Lemon Lavender Spoon Cream - guest post by Ashlee of The Little Foxes - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 16

I thought my Frozen Basil Seed Pudding recipe would be the last one on my blog for this year's Vegan MoFo. Then, the lovely Ashlee Piper sent me this delicious Lemon-Lavender Spoon Cream recipe as her guest post and suddenly I have a post #16 for all of you. :)

I normally write out a little introduction about guest bloggers so you can get to know them better. But Ashlee here sent me a neat bio about herself and made my work easier. She even sent me these photographs of herself to share. Just look at that beautiful, warm vegan glow! :)

I'm sharing her recipe first and at the bottom of this blog post, you'll find her very impressive bio. Make sure you visit the various links she's shared. Especially her blog, The Little Foxes.

Thank you for being here today, Ashlee. I am very happy to have you as a guest blogger at Veganosaurus. :)

Now, on to Ashlee's post...

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Many thanks to Susmitha for having me on Veganosaurus today!

This recipe is a romantic take on a popular Sweet Vegan Ricotta recipe I debuted a while ago. It’s like the sexier, exotic cousin. Lavender and extra lemon make this mixture a little more viscous and luscious – the perfect complement to ripe, juicy fruit and buttery vegan croissants. I call it “Spoon Cream,” because that’s exactly what you’ll want to do – enjoy this lush dessert or snack by the delicate spoonful.

Lemon-Lavender Spoon Cream
Vegan – Refined Sugar-Free – Soy-Free – Palm Oil-Free – Gluten-Free

Yields: About 2 cups
Prep Time: 30 minutes, including soaking
Cook Time: None! Praise be!

Ingredients:

2/3 cups raw cashews
1/2 cup raw almonds
5 dates, skins on
1 cup of water
2.5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp dried lavender buds
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp fresh vanilla bean

Assembly:

1. In a medium sized dish, place the cashews, almonds, and dates, and cover with 1 cup of water. Allow to soak for 30 minutes.
2. Once soaked, add the entire mixture (soaking water included), lemon juice, lavender buds, vanilla bean, and vanilla extract in to a high-speed blender. Blend until creamy and thick. The consistency doesn’t have to be completely smooth, but feel free to add more water or almond milk to make the mixture more viscous.
3. If you really want to take this recipe to the next level, pour a generous dollop in to a vegan pastry cup and top with balsamic strawberries. I make this regularly for catering gigs and people always go nuts (pun intended) for the creamy, sweet, sour, and juicy mixture of it all.

Bio:

Ashlee Piper (MSW, MSc, HHC, AADP) is a former governmental strategist turned plant-based health and lifestyle expert (you can read about her professional transition here). She is the owner of All Is Wellness, a boutique holistic health consultancy that assists busy individuals, families, and workplaces in giving their food, routines, and lives a gorgeously green makeover. An award-winning vegan cook, Piper also runs a popular food and style blog, The Little Foxes, and her recipes and writing have been featured in Reader’s Digest, Earth Balance’s Made Just Right, Ecorazzi, TOMS Shoes, Girlie Girl Army, Vegetarian Times, and Our Hen House. Her blog was recently named among the “Top 9 Food Blogs to Watch” by Refinery29 and Ashlee was recently featured on a Fox News segment where she discussed cruelty-free fashion.

She also writes guides on plant-based topics for Vegucated, manages the Vegucated Schoolhouse Community, a free resource where she shepherds over 1,700 in their transition to a plant-based diet, and is the “Vegan for Life” columnist for Cheeky Chicago. Think a cruelty-free, vegan lifestyle is hard? Ashlee delights in showing people that living la vida compassionate is every bit as tasty, stylish, economical, simple, and fun as the status quo (hint: it’s way more fun)!

When she’s not coaching clients or whipping up mouthwatering vegan feasts, Piper enjoys taking her two rescue dogs to the beach, getting bendy at yoga, singing karaoke, and wearing red lipstick and listening to Morrissey with sassy abandon.

Be sure to follow The Little Foxes on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest to get the latest deliciousness.

Frozen Basil Seed Pudding - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 15

I'm not a flake. I swear! There's a reason I haven't been blogging this whole week. A very valid one. I got bitten/stung by something. I don't know what. A spider, I think. And I have been feeling neither friendly nor neighbourhood-y.

All kinds of crazy, painful stuff happened to my leg, which thankfully is recovering well now. I will not bore you with the morbid details. Pus has no place in food posts. Unless of course, the recipe involves animal milk, in which case there's *plenty* of pus in there. :P

Don't mind me, that's just a little insider vegan joke. You know why it's funny? Because it's TRUE! And yes, it's true in India too.

On hindsight, there's *nothing* funny about those facts. But it is knowledge that is definitely worth sharing. Everybody has the right to know what they're putting into their bodies.

Aaaanyway...moving on to more cheerful things, here's a nice dessert recipe I created a few days ago. It's a healthy, nummy pudding I made out of sweet basil seeds.

I started out with the idea of making a layered parfait but halfway through the process, I decided to blend the gelatinous seeds into the creamy part and ended up freezing the whole thing.

Though it's frozen, it isn't exactly an ice cream, that's why I'm calling it what it is, a frozen pudding. :)

Sweet basil seeds are a locally available superfood cousin of Chia. They are a powerhouse of nutrients and have been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years.

While we were growing up, we always had these seeds in stock at home. My mom and grandma used to soak them in water for us as a home remedy for ushna (high body heat) during the summer months. Sis and I loved to mix sugar into the gelatinous soaked seeds and ate it by the spoonfuls. It was a soothing, dessert-like snack for us everyday.

We used to call this mixture isamboosa (which is totally incorrect). It wasn't until recently that I even knew these were a variety of basil seeds and that they have all these other beneficial properties.

If you live in India and have no idea what seeds I'm talking about, you're probably more familiar with one of the local names - sabja, falooda seeds, kama kasturi, tukmaria.

You can use chia seeds in case you can't get your hands on basil seeds. They are really similar to each other.

Frozen Basil Seed Pudding
Serves 2

4 tsp Sweet Basil/Chia Seeds soaked in 1 C Water
4 Dried Figs soaked in 1 C Water
1/2 C Cashews
1 Banana
Agave Nectar to taste (optional)
Cinnamon powder for sprinkling

*Grind cashews into a powder
*Add the figs, along with their soaking water and blend into a cream
*Add the basil seeds (they would've soaked up all the water) and blend for a few seconds
*Serve into two individual bowls and swirl in the agave nectar (if using)
*Slice the banana and divide the slices between both bowls
*Sprinkle cinnamon powder on top
*Freeze for 2-3 hours
*Enjoy! :)

Noochos Gracias Raw Soup - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 14

All raw soups are very enjoyable when the weather is hot, but during the cooler seasons it's a great idea to blend some warming elements into the concoction.

Keeping in mind the cloudy/rainy days we've been experiencing, I added tulsi, radish, cinnamon and a few other naturally 'spicy' ingredients while creating this soup. They have a certain kind of heat to them, so the soup generates a warm, toasty feeling as it down the throat.



Noochos Gracias is a soup that is bursting with so much character that you'll be saying many thanks with each spoonful you slurp. Though there are all kinds of delicious flavours in there, the lead role is played by nutritional yeast, more lovingly referred to as nooch. See what I did there with the soup's name? :p

As I mentioned in my Zucchini Fettuccine post, you can currently order nutritional yeast in India from i2cook. You can also try making this soup without the nooch. I'm sure it'll be yummy in a different way. You'll just have to call it No-Noochos Gracias and be a little less thankful for it. hehe



Noochos Gracias Raw Soup
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Serves: 2

For the soup:
5 Naati Tomatoes (or any other tart, juicy variety) - cubed
1 medium sized Radish - roughly chopped
¼ Cucumber - roughly chopped
1 inch piece Onion
½ inch fresh Ginger
1 clove of Garlic
Handful of Tulsi/Indian Basil Leaves
8-10 Cashews
3 T Nutritional Yeast
1 tsp Tabasco Pepper Sauce
Splash of Lime Juice
Salt to taste
½-¾ C clean, filtered Water

For the topping:
1 Tomato
¼ Cucumber
Handful fresh Coriander/Cilantro

* Place all the soup ingredients, except tomatoes and water, in a blender jar and grind well.
* Add the tomatoes and water and blend into a creamy soup.
* Pour into large serving bowls.
* Finely chop the topping ingredients and stir into the soup.
* Slurp and enjoy! :)



I wanted to have the Raw Almond Pulp Crackers with this soup but totally forgot! I'm sure it'll be a a great combination.

This recipe has been entered in the Virtual Vegan Linky Potluck 4. Visit the link to check out more awesome recipes that have been submitted by various bloggers.

Fermented Cashew Garlic Cheese - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 13

There just has to be a special recipe for lucky day 13 of Vegan MoFo! :) So I'm sharing a recipe that everyone I have given it to loves, regardless of their food choices - Fermented Cashew Garlic Cheese.

I posted about Hazelnut Cheese on my blog a couple of years ago, when I newly got into nut cheese making. That one involved rejuvelac. The one I'm sharing with you today is simpler to make and has just two ingredients in it - cashew and garlic! Ok, four if you count the pinch of salt and water. :p

The only important tools required are a clean glass jar with a lid and a blender. The complete process takes about two days, but only 5-10 minutes of that time is spent in doing any work. The rest of the time goes in the soaking and fermenting.

I tried this kind of minimal ingredient, fermented nut cheese for the first time at one of Dr. Nandita's healthy cooking demos a couple of years ago. That was a plain, lightly salted cashew cheese. More recently, I tasted the garlicky version made by Mille of Millie's Vegan Cheese, who also makes and sells a variety of other amazing vegan cheeses, pâtés, cheese cakes and other awesome goodies.

I was blown away by the garlic cheese, but more than me, it was my baby sis who fell head over heels in love with it. Ever since then I've been making this for her on a regular basis. My sis is vegetarian but she does try to avoid dairy. This cashew garlic cheese has acted as a perfect butter substitute for her. Her favourite way to eat it is to mix it with kothmiri thokku (an amazing cilantro pickle that my mom makes) have it on the side with chapathi, akki rotti, rava rotti, etc.

This cheese has a creamy, spreadable consistency and can be generously slathered on pizzas and sandwiches. It can be mixed into pastas and salads and any other dish you can think of putting it into. And most importantly, it can be eaten by the spoonfuls all by itself. :D

Since this is a really simple recipe, I've just created a HowDo for it. I didn't feel the need to type the steps out. So watch the HowDo and make your own cashew garlic cheese.

Ruby Smoothie Du Jour - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 12

The moment I made this smoothie for breakfast this morning, I just knew I had to share it here as today's post.

This is the second smoothie recipe I'm sharing here in the raw food theme I have going on for Vegan MoFo this time. The first was a regular old Healthy Green Smoothie. Today, I didn't have any greens at home, so I decided to put some veggies in there with the fruits. And I am soooo happy I did that.

The beetroot gives it such a gorgeous colour! Red is the colour of vitality, and as I sipped on this smoothie, I could feel the positive, healing energy of the red coursing through my system. :)

My friend Angela at Canned-Time is doing a red theme throughout this MoFo. I'm sure she'll be very happy when she sees these smoothie photos. :D

As with all smoothies, this is a highly flexible recipe. You can switch the ingredients around and add in whatever you have on hand.

If you have a high speed blender, you can roughly shop the veggies and pop them in. If not, then grate the veggies before grinding them to get the best results.

Ruby Smoothie
Serves 2-3 people

3 medium, ripe Bananas
1 ripe Guava
1 small Beetroot
1 small Radish
1/2 C Almonds
1 T Flax Seeds
1 tsp Sesame Seeds
1/4 tsp Turmeric
1-2 T Lime juice
pinch of Pachha Karpura (Edible Camphor)
pinch of Salt
1 C clean, filtered Water
Agave Nectar - optional ingredient for sweetening

* Wash and scrub the beets and radish well (don't peel them)
* Roughly chop them and add to a large blender jar
* Add cubed guava and peeled and cubed bananas
* Add all the remaining ingredients
* Grind well
* Mix, add a some water and blend
* Add the remaining water and blend well to get a creamy smoothie
* Pour into large mugs and add some ice cubes if you like
* Sip and enjoy! :)

A word about high speed blenders. I'm a firm believer in the strength and superiority of our old Indian mixer-grinder brands. It makes sense that at least a few awesome mixies come from a country where chutney, idli batter and masalas are ground on a regular basis.

We own an Elgi Ultra Choice+ that we got a couple of months ago and it has made a very significant impact on the amount I grind/blend now. It runs on a powerful 1000W motor and has some neat features that I'm very happy with. If you live in India and are looking to upgrade the mixie at your home, I highly recommend this one.

I have also heard good things about the Preethi brand. Though most of their mixer-grinders have only 750W motors, they have a commercial mixie called Xpro, that runs on 1300W. Preethi is more easily available throughout India and also in many other parts of the world (with country specific power features).

There are many other good Indian mixie brands but I had to mention the two above because they're the most powerful ones. Give them a try before you import a Vitamix, Blendtec or other expensive, fancy blenders. ;)