garden – GUTSy Performance Nutrition

early autumn collard wraps with beet hummus, orange quinoa salad + apple slices

I cooked my first winter squash this week, a delicata from the garden. I added it into the lovely split pea, rhubarb and apple soup from Vegetarian Everyday/Green Kitchen Stories. I sipped a rendition of Izy’s autumn-spiced coffee, planted purple sprouting broccoli for a late winter/early spring harvest, and kicked the heat on to a measly 62 degrees in the house. It ran almost all day while I wore my down vest and a blanket and powered through week four of term three–grad school life; the workload is intense; it calls for blankets and my first coffee in well over a year–and yet I love it. I’ve scheduled myself to take one-two days off from the material right now and I still wake up on those mornings ready to dive back in.

It’s safe to say summer is well on its way out. Ever the seasonal sleeper, I’m waking much later in the mornings. And catching up on processing my recent transition out of school garden education. I also began writing in more detail about my experience with running, eating disorder recovery, faith, and mental health in general–topics that might be a little too intense here. If you first came to this blog for those posts, feel free to read more on my new blog. Otherwise, below are a sampling of the many short and longer reading I’ve enjoyed these past months, a couple podcast episodes I feel are worth sharing, and a few seasonal meals we’ve been enjoying.

Reading
How to Build an Empire
The Salkantay Trek to Machu Piccho: perspective + privilege

David has been cooking with and sharing/photodocumenting the stories of Syrian refugees in Turkey this last week. It is a beautiful experience, important to share, and I think relates a lot to the point made by Ashlae, above.

Why I haven’t weighed myself in 2 1/2 years
The Starvation Study that Changed the World, I’m still reflecting on these last two but they are both well worth reading in terms of body image, eating, and/or weight struggles.

Longer Reading
Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin. I just finished. I loved it.

Listening to
Up Your Game
How to Cultivate Non-Judgment
Andrew Wheating on Strengthening Your Winning Muscle (I’ve listened to this on repeat for weeks!)

Seasonal Eating–Basically, I only want to eat Moroccan or Middle Eastern flavors and/or eggplants so we’ve been enjoying these:
Moroccan Eggplant Mini-Galettes with Chickpeas + Harissa
Moroccan Tagine with Sweet Potatoes + Beets
Roasted Vegetable Pizza
Eggplant & Olive Caponata
We also enjoyed the Eggplant Meatballs from Love & Lemon’s new cookbook at a friend’s last weekend. They were delicious.
And I’m eating all the pears from my favorite pear farmer and these Chai-Spiced Pear Oats, daily.

early autumn collard wraps with beet hummus, orange quinoa salad + apples, makes 4
Every once in a while I get a craving for collard wraps, always with beets and a grain salad of sorts and perhaps some fruit. Wrapped up tight, they make for a delicious and nourishing lunch. This version is inspired by a recipe in Vegetarian Everyday with my own beet hummus (still delicious and addicting), thinly sliced crunchy apples, and locally grown chickpeas.

1-2 batches Beet Hummus
1 cup quinoa
1 tsp. fennel seeds
zest and juice of 1/2 an orange
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup toasted, chopped walnuts
2-3 spring onions or baby leeks, thinly sliced
2-4 Tbs. minced parsley
sea salt, to taste
2 cups cooked chickpeas
8 large collard green leaves
3-4 small apples, thinly sliced

To make the quinoa salad, bring 2 cups water and quinoa to a boil in a small pot. Add the fennel seeds, turn down to a simmer, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Add orange juice and zest, raisins, walnuts, leeks or spring onions, parsley and salt to the quinoa.
To assemble the wraps, trim the base of the stem off the collard leaves and take a serrated knife and thinly shave down the remaining stem, getting it to the same thickness as the rest of the leaf. Then soften the leaves by either drenching in warm water briefly or heating in the microwave for a few seconds.
For each wrap, arrange two collard leaves head to foot, overlapping them halfway. Spread a generous amount of beet hummus, then quinoa salad, garbanzos, and finally a few apple slices in the center. Fold over each end, tuck one side under, and roll tightly like a burrito. If it’s in danger of coming apart, use a few toothpicks to hold it together, and slice in half.
Continue as above to create the remaining three wraps. There should be apple slices leftover which are great eaten on the side.

Zucchini Toasts, Cashew Ricotta + Dukkah

Sometimes, I’m surprised to realize how long ago I began this blog. It began as a little project to collect thoughts and share recipes shortly after I graduated with my undergrad degree, an entire six years ago. Much has changed since then, both on the blog and in life, but one thing that has stayed the same is my fervent and on-going affinity for the freshest, most-local, seasonal produce. Though there is a slightly deeper reason for this than simply liking vegetables, I’ll save that topic for another day. Instead, today’s post is for The Recipe Redux and the theme is Fresh From the Garden Produce.

Thanks to my mother who has the greenest of thumb(s), I was privy to garden produce from the very beginning. What came along with the garden were numerous lists of chores, which inevitably were put off until the heat of the day and the fear of not having them done when my parents got home were at their peak. The worst chore was picking green beans and I never have particularly cared for them, possibly as a result of being haunted by memories of spending “hours” picking in the hot sun. Realistically, I’m betting my attention span was less than 30 minutes.

The best of chores was devouring the hourds of zucchini that came from our garden. We often ate them in two ways; one in a variation of this cream of zucchini soup (which I soon shall be giving a facelift for less dairy and gluten), and two, drenched in flour and egg and fried to crispy golden french-toast-like rounds. Every person in the family loved these meals, and to my recollection we all loved zucchini in general. Since my parents had the joy of raising three hot-headed, disagreeing, and violent-toward-each-other, orange-haired children, it’s a wonder that we all could agree on anything!

To this day, I absolutely love zucchini. It is the simplest of plants to grow and goes every which way into summer meals. Lately, I’ve been grilling it up on the stovetop grill with a coating of dukkah, spooning it atop toasts spread with a cashew ricotta, and watching it disappear faster than my plants will produce. (Crazily enough, this is possible.)

Zucchini Toasts, Cashew Ricotta + Dukkah, serves 2

If you go ahead and pick up store-bought staples like bread and dairy-based ricotta, and make or buy the dukkah ahead of time, these toasts make for a very quick and simple meal. If you like to do everything or prefer a vegan ricotta, I’ve included recipes for all the fixings below. Dukkah is one of those super-easy-to-make seedy, nutty, spice mixtures that packs a serious punch in the flavor department and amps up the flavor profile of simple meals. It is Egyptian in origin and a suitable (although certainly different) substitute in this recipe could be za’atar, if you have that on hand instead. This book is my favorite source for truly great gluten-free bread. I made the 100% Whole-Grain Batons for these toasts and their slightly heftier density and crust worked out perfectly.

Cashew Ricotta, see below

2 Tbs. Dukkah, recipe below

1-2 Tbs. whole-grain or dijon mustard

1/4 tsp. salt

2 medium zucchini, chopped into smallish squares

1-2 tsp. olive or coconut oil

4 slices whole-grain bread (a denser, baguette type works particularly great)

additonal dukkah to coat zucchini and serve

Mix the 2 Tbs. dukkah, mustard, and salt into the ricotta. Set aside.
Toss the chopped zucchini with a spoonful or two of additional dukkah and oil. Grill on a stovetop grill until slightly soft and charred edges begin to form, about 3-5 minutes. Remove from grill.
While zucchini is grilling, lightly toast the bread slices and then slather a bit of the ricotta mixture atop each one.
Then, pile zucchini atop the toast and ricotta, sprinkle a dash of additional dukkah on top, and serve.

Cashew Ricotta

1 cup cashew milk (or any other non-dairy milk)

1/4-1/2 tsp. lemon juice

1/2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil

pinch of salt

3/4 tsp. agar powder

In a medium saucepan, stir together all ingredients.
Very slowly, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally.
Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for five minutes or until agar is dissolved, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat and cool for about 10 minutes. Then, transfer to a sealed container and place in fridge until set, a few hours.
After the mixture is set, transfer it to a food processor and pulse until you get the desired consistency.

Dukkah, adapted only slightly from Vegetable Literacy

1/2 cup hazelnuts

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cup coriander seeds

2 Tbs. cumin seeds

1 tsp. fennel seeds

several pinches each of dried thyme, marjoram, and oregano

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a saute pan, toast the hazelnuts and seeds until fragrant and lightly colored, about five to eight minutes. Then pour onto a plate to cool.
Once sufficiently cooled, transfer the nuts and seeds to a food processor. Add the herbs, 1/4 tsp. salt to start, and pulse until the mixture is roughly ground but not yet paste-like. The goal is a fine but still crunchy textured mixture. Taste and add additional salt, if necessary, as well as a few pinches of black pepper.