My crust is my flax cracker recipe (flax seed, sun dried tomato, red pepper, yellow onion, garlic, lemon juice, Italian seasoning, fresh rosemary, red pepper flakes, splash of water, fresh ground black pepper, dash of sea salt) spread out into a circle on a ParaFlexx sheet. I dehydrate it at 115 degrees for 24 hours (flipping it over after the first 5).

The sauce was made from sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, garlic, the juice from 1/2 a lemon, broccoli, sweet onion, green pepper, fresh rosemary, red pepper flakes and a dash of sea salt all processed in a food processor (process the fresh tomatoes last so they remain in tact). I don’t keep exact measurements for this. When you’re eating raw, the foods you’re making are still meant to resemble their cooked brethren. The reason I use sun dried tomatoes and broccoli in my sauce recipe is to add texture and thickness to it; the other ingredients are for flavor. Use as many or as few of these ingredients as you’d like, just keep it thick so the flax crust doesn’t absorb a bunch of liquid and turn to mush.

My cheese was my macadamia nut ricotta recipe. I added fresh rosemary and the jucie of 1/2 a lemon to it to keep everything taste aligned.

I used a soft spatula to spread the sauce and the cheese onto the flax crust and then I put it back into the dehydrator for another 15-20 minutes at 115 degrees. You can keep it in longer or not at all if you’re starving.

For our side, Loren went out into the garden and grabbed a bowl of leafy greens.

Things you (should) already know about me:

• I LOVE Mexican food
• I LOVE Italian food
• I love to combine things that I love to make one big love fest (in my mouth) (thats what she said).

There are many names for what I’m calling Mex-agna; Mexican casserole, Mexican lasagna, Latin Lasagna, etc. Call it what you want, but I’ll call it delicious.

To get this dish started, preheat your oven to 375 degrees, grab a skillet, some heart healthy oil to sauté with, can-o-black beans, 1 corn on the cob, your favorite salsa, vegan cheese (with melting ability) and some fresh vegetables. I sauteed sweet onion, shredded carrot, green pepper and mushrooms with some cumin, sea salt, fresh ground pepper and cayenne. Do a light sauté to take the tiny bite out of the onion, soften the carrots a tad and to take some of the reserved water out of the mushrooms (the salt with help with this task). Set the sauté aside and sprinkle it with some fresh lime juice. All you need to do to prepare your black beans is open the can and then drain and rinse them. To prepare the corn; cut it free from it’s cob. Spray the sides of your cooking dish lightly (<–seriously) with olive oil, sprinkle a light layer of salsa at the bottom to coat and start building your Mex-agna! I used organic whole wheat big tortillas and ripped them into quarters. My casserole pan was a deep square so I layed out each piece of tortilla so the bottom of the pan was covered. I traded off each layer of the Mex-agna between sautéed veggies with salsa to black beans, corn and cheese. Once you have completed building the Mex-agna, make sure the top layer of tortillas are covered with salsa and then sprinkled with cheese. Cover your baking dish with foil and cook for 35-45 minutes depending on the quality of melty cheese you have. You’re basically warming the dish but also ensuring the tortillas soak up the juices of the veggies and salsa and melting the cheese. I plated mine on top of a bed of spinach with sliced avocado on the side.

There was a article published yesterday regarding a harmful chemical called ‘hexane’ which is being used to process soy protein in a lot of popular veggie friendly foods (i.e. Morningstar Farms, Amy’s, etc). Read about this chemical here as well as find out if your favorite veggie food is effected.  One of Gardein’s active ingredients is soy protein….whether or not they use hexane to process it is unknown. They are not listed on the good or bad side.  What I got from reading the article is that most fake meats labeled organic are hexane free but the others are not.

Behold! Hummus Pizza!!!

I buy my whole wheat pizza crust at the Dekalb Farmers Market.  It’s $2.50, organic and vegan so you really can’t beat that with a stick. I cook the crust in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes depending on how much it poofs up. I want the crust to resemble soft pita so I avoid over cooking by constantly checking up on it.  Once its done I let it cool for <5 minutes and apply my sun dried tomato hummus and a variety of raw vegetables (usually cucumber, spinach, carrot, red onion, sun dried tomato, tomato, olives, banana peppers).  Cut and serve with some crushed red pepper flakes and oregano.

Recipe coming soon…..

i know…i siked you out. i’ll put the recipe up soon and notify you via Twitter once i do. if you’re not following us on Twitter already, do so here!

The vegetables we used are as follows:

• 1/2 a napa cabbage cut into chunks
• 3 large carrots cut into discs
• 3 celery stalks chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 1 butternut squash cut into little squares
• two 15 oz cans of organic diced tomatoes
• 1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed)
• the corn cut off of 1 cob
• frozen peas (we just kind of poured them in)
• diced fresh green beans
• 1 large zucchini sliced and then cut into quarters

We emptied two boxes of organic low sodium vegetable broth and some water into a large pot (water amount depends on how much broth vs veggies you want–always use a least 1 pint’s worth to dilute the broth a little).  We added the carrots, onions, squash and cabbage and brought it to a boil.  We seasoned with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and cayenne pepper, covered the pot and let it cook for about 15-25 minutes until the squash was soft but still a little firm to the bite.  We then added the rest of the ingredients, seasoned again and turned the heat down to medium high and cooked for another 15 minutes (still having it covered).  Consider the squash to be your taste tester to make sure everything is cooked through.  We ladled our soup into the serving bowls and let them cool for about 5 minutes before setting them down at the table.  Cheese eaters should freshly grate some parmesan cheese on top of their soup after the 5 minute cool down.

Oh Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook, you make my tummy smile. I tried out Isa’s recipe for Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter – Oatmeal Cookies the other day but made them small and added carob chips. Can I just say that these cookies are the bomb dot com? They’re the perfect cookie for me to pass out to all my friends and co-workers this Holiday season. Even non vegans cannot argue the deliciousness of this cookie.

To make these fantastical cookies you are going to need:

• 2 c flour (I always use whole wheat flour when baking…tastes incredible)
• 2 c oats
• 2 t baking powder
• 1 t salt in a bowl

Toss these ingredients together making sure they’re mixed.

In a separate bowl mix together (using a hand mixer):

• 3/4 c canola oil
• 3/4 c chunky all-natural peanut butter
• 1 c sugar
• 1 c brown sugar
• 1/2 c soy milk (you can use plain or vanilla…recipe calls for vanilla, I used plain)
• 2 t vanilla extract

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and continue to mix. The dough will be sticky and delicious (just the way we like it when we eat cookie batter). Drop little cookie dough balls onto your greased cookie sheets and cook in a preheated 350 degree oven until delightfully brown on top and bottom. Every oven and cookie sheet is different and cooking time really depends on what you’re working with. I believe my cookies were in the oven for around 20 minutes but I can’t be too sure.

…are incredible.  I’m obsessed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the moment. Of course, you have to be careful when you’re buying these two things at the grocery store.  Beware of chemicals, additives, HFCS and other non necessary ingredients.  ALWAYS READ YOUR LABELS! Raw foodies–use almond butter and make your own jelly.  Simply smash your fruit together using a potato masher (you can add some agave nectar if you like it really sweet).

Spinach hummus is a given ‘duh’. It’s too delicious for words–I’ll let you use your imagination as I explain the ingredients.

Lately I’ve been adding sun dried tomatoes to my hummus (1 can drained and rinsed chick-peas, juice of 1 lemon, 1 [sometimes 2] T tahini, 1 [sometimes 2] garlic cloves, extra virgin olive oil, dash of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper) which has turned out fantastic.  I buy the sun dried tomatoes from the Dekalb Farmer’s Market that are not packed in oil and do not have added sulfates. They’re naturally dried in the sun and then packaged for my enjoyment.  The other night, however, I decided that the sun dried tomatoes just weren’t enough for my taste buds.  I opened the fridge and grabbed my 3.5 pound bag of spinach (also from the Farmer’s Market) and wilted it on the stove top along with some onion powder and garlic in some extra virgin olive oil (you can also use sunflower oil for the wilting process). Once wilted completely, I let the spinach cool and then added it into the food processor along with my other hummus ingredients (including the sun dried tomatoes).  After it was pureed, I dashed some oregano on top and served it along side carrots, cucumber, broccoli and cherry tomatoes.

As many of you know from my enthusiastic tweets, I got a dehydrator for my birthday.  As soon as the Paraflexx sheets arrived (a week later), I began uncooking! The first things I made were Matt Amsden’s “cheese sticks” from RAWvolution and some flax seed crackers based on Karen Knowler’s recipe.  I planned on dehydrating on Tuesday and knew we were leaving town Friday so I made two items I knew would travel well with us on our road trip.  I also brought along an avocado and the little package of soy sauce and dollop of wasabi you get in your grocery store veggie sushi containers. Using those ingredients, I made a quick car friendly version of guacamole to dip our flax crackers in.  This turned out to be the perfect ‘Atlanta-traffic-is-so-bad-you’ve-been-in-the-car-for-45-minutes-and-haven’t-even-made-it-to-the-interstate-yet” snack.

“Cheese sticks” are really, really good.  They are quite salty because of the soy sauce you use in the recipe but worth it.  I found that I had about 1 1/2 cups of leftover ground up sunflower seeds after I finished.  No biggie–I put them in an air tight container and will sprinkle them on top of some salads.  Oh…I also ground up all the sunflower seeds the recipe calls for instead of what the recipe actually says (maybe that’s why I had so much extra?).

Matt Amsden’s Cheese Sticks

• 4 3/4 c raw sunflower seeds
• 1/2 c fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 c Nama Shoyu
• 4 cloves of garlic peeled

Grind 2 3/4 c sunflower seeds in the food processor.

Spread out 2 cups of the ground sunflower seeds onto a plate.

In a high speed blender (or a food processor which is what I always use), combine the rest of the sunflower seeds and the other ingredients and blend until smooth.  Transfer this mixture into a pastry bag (or a large ziplock bag cutting the corner off of one side so you can push the mixture out in the same way).  Squeeze the mixture out in 3/4 inch long sticks onto the plate of ground up sunflower seeds.  Roll the sticks around in the ground up seeds so they are coated completely.  Spread them out on your Paraflexx sheets and dehydrate for 18-24 hours at 100 degrees.  Serve with a raw marinara sauce, raw salsa or just eat them plain.  Store them in an air tight container.

I wanted to make more than enough flax crackers so I doubled parts of Karen’s recipe and added some of my own tricks.

Flax Seed Crackers

• 4 c raw flax seeds
• 1 c raw sun dried tomatoes
• the juice of 1 lemon
• 1/2 c cherry tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic (or 2 depending on the size)
• 2 T Italian seasoning
• water

In the bowl of a food processor I put all of these ingredients making the flax seeds last so everything else would have a chance to grind up.  I waited on putting water in until after everything had a chance to mix and then just poured a little, mixed, poured a little more, mixed and so forth until it was the consistency that I wanted.  You want the seeds and everything to be stuck together in almost a paste so you can spread it out over the Paraflexx sheets.  Careful not to add too much water though–keep your eye on your amounts.

When you spread the mixture out onto a Paraflexx sheet you want to make sure its evenly spread along the sheet (making sure parts aren’t too thick or too thin).  I split the mixture in half and did half on one tray and half on another. After it’s spread, score it so you can easily break your crackers apart.  If you are unsure about this process, check out Karen’s video.

Dehydrate your crackers at 115-120 degrees overnight. Flip the crackers over after about 5 hours so both sides dry. I started my crackers at 4 pm, flipped them at 9 pm and then took them out around 8 am.  Break them apart and let them cool for about 5 minutes before putting them in an air tight container.

Because I dehydrated my “cheese sticks” and crackers together, I kept the dehydrator at 115 degrees for the first 5 hours and then flipped it down to 110 degrees for the rest of the time.

**UPDATE : I have been creating new recipes for flax seed crackers these days.  The 2nd shot I had at them I used: 2 garlic cloves, juice of 2 lemons, 4 c flax seed, 1 cup sun dried tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, a little water, 1 t Italian seasoning, 1 t onion powder, 1/8 c chopped onion. Those turned out stellar. I liked using less Italian seasoning than the first go round because I found it too overwhelming.

On my 3rd attempt at making them I used: 4 c flax seed, juice of 2 lemons, 1 cup sun dried tomatoes, 1 cup shredded carrot, 1 large garlic clove, a little water, 1 t onion powder and 1 t Italian seasoning. These are also excellent.

It’s fun being able to play around with recipes until you have them catering specifically to what you want them to be. I’m going to keep going with my flax crackers to see what other taste combinations I can come up with. These are delicious with peanut butter and jelly on, dipped in hummus and guac.