Here at Casa Metta, www.casametta.com , we aim to please our guests. Tonight we had a bean tamale with tomatillo salsa and pumpkin seeds, along side a frilly lettuce and avocado salad, sweet plantains cooked in coconut milk with a bit of spicy beans and caramelized onions and plantain chips for dipping.
Dessert was a dark chocolate soy pudding with brandied bananas and toasted pecans. The guests were happy and asked for recipes!
I love polenta. Being vegan and wheat free, polenta is one of my favorite dishes to impress guests.
For dinner, I prepare polenta by cooking it in vegetable broth. Once cooked, but not to dry – still creamy, I add: minced garlic, olive oil, minced fresh herbs, chopped sundried tomatoes. I them bake for 50 minutes (350) in a clay pan. The pan is oiled with olive oil and I drizzle a bit on the top, before baking, with pine nuts. I serve this with my vegan pesto (almonds, garlic, olive oil, basil and nutritional yeast) and marinara.
Then I use the leftover polenta for breakfast…
This is squared of the baked polenta smothered in vegan hollandaise sauce, toasted pecans and avocado. It is amazingly good.
So, this shows how you can use polenta in a few ways. There are many other variations, such as Mexican polenta still to come…
I make this soup almost weekly. We are having our winter here, in the mountains of Costa Rica. Soup is a welcome lunch, dinner or breakfast.
This soup is easy. First I put 2 cups of brown rice in my rice steamer and start cooking it. Then I chop and saute on package of white button mushrooms and a package of crimini mushrooms. Crimini mushrooms are baby portobello mushrooms, so you can use those, but chop small pieces. I saute the mushrooms in a pan adding no oil. As the mushrooms start to get soupy, I add chopped shallots or green onions. I then add spinach leaves, two boxes of mushroom broth (I use Pacific Foods mushroom broth – good and organic), 1/4 cup of Braggs Luquid Amino Acids, 4 garlic cloves chopped, fresh cracked pepper, 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast. I let this simmer. When the rice is cooked, I turn off the heat under the soup and add the brown rice. I then add a dollop of miso broth and stir to dissolve. Serve and enjoy. It is divine!
Food Rules If you have not already read this short, concise, easy to read book, you should. It is a perfect book of rules for eating. It is simple and complete.
http://michaelpollan.com/books/food-rules/
Tempeh is a wonderful meal. Last night we had barbecued tempeh over basamati rice topped with guacamole. Erich makes a spicy homemade barbecue sauce, to avoid corn syrup which seems to be in everything. Basamati rice is my favorite… so much better than conventional rice and available in white and brown. Avocado is a wonderful addition to any meal – nutritious and delicious. Tempeh is full of nutrients:
Tempeh is a complete protein food that contains all the essential amino acids. The soy protein and isoflavones have many health benefits. Isoflavones strengthen bones, help to ease menopause symptoms, reduce risk of coronary hearth disease and some cancers. Tempeh maintains all the fiber of the beans and gains some digestive benefits from the enzymes created during the fermentation process. Tempeh is an excellent meat substitute and can be served many ways.
We moved 4 weeks ago, but the house needs major work. It will be about 6 to 8 weeks before all is ready. We have two kitchens and lots of space to relax and enjoy the beautiful mountains of Costa Rica, where the air is always cool and fresh. We will have vegan/vegetarian cooking classes, a B&B for healthy foodies, and we will be producing and selling some vegan food products locally.
We are currently painting, changing tile, re-doing plumbing and electrical, remodeling bathrooms, building a salt water sanitizer pool. We are cooking up some vegan delights and will post some new recipes here soon. We did not have internet for the first few weeks here.
Our place is called Casa Metta – house of loving kindness. It is set on an almost 3 acre sight with amazing views – even an ocean view on really clear days. It will be a healthy, relaxing retreat with space for up to 4-6 guests, once all is completed. We are loving our new lives and our new challenges. We look forward to sharing fantastic vegan foods with others, in our new locale.
I am vegan and gluten free. And, I live on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica where the products you can find in other countries do not exist. So, I have no bread or crackers that I can eat available here. I have to make my own. I just made a 5 seed fry bread that is tasty, healthy and filling.
I mixed together the ingredients and cooked large spoonfuls on a pan sprayed with non-stick spray, over low to medium head. 10 minutes each side, press down with spatula when you flip, and back over if not quite done.
Vegan Gluten Free Bread
Ingredients
1½ cup ground buckwheat or buckwheat flour/meal
1 cup ground flax seeds or flax meal
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups filtered water
⅓ cup sunflower seeds
⅓ cup whole flax seeds
⅓ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ sesame seeds (white, black, or a mix)
1 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
This tastes excellent as a sandwich bread, with tofu dogs, as a side with main courses, or even as a garlic bread – toasted with olive oil and crushed garlic. Yummy and good for you. No guilt bread! Buckwheat is actually a seed, so this can be a 6 seed bread.
Or, you can dehydrate for a raw bread – about 4 hours each side.
My son, Elliot, made me some vegan, gluten free crepes today. He made a bunch of them and I froze some for another day. I did eat one with soy swiss cheese. It was yummy.
I have a little dog, named Marley, who was rescued by my son and I at a few months of age, near death. He is quite an adorable little dog, now over 4 years old. He has suffered greatly from food allergies. We have tried every specialty brand of dog food for dogs with allergies. I won’t begin to name them here, but trust me, we have used them all. He has improved, less itching, hair re-growth and loss of bloating, with each one, but after months, the allergies seem to return with a vengeance. We have taken him to innumerable vets and done massive amount of research online. Marley is now eating home cooked vegan food and is doing better than he has done in years.
Recipe for Marley’s Food
120 grams of texturized soy protein
3 medium sweet potatoes peeled and shredded
1 carrot shredded
1 cup slivered almonds
2 T coconut oil
4 T brewers yeast or nutritional yeast
1 heaping T tumeric
Soak soy protein in a pot, covered in water, for 20 minutes. Add shredded potoato and carrot. Add almonds, yeast and coconut oil. Simmer for one hour. Let cool, covered. Makes 4 or 5 days worth for Marley. Store refrigerated. We add 1/2 chopped avocado to the food.
My good friend, Johanna, has written an amazing eBook of vegan desserts. All of these recipes are made without regular cane sugar. Instead, they are sweetened with fruit sugar from fresh, dried, and frozen fruit and berries. Agave syrup or maple syrup is also used. Agave syrup is a yummy low GI sweetener that works really well in these recipes.
All but 5 of the recipes can be made 100% raw, but if you don’t have 100% raw resources such as genuinely raw cocoa powder, you can still make them and they will taste incredible!
Check it out: http://www.miss-best.com/LLLD.html
