Category Archives: Vegetarian Recipes

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You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Kugel!

This year Labor Day and the first evening of the Jewish High Holiday season happen to coincide on September 6, which calls for celebratory food—like this utterly scrumptious Updated Noodle Kugel. Whether you’re going to a Labor Day potluck or preparing food for Monday’s Erev Rosh Hashanah family dinner, the beginning of the Jewish new year 5782, this dish will be a sure crowd pleaser.

I developed this recipe especially for my friends and readers who follow a gluten-free, lactose-free diet. And let’s be honest: as I approached my birthday, I was craving favorite childhood dishes that I hadn’t tasted since I went gluten-free!

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What to Do with All Those Cucumbers!

If you’re looking for several ways to use the abundance of cucumbers that recently burst forth in your garden or arrived fresh from a farm in your produce box, I’ve got some quick and easy recipes for you.

Let’s start with this Carrot and Cucumber Salad. You could eat the carrots and cucumbers raw, as you might expect, but instead I cooked them, Asian style, for just a few minutes. Add salt, fresh mint, cilantro, and lime—and voila—culinary delight! Not only are the cucumbers delicious when cooked, but they are also easier to digest.

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Notice to Readers: Taking a Hiatus

Photo by Roger Winstead

 

Dear readers:

Have you ever felt so off kilter that you had to put your foot on the brake to stop the world from spinning so fast? I’m in the middle of just this kind of experience, making a conscious effort to SLOW down and unwind from my habitual hectic pace.

As I begin my period of unwinding, I want to check in with loyal fans and new readers to explain why I won’t be generating new content for Sacred & Delicious for the next… let’s say several months. I feel that I need to take a hiatus.

My mother died recently, and the years leading up to her death were challenging for me, as well as for her. Mom had profound dementia along with numerous other health conditions that demanded medical attention and required my support for more than a decade.

Of course, my situation is commonplace. Millions of others around the globe help loved ones as they age.

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Spring Cleaning with Vegan Collards

When spring marches in, we naturally want to throw open the windows of our home and clean out all the dust and cobwebs. In the same way, Ayurveda recommends that we give our bodies an annual spring cleaning! Once the autumn chill descends, and all the way through the cold winter, we tend to eat heavier foods. This way we can put on a little fat to stay warm. Spring invites us to help the body transition to the new season by eating lighter foods.

I always recommend a mung soup fast along with light vegetables for a few days or a week at the beginning of spring. This helps to detoxify the colon, liver, kidneys. Cooked greens of any kind are a great side dish to support a spring detox, and today I’d like to generate some enthusiasm for collard greens. Collards belong to the dignified family of Southern “soul food,” brought to

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Cauliflower Steaks Three Ways

I tasted this scrumptious cauliflower dish at The Well Fed Community Garden in Raleigh in late May when Arthur Gordon, of Irregardless Cafe fame, created the dish on the spot! He gathered up whatever looked fresh and interesting at the farmer’s market along with herbs growing in the community garden and—voila!—came up with this amazing dish! I’ve adapted it only slightly to serve eight instead of eighteen and made it a tad milder so it doesn’t bring on more heat in this sweltering summer.The complete dish is a cauliflower “steak” that is rubbed down with a mixture of fresh herbs, roasted or sautéed, and topped with a red pepper cashew sauce. The first time I made this myself, I ran out of time and served only the first part of the dish, pictured here—cauliflower with herb rub. That alone was delicious! So, if you want a simpler dish to make for a July 4th bash, you won’t be disappointed.

A third option, also simplified from the original, is to skip the marinade. You chop the florets, grill them (or sauté them in a little salted oil), and top them with the cashew sauce.

If you want to go the extra mile to impress your guests, I recommend making the full dish: rubbed cauliflower steaks with red pepper cashew sauce. The sauce is simple, and you can use it over any of your favorite vegetables. I’ve found it wonderful over grilled summer squash, plantains, and sweet potatoes—foods I like to see on a summer menu!

Finally, if you want to replicate Arthur’s dish more precisely, you can add some hot sauce to the red pepper/cashew mixture. It’s a flavor I always avoid, but I know many people love it!

Wishing you all the freedoms hoped for when our forefathers proclaimed their independence on July 4, 1776!

Lisa with Arthur Gordon, founder of the Well-Fed Community Garden and Irregardless Cafe.

 

 

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A Gluten-Free Vegetarian Guide to Thanksgiving

If you want to plan an intensely flavorful vegetarian menu for Thanksgiving, look no further! Today I’m sharing a recipe for Gluten-Free Millet Dressing. I’ll also point you to my sumptuous versions of traditional American holiday side dishes, which will fill your family with joy and gratitude!

Why millet?  Millet is a good source of vegetarian protein. One cup of cooked millet offers 6 grams of vegetarian, gluten-free protein, which equals the protein in one egg. It’s also filling, grounding and easy to make.

Now for the rest of the menu. My famous Holiday Sweet Potatoes, topped with a pound and a half of pecans, are the eagerly awaited crown jewel of our holiday table. For a dash of freshness and color I offer this cranberry salad, a squeaky clean, upscale version of the canned stuff that used to be served when we were growing up!

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Seven-Minute Sides: Mild Curry Leaf Chutney

Photo by Roger Winstead

 

This curry leaf and cilantro chutney recipe comes from Vaidya Smita Naram.  She whipped up this lovely sauce in our Vitamix in about 5 minutes while recently staying in our home.  My husband, Tom, and I happily poured it over mung bean “burgers” I had made for dinner.  A few days later I prepared another cup of the chutney, which we used to top off savory chickpea pancakes that Dr. Smita showed me how to make a half-hour before we drove her to the airport for her flight home to Mumbai, India.

Chutneys are relishes or sauces that are staples in Indian cuisine. They are also used in Ayurvedic cooking when freshly made. There are innumerable kinds of chutneys — some chunky, others that are more like a paste, and liquid sauces.  Chutneys have a reputation for being amazingly hot to the tongue because most Indian cooks spike their chutneys with chilies. Not so with this recipe!  Authentic Ayurvedic cuisine avoids the use of chilies except for people who are predominantly kapha types. Nonetheless, this chutney is guaranteed to add a bolt of flavor to any dish along with potent healing power.

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Black-Eyed Pea Salad

Here’s an easy-to-make, completely satisfying vegan Black-Eyed Pea Salad. Quick, delicious and healthy to boot.

Black-eyed peas are especially appreciated by vegan and vegetarian cooks because the peas will be tender after boiling in about 30 minutes, unlike harder beans such as black beans and chick peas that take an hour or more to cook in a regular pot. With black-eyed peas you’ll have a protein-rich main dish that you can build a summer meal around with very little labor—a gift to the cook on a hot summer night.

If you’re too hungry to wait for the black-eyed peas to cool, no problem! This quintessential Southern food is equally appealing when eaten warm after it’s just been cooked. Once the salad is chilled, it’s an ideal dish to serve at your 4th of July picnic.

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Dressing Up Humble Red Cabbage

I usually have a plan for dinner. After all, I’m a Virgo with four planets in Virgo. We tend to details. But I didn’t have a plan last night, and when I got home at 6 p.m., ready to hunker down for a Carolina ice storm, what I really wanted to do was work out before cooking. So I quickly wrapped up some sweet potatoes and put them in the oven to bake, postponing my thoughts about the rest of the menu. Thirty minutes later I was finally ready to cook, but my menu was still an empty page.

As resourceful (or sometimes desperate) cooks often do, I opened the refrigerator door looking for inspiration.  The red cabbage that had been ignored for a few days was calling my name. My first thought was to make a quick stir-fry, using cabbage as the focus since I

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