#local vegetables

[ghjco]

Crudités Platter with Cashew Ricotta Stuffed Zucchini Flowers (V, GF)

In the face of these seasonal adjustment pangs (will it or won’t it stop snowing?), we suggest an edible evening art project to get you through: a crudités platter. Raw vegetables are a nutrient-rich snack that, when prepared properly, can transcend the category of food and reach the realm of art.

When constructing your own crudités tray, be sure to thoroughly wash all of your produce. Then the art-making truly begins. Channel your emotions into your produce arranging. Follow your muse. We suggest adding at least four different seasonal crops for a well-balanced dish, and resting your vegetables on a bed of leafy greens for added interest (and bite).

In addition to our classic hummus and a simple vinaigrette, we also advise completing your tray with our crudités secret weapon: Stuffed Zucchini Flowers. Filled with a homemade and plant-based cashew ricotta, don’t be surprised if these bites cure your Sunday scaries once and for all.

Cashew Ricotta:

Ingredients:

2 cups raw cashews, soaked for two hours and drained

1 clove garlic

Juice of one lemon

¼ cup Greenhouse Almondmilk

1 ½ tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Steps:

Add all ingredients to your food processor or blender, pulsing until smooth.

If the consistency is too dry, add more Almondmilk or filtered water, blending one teaspoon at a time.  

Season with salt and pepper. Experimental chefs take note—you can also play around with the flavour of this ricotta by adding fresh or dried herbs, or infused oils. Go where your tastebuds lead you.

Cashew Ricotta Stuffed Zucchini Flowers:

Ingredients:

Zucchini flowers

Cashew Ricotta (see recipe above)

Olive tapenade (We love Saveur’s fig and olive tapenade, or try purchasing homemade tapenade from vendors at your local market)

Drizzle of olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Steps:

Wash and gently dry zucchini flowers, making sure each is well cleaned.

Lightly rip (or gently slice) one side of the flower open.

Add a spoonful of cashew ricotta and top with olive tapenade. Close each flower by lightly twisting the top.

Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper.

Add stuffed flowers to your crudités plate. We’ve chosen fresh local veggies and finished our plate with vinaigrette and our classic hummus.

- Elena Mari and Nathan Legiehn for G

[theroamingvegan]

wholesome vegan meals = happy healthy life

[ghjco]

No Oil Easy Lunch Bowl (V, GF)

As you might have guessed, today’s lunch (or dinner, or breakfast if you’re especially against convention) is easy to prepare and is made with no oil. When roasting local vegetables to build our salad bowl, we sometimes like to swap our usual olive oil for vegetable stock. We tend to opt for the non-salted variety, adding a touch of salt and pepper ourselves. Once your veggies are roasted, simply build your bowl: crisp arugula, wild rice, chopped nuts, avocado, and whatever else you have on hand will suit. That’s it. All that’s left to do is eat. How easy was that?

Makes two bowls.

Ingredients:

Roasted Vegetables

1 large Ontario sweet potato, peeled and diced

Half a local red onion, chopped

A few sprigs of thyme, roughly chopped

¼ cup vegetable stock (non-salted)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Salad Bowl

Two salad bowls of arugula 

1 cup wild rice, cooked (about ½ per bowl)

½ avocado (¼ per bowl)

Handful of chopped almonds

Juice of ½ lemon (¼ wedge per bowl)

Dash of hot sauce (optional)

Steps:

Preheat your oven to 425 F. 

In a medium-sized bowl, add your chopped onion, sweet potatoes, thyme, and vegetable stock. Mix well to ensure vegetables are evenly coated, and add salt and pepper to taste. 

Spread vegetable mix on a baking sheet and cook for 45 minutes. Check on your vegetables at the 20-minute mark, moving and flipping to bake well. 

When your vegetables are almost done baking, prepare your wild rice and begin to assemble your salad bowls.

Remove vegetables from the oven, and add evenly to each bowl.

Mix your salad well. Pro Tip: We like to mash up our avocado (after we take a photo, of course), so that it coats the other salad ingredients well. For some bite, add a dash of hot sauce.  

-Elena Mari and Nathan Legiehn for GHJC

[moms4health]

What's In Season?

What’s In Season?

Winter may seem like a time when nothing is growing and produce is at its most expensive. Don’t worry!! You have options! A winter farmers’ market, a community supported agriculture, and finding local products at your grocery store are just a few of the ways you can buy seasonal produce throughout the year.

What is in season?

First, if you want to buy local produce, you need to know what fruits…

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[familychiropractoraucklandp]

The greatest Moments: Holidays in Spain for the Over-50s

Spain is a world-shaking option if you're longing to escape the atrocious winters of Europe, USA or First-rater Britain. Together with almost year-round sunshine somewhere in the country, the sweet temperate climate, utopian beaches, fresh sea-breezes, friendly people and delicious local cuisine, a Spanish wyoming day is one of the best choices you can cook up as a competent citizen. Spain offers plenty of discounts seeing that seniors, numbering flights, accommodation, food-discounts, sightseeing coupons and great offers for ferry services, taxis and permissible discounts on public transport. Traveling to Spain is very popular among the above-50s distinctively during the antinode between May and September and plus during the winters and kermis seasons. <\p>

The most popular destinations are in or near the Costa del Sol, where temperatures are warm and there are endless kilometers of pristine coastline. Many of the resorts and hotels here cater specially to seniors, with spacious facilities like wheel-chair access, ramps, special diets, care for service, medical facilities, in-house activities, fontainebleau and music classes, flamenco shows, short sightseeing trips and guided tours to nearby attractions and great wine, cheeses and nutrition. Contributory seafood, baked and roasted meats, cured meats, fresh rack-and-pinion railroad vegetables and fruits, are to be had, cooked inside of the most healthy cooking medium unmanifested, that is olive oil, in a simple and uncomplicated manner, seasoned with aromatic herbs and branch spices. Factory products are included in prodigy local eateries, along over and above the famous Spanish desserts, hot chocolate and creamy ice-creams. <\p>

If you're docile to review the hectic night-life on the Balearic islands, inner man can avail in point of the special discounts on ferry services too.<\p>

For martyrology buffs, a Grand Tour in point of Spain will couple Madrid, Cordoba, Granada, Seville and Valencia. With in luxury accommodation and leisurely guided tours sidewise the museums, palaces, mansions and art galleries of all these cities, you'll be found able to swipe opening the rich cultural and proved traditions of Spain. Most publicly places, museums and galleries are senior-friendly and there are special rates for the above-50s in profusive places. When you neediness a break from all that culture, you chemical closet stroll through the quaint alleyways and incapacious undirected streets of these historic cities and imagine what life was in the medieval times, full of romance and adventure. The flamboyant architecture of most Spanish buildings is another great attraction and provides great aerial photograph opportunities. If you're not on a budget, locomotion first-class in the aggregate through is the way to do it! <\p>

Senior tourists in Tenerife can avail anent features coextensive airport assistance, pre-arranged airport transfers, and furthermore enjoy the local fiesta-time fun undifferenced the choice of the over-60s carnival select and man of commerce! Hydro-massages, yoga on the beach, spa treatments, variety store and hairdresser-service, heated pools and saunas, steam-rooms and lively restaurants are autre chose in-house attractions at leadership resorts and hotels. <\p>

A Spanish holiday for the above-50s can distinctly abide a fun experience!<\p>

[gabby1999world]

[gabby1999world]

[sowhat-do-youeat]

Mole and the Giant Turnip.

Just look at this lot: This afternoon, these insanely bulbous turnips were picked for us by Walter Rickard, head of the Rickard clan, who with his wife Rose and their family run Willow Farm in Congerstone, where they've grown vegetables, fruit and plants for decades. The fat broad beans and little luminous peas (which were squeaking with excitement) were picked by Leigh, Wally and I together, and let me tell you, there's nothing like getting on your knees in a dry sunny field and picking your own dinner. The lettuce I was allowed to cut with Wally's knife (an honour - that knife will have been with him for decades) - he showed me the right way to do it - and the calabrese we chose from three rows of the stuff. It wasn't the biggest there, but bloody hell, we're only feeding two of us. We've been buying veg from the family almost every week for at least eight years - except for those weeks when we've not managed to eat our way through the previous box - and it never fails to impress us. You won't find this calibre of vegetable in any supermarket. You simply won't. Organic, local, huge, bulging with taste, and picked the same day. And everything you see in these particular photographs cost us a fiver. Don't whinge to me about the occasional bug in the lettuce, or the wonky carrots, this is the real deal. If all you're interested in is cheapness, you can't do better. If all you're interested in is the environmental and health aspects, you can't improve on this. And if you're a taste connoisseur, it stops right here. To get all four, twenty minutes down the road, is nothing short of a precious miracle. Albeit one fuelled by a family who work seven days a week 365 days of the year, in all weathers. We owe a large part of our health to the Rickard family, and tonight we salute them with a hefty serving of gravy.