BiG TeA PaRtY

VEGAN COLE SLAW with Honey-Lime Dressing

BY ELIZABETH FIEND

Category: Vegan, Vegetarian Recipe

This is one of the recipes I made when I was a guest on the Food Network’s “ROKER ON THE ROAD” TV show starring weather man Al Roker.

I developed this recipe to not only give you the health benefits of turmeric (to learn more about turmeric click here), but the added benefits of another “warming” spice, cayenne pepper.

This recipe packs even more of a punch with the vitamins and antioxidants found in red cabbage and carrots and the minerals found in seeds.

It’s also low-cal and it tastes so refreshing!

VEGAN COLE SLAW with Honey-Lime Dressing (and turmeric)
GOES GREAT WITH BBQ!!!!!

Serves 4, Time: 15 minutes

Dressing Ingredients:
1/2 cup soy milk
3 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon salt

Slaw Ingredients:
2 carrots, grated
1/4 head red cabbage, grated
4 teaspoons sunflower seeds

Directions, Easy as 1-2-3:
1.) Mix up dressing (use a container with a lid and
shake it up baby)
2.) Pour dressing over grated carrots and red
cabbage
3.) Top with sunflower seeds right before serving

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Soy to the World!

BY ELIZABETH FIEND

You wait and wait, eagerly anticipating your favorite time of the year, and suddenly, it’s here! April is National Soy Month, the most delicious month of the year!

Soy is one hell of an amazing plant, one that’s been part of the human diet for over 5,000 years. But it’s much, much more than just veggie burgers. The soybean is also used as food for livestock and it has all the properties of petroleum — except unlike petrol, soy is biodegradable.

Wow, doesn’t knowing that you could fuel up your car or feed your cow with it make soy even more mouth-watering, appetizing and desirable to you?

This bean’s potential is astounding.

Ben Franklin was so intrigued by the story of a “cheese” made from a bean he acquired some seeds, soybeans actually, and sent them to his West Philly homey John Bartram’s estate. Ben also sent along directions on how to turn the beans into curds, aka tofu.

Despite Ben’s efforts, soy never really caught on in Ye Olde America, and was primarily grown for livestock feed and oil until food shortages during WWII stimulated interest in the plant as a source of food for human beans.

Tofu, which had Ben so jazzed up, wasn’t sold in an American supermarket until 1958. Not coincidentally, I made my own debut that year.

Franklin was only one great thinker (and eater) who was intrigued by the potential of the plant from Asia. Both George Washington Carver and Henry Ford donated a great deal of their lives to this marvelous bean.

Carver, the African-American educator and agricultural genius, began investigating soy in hopes it would become a crop newly-emancipated slaves might use to gain financial independence. His soy products include candles, soups, coffee, cheeses, ice cream, flour and oil. (Click to see my in-depth article on GW Carver.)

Henry Ford also had a million projects going on involving soy and dedicated the last two decades of his life to the bean. Among other things, he unveiled a car made with soy-composite body parts in 1941 and was known to be out and about town in a suit spun out of soy.

As a food, soy can’t be beat. It’s packed with more protein than any other bean. In fact, the soybean is the only plant food source that contains ALL of the nine essential amino acids, making it equal to the protein from animal sources. But unlike animal products, soy has no cholesterol and is much lower in saturated fat.

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Orange Creamsicle Cake

RECIPE BY ELIZABETH FIEND

A favorite childhood memory of mine was running outside when the ice cream truck came around my block. I would always get the Orange Creamsicle ice cream bar. Orange sherbet coating over a rich creamy vanilla ice cream bar, this treat always spelled carefree days to me! I’ve duplicates these flavors as a refreshing, fruit filled cake. Yes, there really are two pounds of fruit in this cake!!!

Quick and easy. Dress up a store bought cake or if you have a favorite recipe, make your own angel food cake. You’ll get raves, trust me!! Only takes 1/2 hour (with store bought cake).

THIS CAKE JUST SCREAMS SPRING!! MAKE THIS CAKE FOR YOUR NEXT PARTY.

Category: Vegetarian, Dessert Recipe

OK, a cake’s a cake. It’s dessert and there’s no denying it. But I’ve tried made this cake more healthful by incorporating two pounds of fruit into the recipe. (I must be a genius!) Plus I’ve lightened up the custard filling by using yogurt and mascarpone cheese, a soft, sweet Italian cheese with half the calories of butter. And — angel food cake contains less fat than most other cakes.

Special tools: Angel-food-cake cutter. This looks kinda like an Afro comb. You first slide it down thru the cake poking little holes in to the cake which will enable you to then slice the cake with a regular knife. (If you don’t have one, it will be a little harder to slice, but not the end of the world.)

Ingredients:
Use your favorite recipe for angel food cake. Or to save time use a store-bought cake.
8 oz mascarpone cheese
12 oz orange-cream yogurt
Two 15 oz cans mandarin oranges (drained)
8oz prepared whipped topping (if frozen, defrost) or fresh whipped cream
½ cup sliced almonds

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The Green Party
By ELIZABETH FIEND

You’ve got your spinach, your bok choy (and a zillion other ‘choys’), your soft, dainty salad greens, yer sturdy kales and collards. Dandelion and mustard greens, Chinese broccoli, broccoli rabe, beet and turnip tops — they’re all part of the green family. I also include green, leafy herbs like basil, mint, parsley and cilantro in the green clan.

Lots of cultures celebrate greens in their cuisine, but with the exception of a few Southern favorites, your Standard American Diet (SAD) generally ignores these powerhouses of nutrition, taste and versatility. Still I was pretty surprised when a well-dressed, intelligent businesswoman said to me, “What you GROW kale in your yard?” And then proceeded to ask how I cooked it. I blurted out, “Like every other green” With a “duh” implied. Geez.

The next second I realized what my new column would be.

Greens! Are! Grand! You gotta get with them this fall and winter (and forever).

If you don’t like greens, you haven’t had them prepared properly. Or, prepared in a way you like. Greens go with or in almost everything. What do you like?

Quiche, omelets (and other egg dishes), burgers, chili (or any dish with beans), tomato sauce (or any dish with tomatoes), potatoes, Indian, African, Asian, Italian food? Greens, they go with all of these foods.

Polenta too. A few slices of baked polenta and a mess of greens, a glass of red wine — you got dinner.

Greens are super foods for sure. They have hardly any calories, a negligible amount of fat (if any) and they’re loaded, I mean really loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Greens are even a great source of dietary fiber.

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Popeye’s Nutty Portabella Mushroom Burger

BY ELIZABETH FIEND

Quick and Easy, 1 Dish Meal

Serves 2 Human Beings or 8 Martians

Category: Vegan / Vegetarian Recipe

Ingredients:
2 large portabella mushrooms
1/2 onion
4 cloves garlic
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon sesame seed oil
1/4 cup white wine (or white grape juice or water)
1/2 cup water (divided in to 2 parts)
2 cups fresh spinach (packed)
2 teaspoons white miso (or dash of soy sauce)
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 whole grain rolls/buns

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SNACK-CAKE CAKE

BY ELIZABETH FIEND

ON THE “SILLY SCALE” OF ONE-TO-TEN THIS IS A TEN!

Category: Vegetarian Recipe (but it’s not healthy!)

My first appearance on national TV was on the Food Network in a segment of Roker on the Road starring weather man Al Roker. I made this cake and it was featured repeatedly in commercials for the show. Although I made many dishes in that episode, most people only remember this one.

This cake is a no bake cake. Any idiot could make it because it’s basically a bunch of snack cakes piled up and then slathered in whipped topping. I think the cake tastes absolutely disgusting. But everyone else seems to love it.

Ingredients:
1 box chocolate snack cakes (12 oz or 8 cakes)
1 box yellow or white snack cakes (12 oz or 8 cakes)
20 oz can cherry pie filling, low sugar (but not artificial sugar!)
8 oz whipped topping — (defrost if frozen)
food coloring of your choice (a few drops)
2.5 oz slivered almonds
cake toppers or decorations of your choice

Method to the Madness:
Line-up white snack cakes on a plate, making a rectangle.
Spoon the cherry pie filling over the top of the cakes.
Gently place the chocolate snack cakes on top.

Mix food coloring into the whipped topping.
Frost the “cake” with it.
Press the slivered almonds into the whipped topping along the sides of the cake.
(Almonds are high in potassium — the heart mineral –
you heart will need all the help it can get after eating this cake!)

Decorate the top of the cake in a silly way!

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A Diet Diverse is a Diet Divine
By Elizabeth Fiend

Add cranberries and Brussels sprouts to your diet they taste great and are loaded with goodness.

Here’s why and how! Recipe at end.

Having diversity in your diet is an often overlooked way to remain healthy. Within each food category lies a cornucopia of nutrient-rich foods. And each one of these foods contains hundreds of unique substances — the good, like antioxidants and phytonutrients, and the not-so-good toxins. By eating a diverse diet, you increase your chance of getting the good and decrease your chance of consuming too much of the bad.

Increase eating the good + Decrease eating the bad = Decrease your risk of disease.

Prehistoric peoples are thought to have dined on 1,500 different wild plants. And throughout history, humans we have consumed 80,000 different edible species, with 3,000 of those in widespread use. Shockingly, today we generally stick to eating just 30 different plants with only four – wheat, rice, corn and soybeans – accounting for 75% of our calories!

Think about it? How many different kinds of fruits did you eat this week? You did eat some fruit this week, right?

The number of unique foods you eat is the key to diversity. A study at the University of Utah showed that women who ate an assortment of different vegetables were at a 20 percent lower risk of colon cancer than women who ate the least diverse types of vegetables. That’s a huge benefit! But there are many more reasons to go diverse, taste and fun among them.

Seasonal eating is a good way to add diversity to your diet — and lucky for us, two great foods are at their peak right now: Cranberries, the local hero, and everybody’s favorite, Brussels sprouts! Shocker: Brussels sprouts and cranberries, not just for Thanksgiving.

Cranberries have popular appeal thanks to cranberry juice and dried cranberries cleverly marketed as Craisins. Brussels sprouts, unfortunately, have not been so lucky in the branding department. But that could all change, if only you know how to prepare them in the proper way.

The old school way was to boil the hell out of these cute vegetables that look like baby cabbages. Don’t do that. Sure, they’re densely textured, but they should be slightly crisp after cooking. You’ll be rewarded by their sunny, nutty flavor and miss out on the release of nasty sulfurous compounds that comes on only after over cooking.

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