Sunday, April 18, 2010

Indian Lentil Crepes

These savory crepes are awesome, and full of fiber, and best of all, they are cheap! All you need are lentils, brown rice, salt and water. Gotta love that in this economy!

Indian Lentil Crepes

2 cups uncooked lentils
1/2 cup uncooked long grain brown rice
Salt to taste

In two bowls, soak lentils and rice separately in water for 5 hours at room temperature. At the end of the 5 hours, grind lentils, rice and salt in a food processor with some of the soaking liquid. Mix until pancake batter consistency is achieved, the mixture should be coarse.

Warm coconut, olive, or grapeseed oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Then, spread a spoonful of batter on the skillet. Let cook for 2 minutes, or until lightly browned. Flip and cook the other side.
For the filling, I sauteed chopped mushrooms, zucchini, green pepper and onion in olive oil until cooked through.
Spoon filling into the crepes and enjoy!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Gluten Free Fish and Chips

My goal in my cooking journey is to recreate food I loved before I learned I had food allergies. And my absolute favorite meal of all time was, you guessed it, fish and chips! I'm not kidding when I tell you I ordered that meal at every restaurant I ate ate before, and even sometime after, I found out about my allergies. So its only natural that I teach myself to make gluten free fish and chips.

Sarah's Gluten Free Fish and Potato Free Chips
Serves 3

1 lb. Cod Filet, cut into strips
1 cup garbanzo bean flour
3 tbsp. ground flaxseed
9 tbsp. warm water
sea salt to taste
olive oil (for frying)

Mix the flaxseed and the warm water and let sit for 10 minutes, until it is the consistency of an uncooked egg. Set aside. Mix the garbanzo bean flour and the salt. Heat oil over medium heat in a skillet. Once cod is cut into strips, cover each strip with the flax mixture, then coat it with the flour mixture:

Make sure the flour sticks to the cod, then put in the frying pan:

Saute the cod 3-5 minutes on each side, or until they turn golden brown (see above). Serve with my sweet potato fries and a garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette and you've got yourself a well balanced, gluten free meal!
Absolutely delicious! Stay tuned, my first video blog should be out sometime this week! And as always, Live Free!

Thursday, April 8, 2010

PatisseRaw

The other day at the 3rd and Fairfax Whole Foods I discovered PatisseRaw desserts. The adorable little things looked like cheesecake, but all the ingredients are raw, sugar free and gluten free! So I took down the address and the number and decided to get in touch with the owner.

I was fortunate enough to meet with Christina this morning, and let me tell you, it was the best part of my day! She was so inspirational! She basically followed her heart and it lead her to start PatisseRaw, and now shes distributing her goodies to markets all over Los Angeles! All because she had a passion for the raw food diet and educating people about eating better. She talked a lot about following her intuition and how that has single-handedly contributed to her success. It was so motivating for me because I'm trying to do something similar. Because my passion for this is so strong, I know it will work out. Now I just need to be in tune with my intuition so I won't miss any opportunity that comes my way.

Also, the desserts are truly delicious. I got to try the strawberry flavor, the chocolate eclipse (fudge), and the carrot cupcakes. WOW! I was shocked to find out how simple the ingredients were. They are seriously amazing, and I highly recommend them. Plus, the business is eco-friendly! They either recycle or compost all of their waste, and they deliver their treats by bicycle if you live in Venice! Plus, they are made with love by a genuinely awesome person.

Until next time, Live Free :)

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Gluten Free, Sugar Free Blueberry Pie experiment

Today is my last day interning at E! Entertainment in Los Angeles. My supervisors and the other interns have seriously been so amazing and inspiring during my time here and thanks to that, I leave a more mature, ambitious and driven person. And more than that, I have a goal. And so help me, I'm never letting go of my dreams. They WILL become a reality.

So naturally, I wanted to thank them in the proper foodie fashion, by baking them some goodies! I had a frozen gluten free pie crust in my freezer at home and a bag full of frozen blueberries I needed to get rid of, so I looked up a blueberry pie recipe.

Naturally, the recipe's main ingredients were corn starch and sugar. So I substituted arrowroot starch and agave nectar into the recipe and voila! Out came a gorgeous, and delicious, blueberry pie.

I took it to work hoping people would like it. Once you've cut certain things out of your diet, you get used to the substitutes so you never know what other people will think of the things you eat.

Luckily, everyone loved it! Like, beyond loved it! I'm so proud of myself and it gives me an extra push knowing that I may be able to change people's eating habits if they realize that there are perfectly good substitutes right at their fingertips!

Unfortunately, my camera died so I couldn't get a picture of the finished product. But its cool cause I'm actually going to hold off on sharing the recipe. First of all, the crust is made with milk and eggs, and my slice of pie did not make my stomach too happy. Therefore, I need to learn to make my own pie crust. Also, my favorite dessert as a kid was my mom's blueberry cream pie, so I'm going to change this recipe from plain old blueberry pie to wheat free, vegan, sugar free blueberry cream pie. I promise you, that creation will be a masterpiece. So hold your horses on that recipe, I promise what I'll give you will be even better than what I gave them!

Thanks for reading, and Live Free!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

My First Veggie Burger Experience

Happy Easter Everyone!!

I hope you all had awesome allergy friendly Easter dinners. I got to spend Easter with my aunt and uncle in Riverside, and they were nice enough to make tons of variations of vegetables for my Easter dinner, which I so appreciated. But since they were having ham, I picked up these little babies at Trader Joe's as my Easter "meat":
I've never had a veggie or boca burger before, so I was obviously a little skeptical. I mean, I remember the days when homemade cheeseburgers & OreIda fries were my favorite meal. I had them every year on my birthday because that's all I'd ever want. So for me, replacing burgers was going to be quite a task.

I'm so happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised. Ok, so its no hamburger exactly, but the taste was phenomenal! I couldn't believe my taste buds! Thankfully, there were two in the package so I brought one home to cook up for this week. I have a feeling this is going to be one of my new staple items, along with almond butter and hummus :)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Live Free, and have a tofu burger!!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Day 4

Day 4...what can I say. It's been bittersweet.

I woke up feeling like a truck hit me, thankfully, my breakfast made that go away pretty fast. But needless to say, I didn't get up and work out this morning.

I spent a little time laying in the sun and let me tell you, the whole clarity of mind thing that this detox is supposed to cause definitely kicked in today. I was laying there in the sun and all I could think about was new ideas for my blog and my potential career. I actually got a lot accomplished sitting out there and thinking. Called two potential summer employers (unfortunately haven't heard back) and started making steps towards making this a video blog!! I won't give too many details yet, but this blog has to go somewhere and it's finally becoming clear to me what I need to do.

Unfortunately, I couldn't last out there too long cause the sun totally drains me, so I came in and did my castor oil and rested while watching (what else?) The Biggest Loser. That show motivated me to get my hiney off the couch :)

I was still too tired to exercise, so I searched the room I share with my friend Kami to see if she had any books I could read. The only one I found that wasn't school related was Chicken Soup For The Soul Living Your Dreams. I started reading it and wow, it was like the book was sent straight from God. It had so much great info about achieving success, and I got way into it. So that's definitely my book of the moment, I'm so glad I found it!

I made a bomb salad for dinner, chard, spinach, red bell pepper, cucumber, strawberries, and minced garlic. I needed that garlic flavor today. I'm so sick of bland food.

The reason I say this day was bittersweet is because I was so motivated to pursue my goals, and I didn't have the energy to do it. At least I wrote a lot of great things down, and I'll start on that path next week!

As for tonight? I was going to go out to Playhouse in Hollywood with my roommate, but, as you could probably guess, I'm in no mood to go to a club. So I'm off to do my Maundy Thursday meditation and listen to Marc David's podcast on Nutritional Consciousness. Is it weird that I'm excited about that?

Till tomorrow, Live Free.