Kale Chickpea Curry & Tropical Smooth Dessert Smoothie

I started off my day right this morning with one EXTREMELY green juice!  Celery, cucumbers, kale, spinach, lemon, ginger, and an apricot.  Holy yum!  I felt great and was ready to take on the day!

No amount of juice could have prepared me for the weather though.  The weather today has been absolutely insane.  Most businesses in the area shut down around 3:00 due to a tornado warning AND a flash flood alert.  The sky turned an eerie green almost instantaneously and torrential downpour stranded me as well as the rest of the city.  Hail pelted relentlessly at my windows and I thought to myself “I had better cook some food while the power’s still on!”  The only question was what to make?

I don’t know about you all, but lately I seem to be on a Middle Eastern/Indian food kick.  Curry powder, cumin, and paprika have been my go-to spice trio for the past few months (My Italian mother is not at all thrilled by my lack of basil, oregano, and thyme).  I ended up throwing together a kale and chickpea curry, served over a bed of brown rice, and what’s better to wash down that tastiness with than a mango-papaya smoothie?  Enjoy both of these recipes.  Whether you make them together or separate, they will taste amazing!

Kale Chickpea Curry on Brown Rice

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp red curry paste
• 1 can chickpeas, undrained
• 1/2 bunch kale (4-6 stems), roughly chopped
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 cup brown rice, uncooked
• Unsweetened coconut shavings, for garnish (optional)

Start cooking the rice while you work on the rest of the dish on another burner.  Once your rice is simmering, pour the olive oil into a separate pan and cook the garlic and onion on medium heat for 5 minutes.

Add in the tomatoes after the onions have become translucent, and add in your seasonings as well (curry paste, paprika, cumin, coriander).  Let simmer for another 5 minutes.  Then add your can of undrained chickpeas.  The liquid should give the mixture a stew-like consistency.  Simmer the mixture for 10-15 minutes.  

Right before taking the mixture off the heat, add the kale.  Cook just until it wilts.  

Serve over a bed of brown rice.  Add coconut shavings for garnish.

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Tropical Smooth Dessert

• 1 cup frozen mango, cubed
• 1 cup frozen pineapple, cubed
• 1 cup frozen papaya, cubed
• 1 can full fat coconut milk

Add all ingredients into your high-powered blender and blend on high until the consistency reaches that of ice cream.  You must freeze the fruit thoroughly prior to blending for this recipe to work properly.  

Enjoy!

Cheezy Cauliflower Soup (Vegan)

Thank goodness for this beautiful weather!  Now that the rain has stopped (for the most part anyway) I can officially resume walking to work again!  I’m so lucky to live in a town where everything is reasonably close together.  Just the simple act of walking to work and back adds 5 miles of walking to my day!  I love it!  

My college roommates got married last weekend, so I was out of town to celebrate with them!  The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was awesome… Especially the bride and groom’s late night trip to Taco Bell, wedding dress and all!  Monday meant back to reality, though, and I was way too wiped to head to the grocery store.  I didn’t even have fruit to juice 😦 sad day. I guess it was the perfect time for a little kitchen experimentation!  The result was pretty delicious, and I can say I will definitely be making it again!  

Cheesy Cauliflower Soup

• 4 tbsp. Nutritional Yeast
• 6-7 cups water
• 1 can Full Fat UNSWEETENED Coconut Milk (drain liquid from can and save for later)
• Pepper to taste
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3/4 head cauliflower, roughly chopped
• 9 or 10 stems fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Throw everything but the parsley in a pot and bring to a boil! Simmer for 30 minutes and top with fresh parsley. Voila! 

As for the liquid from the can of coconut milk, I threw it into the blender along with a couple frozen bananas and had a very creamy dessert!

What kinds of healthy meals do you throw together when your cupboards are less than stocked?

Apple Coconut Popsicles- Utilizing Juicer Pulp: Part One

Welcome back!  I know it’s been a while, but I’m back and ready to get you pumped up about juicing again!  I submitted my last final exam for the semester Monday, and I immediately felt the summer arrive! Now that school is done for the summer, I can get back to posting delicious recipes and advice on here.  Sorry about the hiatus, but you best believe I am back full force with tons of great stuff on the way!

Today was an amazing day.  Starting off the morning with a little yoga and some hot lemon water was just what I needed.  After spending all morning in the kitchen, I got to spend the afternoon going for a 6 mile hike.  It was GORGEOUS!

Today was day 2 of my Spring juice cleanse.  I spent the morning juicing lots of fruits and veggies.  I used two bags for pulp, switching them out between juicing the fruits and the vegetables.  After bottling up the juices and storing them in the fridge, I set off on a mission to utilize all my pulpy leftovers.  Yesterday at work, my coworkers and I got into a discussion about juicing, and they mentioned that juicing was a waste since all that pulp gets thrown out.  Now, I’ve used juicing pulp in recipes before, but a lot of times I put the pulp outside for the animals around my house.  They love it!  Not now, though.  Now, I felt an overwhelming need to prove a point (gotta love stubbornness).  Since I’m fasting, I know I can’t eat anything right now, which begged the question, what can I cook with this pulp that will stay good until this fast is done?  As far as the fruit went, that was easy.  I could make fruit leather, or I could make some fruit pops!  I’m all about fruit leather, but that’s more of an overnight endeavor since the oven’s gotta stay on for about 9 hours, and I wanted to be outside today!  That meant it was fruit pop time!  These popsicles have tons of fruits in them, but mainly the fruit pulp was full of apples. I imagine you can use any fruit with this recipe, so make it how you want!

Apple Coconut Pops

• 2 cups fruit pulp
• 1 cup water
• ¾ cup full fat coconut milk
• Agave nectar, to taste (if needed)
• ½ lemon

1. Boil the water in a pot and add the fruit pulp.  Add the lemon juice.
2. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Pour the mixture into your Ninja or other blender and blend for 1 minute.
4. Add the coconut milk and agave nectar and pulse until it is evenly distributed throughout the mixture. 
5. Distribute the mixture into popsicle molds and freeze!

These fruit pops are heavenly on a hot day like today was!  I won’t be able to enjoy these fruit pops today, but you best believe I will be smashing on them in a couple weeks!  For now, I’m making do with very yummy kale-carrot lemonade, and it is refreshingly delicious!  Juice fasts are definitely easier with the warm weather; an ice cold juice really hits the spot!

apple, ginger, kale, carrot, lemon, and spinach

What did I do with the vegetable pulp from my daily juicing?  I’ll have that awesome recipe in my next post!  Stay healthy, be well, and happy juicing!