy smelling, white blooming bush; schersmin. I have one in my garden and every spring, a few stems are dead (while new ones sprouting). These dead ones are perfekt as growing support, straight, sturdy and long lasting. 

This is how my borlotto lingua beans looks with the stems as support. During the winter they are stored outdoors leaning against a wall and holds the next growingseasons without breaking.

 Picture of the lunch, squash, salad, leaves from celeriak, radish, onion tops and pesto of dill.

Different containers for growing seeds

It's time for growing vegetables. As many vegetables are sensible for the frost nights of the north they need to start the season indoors or in a green house. If you have a large vegetable garden you need lots of pots for the seeds. But with a bit of fantasy these pots can be almost for free. 

With a pot maker you can make pots out of news paper. These are perfect for plants that you don't need new pots along the indoor growing. Here are some pots with sweet corn. The paper pots stands on a plastic tray for minced meat.

A tray for lego bits, actually Legos Christmas calendar with 24 boxes is another clever solution. I grow suedes in this tray . 

All my kaleplants have problems with earth bugs. They are completely invisible so it took time until I realised why all my seedlings died. To protect the kale plants, you need a moist air. Plastic containers for baby tomatoes are perfect little green houses. They will keep the air moist.

This is how it looks under the lid.

To be continued ;)

Blood orange

I highly recommend you to buy fruits and vegetables depending of the season. Right now it's the season for buying the Italian blood oranges. They are sold cheap in nets right now.

These oranges are actually ordinary oranges. What makes them red in the meat and peel is the temperature differences between cold frosty late winter nights and warm days. The red colour is antocyanin an antioxidant  good for your immune system. So beat the winter flu with a glass of fresh pressed blood orange.

Weird looking porridge

Chia seeds looks so weird, they reminds of small insects eggs with a grey brown crackled surface, and they taste nothing.

If we think a little positive about this; the benefit of something that tastes nothing is that you can combine with ingredients that taste lovely as they are.

If you put them in water, the chia seeds swells and form a clear gel around the seeds. That makes them look even spookier. The benefits of this seed is that it contains lots of omega 3 oils and is high in proteins and lots of other nutrients.

To get a tasty porridge I top it (hide the weird seeds) with sliced bananas, coconut flakes and pumkinseeds, yum.

Easy peasy porridge

2 Tbsp of chia seeds

100 ml water

mix it in your porridge bowl and keep it in the fridge over night. In the morning the porridge is ready to eat. Just add a little salt to it if you like and serve with different toppings

Irresistable spread

 Those mornings you feel for something heavier or those times when you need a snack, a seed cracker with almond butter is a tasty choice. When I heard about almond butter I googled lots of recipes and found out how easy it is to make. And as many people are allergic to nuts and peanuts (like one in our family) this is a good replacement for peanutbutter.

Almond butter
Roast the almonds 300ml in a hot frying pan. I think its better to roast them quickly than on low temperature and slow. If you wan't to go completely raw, skip this step.
Pour the almonds in your food processor and start the engine.........
......Use a good portion of patience here........
At first it looks like grated almonds but as you continue the almonds will turn to a more heavy dough. Continue to mix until you get a creamy spread, add a little salt and there you have a spread full of energy.

The allergic son has looked at his bigbrothers nutella spread with envy. With this spread you can make something similar, almost exactly in taste. Add honey, cacao, and vanilla powder. Be careful about the cacao the taste of the spread is already quite strong. If it gets to thick, add some sunflower oil to the spread. 

Both the almond spread and the fake nutella is full of calories so it's not a daily treat ;)

Buck wheat crunch

I know, it's strange I tend to post a lot of breakfast recipes. I'm such a novis in this raw food thing and haven't found out any dinner recipes yet, well nothing to write about, or take pictures of. 

These crunchies are perfect for a little heavier breakfast, served with light almondmilk or just as little energy snacks. I have a jar with these to snack on at my office table. 

The perfect thing with this recipe is that you reuse your waste, from almond milk and your juicer.

Buck weat crunch

2 dl of apple pulp from the juicer (this is the pulp that you get when making applejuice, the pulp is without the seed house)

2 dl pulp from almond milk (see picture below)

10 organic dried apricots, soaked in water over night

1,5 dl buchwheat, soaked in water over night (eventually dried in the oven or dehydrator)

 1 hand full of grated coconut 

1 hand full of sunflower seeds

1 hand full of pumpkin seeds

1 Tbsp of raw coconut oil.

Mix the apricots with a little of the soaking water. Pour it into a mixing bowl and add all the other ingredients. Mix all ingredients carefully until fully blended. You can also use a dough blender in this step.

Pour the mix over a baking sheet (teflex) and dry it in the oven under 50 degrees Celsius. Use the fan in the oven and open the oven door even now and then to let the moist out. Stir around a little. It will take 8-10 hours depending how wet it is and the oven. Store the crunch in a paperbag.

If you don't have time to use the pulp immediately you can store it in the freezer.

Friday evening dinner

Our supermarket has started a campain to make their customers to eat more vegetables. I think this is a excellent thing. They promote fruits and vegetables of the season and often sell for lower prices. When I walk past the sweet potatoes I couldn't resist them. In a second, the dinner plan was set.

Roasted sweet potatoes and hot salsa

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C. Peel the sweet potato and cut into wedges. Pour them in a oven pan and add a tsp of coconut oil and Tbs of sunflower oil. sprinkle sea salt and ground some pepper over them before you roast them in the oven. 30 minutes is enough because they get squishy very easily.

The salsa is made of 3 finely chopped tomatoes, 1 finely chopped onion, 3 mashed and finely chopped garlic cloves, a half finely chopped red bell pepper. The green herb is fresh chopped chervil (a good replacement for those who doesn't like coriander). Blend all ingredients in a bowl and season with himalayan salt, chili flakes and ground black pepper.

For the meat eaters I served grilled chicken filets with lots of barbecue seasoning on top.

Serve with a green salad.

Note: Sweet potato is literally a sweet potato, it contains 10 times more sugar than potato so if you would like to cut down on carbs, this is not a choice for you. 

Green smoothie post

So how about three apples, one banana, a lemon, a huge plate of greens for breakfast. Does it seems too much to eat? That is an example of what I eat for breakfast in the form of a smoothie. I know the internet is flowing over with those green smoothies and about the benefits of them.

So for those who thinks, oh another green smoothie post, you can stop reading now and wait for next post ;)

Our old family relic, the starmix from the 50's is still running strong. The pitcher holds about 1 liter and I pack it loosely with baby spinach leaves and maché sallat.

Three apples are chopped in pieces with the stem and seed house removed. I press these in my juicer and receive a large glass of fresh apple juice. One lemon is pressed + a bunch of  chervil is also added.

 After mixing all the ingredients in the mixer I get half a litre of green thick and chunky smoothie. I fill my 250ml glass containers all the way up to keep the smoothie fresh. If there is space left, just add water. In this way I can make it the day before and drink it at work the morning after.

The only limit for a green smoothie is your own imagination. Add wich fruits and leafs you like and make your own favourite.

NOTE: At first when I drank the green smoothie I got a terrible headache. The trick is to drink and chew for a long time and not starting the day with the smoothie until you have been up and running for a while. Don't forget to drink plenty of water as well.

Broccoli sprouts

This is my favourite topping; Sprouts!

Perfect on top of anything. Broccoli sprouts adds a little nutty and fresh taste to your dish.

On top of your salad, sandwich or in you smoothie.

I used a plastic tray for flower pots and covered the bottom with 1 cm of pot soil. The soil is soaked and then  broccoli seeds are sprinkled in an even layer on top. A thin layer of soil to cover the seeds. Make sure the soil is always a little moist. Put the tray in a window to get nice green sprouts. After ca 4-5 days it's time for harvest.

I bought special bags for sprouting at Runåbergs fröer (swedish seed company). They sell a small variety of sprouting seeds.

Sauerkraut

Oh, Im so happy and pleased!

After my second trial I have succeded to make my own sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is a great way to eat probiotics and you don't have to deal with bloating problems like some can get when eating raw or cooked cabbage.

Don't be afraid that the taste will be grouse, it's not. It tastes like the salad that is served at Swedish pizza places. Just grind som pepper over it and there you have it. 

After Christmas the supermarkets sold the red cabbage for only 20 cents per kilo. A big cbbage head for only 50 cents was bought.

Shred the cabbage (exept the outer leaves to use later) and mix it in a bowl with a half handfull of Himalayan salt. Mash the blend with a coffe mug to get the juice out of the cabbage.

Tuck the cabbage in a big glass jar with airtight cap. Make sure you press out as much air from the cabbage as possible.  Fold the outer leaves and put on top of the shredded cabbage to get a seal. Pour water over the leaves (boil the water then let it cool first) to get a air tight cover over the leaves. If the leaves have a tendency to rise you can do as I did, put a coffemug on top before sealing (see picture below).

Let the cabbage stay at the kitchen bench for two days approximately. You should see some bubbles along the waterline. Then store the jar in a colder place ca 12-15 degrees celsius (the cellar, cupboard or something like that) for 5-7 days. Hopefully you will have a delicious cabbage sallad after this time.

First time i tried to make it I used my home grown green cabbage. I didn't use any extra water at all and I stored the jars in the cellar. It smelled like poo during the 5 day storage. When I was supposed to open a jar and taste, an awful smell struck my face and I could see mold on the surface. So be careful when you make it. Be sure you use clean jars, boiled water and make sure you have the leaves under the water.

I serve the salad every day with green salad to get a healthy stomach.

Raw crisp bread

I have made my first try to make a raw crisp bread. As inspiration I googled about how to make them and then made my own recipe. They taste so nice with mashed avocado on top. You can also brake them to smaller pieces and get crackers.

Raw crisp bread "Knäckebröd"

1 dl Sundried tomatoes

1 dl Sunflower seeds

1 dl Pumpkin seeds

1 dl Sesame seeds

1 dl Oat groats (not the flakes)

1 dl Psyllium seeds

2 dl Flax seeds

1 Tbs Nutritional yeast

1 Tbs vegetable broth

Soak the sundried tomatoes in a cup of water. Mix all the other dry ingredients in a bowl and soak in water. The amount of fresh water is not more than to cover the seeds. Let it soak for 3-4 hours. Chop the tomatoes and blend in the seed mixture.

After soaking, pour the mix on a baking sheet and flatten it out with a spoon. It will be flat enough to be homogenic without any holes. Put your owen on lowest temperature maximum 50 degrees C. Dry the bread in the owen by opening a gap even now and then. When the upside feels dry it's proper to turn the bread upside down. Be careful so you don't brake or drop it. 

When the bread is completely dried, store it in an airtight holder.

Warm cocoa

Sometimes I have strong cravings for chocolate. This hot cocoa is a tasty replacement for the one with milk and lots of sugar.

Pour one cup of almond milk in a saucer and add 2 tsp of raw cocoa, ½ tsp of honey, a pinch of salt and eventually a tiny amount of raw coconut oil and whisk while warming carefully. The temperature should only be as high as it is pleasant to drink, not hot. The pinch of salt gives the cocoa a richer taste and the coconut oil gives it some body. 

Perfect after a cold day outdoors.

Gluten free bread

As I need to cut down on gluten I searched the internet for a nice bread to bake. I used this recipe as an inspiration but changed it a bit. I removed the sweet stuff and dairy products.

300 ml oat groats

300 ml gluten free flour ( I used Lailas gluten free flour)
150 ml of mashed almonds remnants from the almond milk 

100 ml pumpkin seeds

1,5 tsp baking powder

0,5 tsp himalayan salt

a pinch of cinnamon

350 ml almond milk (see last post)

Preheat the owen to 175 degrees C. Blend all the dry ingredients and pour the almond milk in the dry blend. Take a rectangular bread form and line it with raw coconut oil and sprinkle some gluten free flour over. Pour the dough in the bread form and bake the bread for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Store the bread in the fridge in a box or bag.

I think this bread would taste a bit better if you add some sweets like a Tbs of honey or molass. It works fine to slice, toast and serve with sliced avocado and a pinch of fleur de sel.

The green dots comes from the pumpkin seeds. I think pumpkin seeds could be a good alternative for pistachio, for those who are allergic.

Snack time

In the beginning of the week, the weather was very warm and sunny. The snow was melting from the roofs and ground. It was so warm that it was possible to sit on the porchstair to enjoy the last sunbeams for the day.

As a snack I drank my favourite tea, white tea with spirulina and almond milk. A small bowl of roasted organic coconut flakes and pumpkin seeds to eat.

Almond milk is very easy to do by yourself. Take two hand fulls of almonds and put in a bowl of water. Let it stand for at least 5 hours to sprout. You can see that the almonds have swelling after that time. Mix the almonds with some water until it's a smooth mixture and add some more up to 700ml. Strain the almonds in a cheese cloth and fill clean bottles. The almond milk lasts a few days and it is visible when it's to old because you can clearly see how it is separated. Then it's time to pour it away. 

The mushed almonds can be stored in the freezer and be used for homemade crunch, breads, piecrusts etc.

The almond milk has a very mild and nice taste. I frankly prefer almond milk in my tea before milk from now on. 

Introduction

This blog is intended to follow me along the way to a healthier and more consious self. I didn't consider myself very healthy or sporty until my life was turned upside down and because of that I got depressed and gained 40 pounds. Looking back to the person I was only few years ago, I realize that I was healthy, I'm going to take back that person again.

I will post delicious healthy recipes that fills your body with nutrients, lots of vegetables and rawfood. 

There will also be lots of tips how to grow your own organic vegetables in a cold climate.

Hopefully this will be a place were we can share the joy of the healthy food mother nature provides us with and a place for exchanging ideas and inspiration.

Lots of love and energy 
Therese