Corn casserole is a dish that is as easy to put together as a boxed cake mix is to transform into a cake – it’s a one-bowl sensation that takes minutes to prepare! Even so, the ingredients list is not exactly the most redeeming and could use a makeover. Traditionally, cornbread mix is folded into butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, milk, and cream-style corn, and the result isn’t something that is doing your body any favors.

In this fluffy vegan cornbread casserole recipe, we not only nix the animal products but also embrace healthier versions of the refined sugar and flour. Cornmeal and spelt flour are supported by the sweetness of applesauce and the creaminess of vegan butter and nut milk. Baked to a warm, fluffy finish, the casserole tastes nothing like compromise and everything like the real deal.

What You’ll Need

The ingredients are pretty straightforward and not hard to find. When it comes to the almond milk, I strongly suggest making your own to avoid the sneaky sugar, stabilizer, and preservative add-ins.

Meanwhile, it’s important to note how you can turn this recipe gluten-free. Corn is naturally gluten-free, but the spelt flour and baking powder are not. To go gluten-free with this recipe, replace the spelt flour with oat flour or with a store-bought gluten-free flour mix. For the baking powder, all you have to do is replace the three teaspoons called for in the recipe with two teaspoons of cream of tartar and one teaspoon of baking soda.

Vegan Corn Casserole Recipe

Serves 8

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups cornmeal
• 1 cup spelt flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups almond milk
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/3 cup vegan butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 1/2 cups frozen corn kernels
• 4 scallions, finely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a bowl, mix together the cornmeal, spelt flour, baking soda, and salt. Fold in the nut milk, applesauce, melted vegan butter, and maple syrup. Once well combined, stir in the frozen corn kernels and scallion. Stir until just combined and then transfer the mixture to a lightly greased casserole dish.

Pop the casserole dish into the oven and bake for about 45 to 55 minutes, or until the cornbread casserole is tender throughout and has a golden brown glow.

Serve while it is still warm to enjoy the casserole at its fluffiest. Once it cools, it will have a bread-like consistency.

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The post Fluffy Vegan Corn Casserole Recipe appeared first on EcoSalon.

Breadsticks. Now that I have your attention, imagine enjoying them whenever you wanted without worrying about the empty calories, high carb content, or general low nutritional profile. Here’s a breadsticks recipe that erases such worries away.

When it comes to making low-carb “dough” that acts as a flatbread or pizza base, cauliflower has emerged as the shining buttress of choice. The hearty vegetable breaks down to a rice-like texture that can be mixed with eggs, cheese, and spices to resemble a wetter, spreadable dough. When cooked, you wouldn’t care to detect the difference – it’s that good. This breadsticks recipe is a lot like that of a cauliflower crust pizza dough only it churns out a lot thicker and a lot cheesier nibbles. Enjoy aside hummus, a tomato sauce, or ranch dressing dip.

In this recipe, cauliflower doesn’t just replace the white flour found in traditional breadsticks; it adds a boost of nutrition to an otherwise nutrition-starved food. Cauliflower is an excellent source of vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B6. It is also a great source of choline, dietary fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, manganese, phosphorus, and biotin. In a 100-gram serving of cooked cauliflower there are 23 calories, 142 milligrams potassium, 2.3 grams dietary fiber, 73% of the RDA of vitamin C, and 10% the RDA of vitamin B6. Cauliflower is known to reduce the risk of cancer, boost cardiovascular health, fight inflammation, improve brain health, support digestion, aid in weight loss, balance hormones, and build stronger bones.

Biting into each breadstick, you get more than just a delicious burst of flavor in your mouth – you get a health kick. To augment those effects, be sure to choose the other ingredients wisely. Opt for pasture-raised eggs and goat milk mozzarella-style cheese over their mass-produced, mainstream counterparts as well as a Pecorino (aged sheep’s milk cheese) instead of regular cow’s milk Parmesan.

Low-Carb Cauliflower Breadsticks Recipe

Makes 10 to 15 breadsticks

Ingredients

• 1 head cauliflower
• 1/2 cup + 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup + 1/2 cup shaved Parmesan (or Pecorino) cheese
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh basil
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cut the cauliflower head into florets and add to a food processor. Pulse the cauliflower until the cauliflower resembles rice. Transfer the cauliflower rice to a nut milk bag or thin cotton towel and wring out the natural juices of the raw cauliflower. This step will help to prevent soggy breadsticks.

Place the cauliflower rice into a large bowl and add the one-half cup mozzarella cheese, one-half cup Parmesan cheese, egg, garlic, basil, parsley, salt, and pepper. Fold the mixture together until well combined.

Spread the mixture onto the parchment paper so that it resembles a rectangle and is about one-half inch thick. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Top with the remaining one cup mozzarella cheese and one-half cup Parmesan cheese. Turn the oven to its broiler setting set at high and cook for another one minute, or until the cheese has melted and lightly browned.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let the mixture cool down for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing it into breadsticks. Serve and enjoy!

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The Goodness of Cauliflower: Roasted, Simmered, Souped Up
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The post These Amaze-Balls Breadsticks Swap White Flour With a Vegetable (Carb Who?) appeared first on EcoSalon.

For some, living gluten-free is their only option to feeling healthy and operating normally on a day-to-day basis – its freedom from discomfort and, often, debilitating pain. For many of us, it is a gesture that can subtly affect our health, from improved skin to increased energy. Luckily, for whomever embraces a gluten-free lifestyle, bread is no longer out of the equation. The following five gluten-free bread brand are the best thing since sliced bread.

5 Gluten-Free Bread Brands

Barely Bread

1. Barely Bread

This grain-free bread brand has nothing to hide. It offers bread slices, baguettes, and bagels, which are all based in almond flour, egg whites, eggs, coconut oil, psyllium husk, sweet potato flour, almond butter, hazelnut meal, vinegar, and honey. Barely Bread’s products contain an impressive list of ingredients that are also GMO-free, certified paleo, and gluten-free.

2. Food for Life

Food for Life makes the iconic Ezekiel bread that has been around before green juice, kale, and paleo were even a thing. Their bread products are made from sprouted grains and offer yeast-free, gluten-free, vegan, and diabetic-friendly selections. Its Ezekiel 4:9 bread is crafter according to the Holy Scripture verse Ezekiel 4:9 that reads, “Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils and millet, and spelt and put them in one vessel…”. Food for Life’s products are kosher and free of GMOs, refined sugars, and preservatives.

3. Ener-G

Ener-G breads range from the regular loaf and English muffins to hamburger and hotdog buns. Each has its own gluten-free base, such as tapioca, white rice, flax, corn, and brown rice.

4. Rudi’s Organic Bakery

Rudi’s bakery’s buns, rolls, ciabatta, toast, bread, tortillas, and wraps are made with organic ingredients and, if you so choose, to be gluten-free. The brand’s gluten-free loafs come in cinnamon raisin, deli-style with caraway seeds, hearty fiber, multigrain, and original flavors.

5. Glutino

Glutino doesn’t do just bread: it does crackers, flours, cookies, pizza chips, bars, breadcrumbs, and pastries. But its breads are worth writing home about. They’re soft, chewy, and won’t have you craving the real thing. Based in tapioca starch, corn starch, potato starch, Glutino’s breads are gluten-free and delicious!

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The post 5 Gluten-Free Bread Brands That So Don’t Taste Like Cardboard appeared first on EcoSalon.

While much of conventional farming is doing more harm than good to the climate, wheat may be an important crop for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So, would wheat still be such a dietary pariah if it could help to curb climate change?

According to a new paper published in the recent journal Nature Communications, we may want to give wheat another chance. “The study found that a combination of a few basic farming practices boosted wheat production and put heaps of carbon back into the soil–more than enough to compensate for the GHGs emitted in the process of growing it,” reports Civil Eats.

It’s been thought that wheat actually contributes to greenhouse gases by producing carbon, but the roots and stems of the plants that are left in the ground at the end of the growing season actually replenish carbon in the soil, which offsets emissions. Civil Eats explains: “That means reducing the climate impact of wheat hinges on maximizing soil carbon storage and minimizing inputs, all while growing as much grain as possible.”

The researchers farmed several dozen test plots, with four different cropping techniques, measuring the results. The test plots were either grown with “a three-year rotation of fallow-wheat-wheat, another of fallow-flax-wheat, a two-year rotation of wheat and lentils, and continuous wheat plantings,” reports Civil Eats. “What the researchers found surprised them: All of the plots had a negative carbon footprint.”

All of the wheat returned more carbon than was emitted, the researchers discovered. “In part, the researchers attribute this result to the way they calculated the total carbon balance; many previous studies failed to consider the role of soil carbon at all,” Civil Eats explains.

The researchers discovered that keeping the crops in the ground instead of fallowing the land (keeping it unseeded) was a hugely important factor in the decrease of wheat’s carbon footprint. But the researchers also noted the pressure of continuous planting, which can require carbon-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It turns out though, the lentils used in one of the test plot groups were hugely beneficial in the reduction of fertilizer, according to Civil Eats. “On average, fields planted with lentils required 30 percent less fertilizer than fields planted continuously with wheat, and produced just as much grain.”

The lentils behaved much like cover crops do. A common practice in organic farming, the lentil increased the nitrogen.

“Overall, the scientists estimated that for each kilogram of wheat they harvested, the soil removed up to a third of a kilogram of CO₂ from the atmosphere,” explains Civil Eats. “That bodes well for the large swaths of the planet where Spring wheat is grown in semi-arid environments similar to the North American Great Plains, like China, India, and parts of South America.”

Does that mean we should all increase our intake of wheat? After all, it’s a grain that’s become increasingly less tolerated—from the rise in Celiac disease to other gluten sensitivities. But some experts think that those “sensitivities” aren’t as real as people think. In other words, if you’ve been avoiding wheat because you think it upsets your body, it may be more of a psychological reason than a digestive one.

Another benefit to wheat is that it’s not genetically modified like other major U.S. grown crops, soy and corn. The U.S. is also the largest producer of wheat in the world, so it’s a local food in that regard,  unlike some of our other beloved commodities. Supporting American farmers is important to our economy and our food system. Of course, all wheat is not created equal. But it can be part of a healthy diet for humans and the planet.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Image: John Loo

The post Can a Loaf of Bread Decrease Greenhouse Gas Emissions? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Concerned about how your sourdough starter will fare when you’re on vacation? Drop it off at the sourdough starter hotel.

Sweden is known for baking culture. If you’re not baking your own bread, then you know a good bakery to get it from. The bread is usually dense – none of that fluffy, baguette stuff – and hearty. The stuff good quality, no-nonsense Scandinavian meals are made of.

So maybe it’s no surprise that in Stockholm, there’s a place to store your sourdough starter when you go on vacation. Yes, for a mere 200 Swedish kronor (about $30) a week the Urban Deli bakery on Södermalm will take your sourdough starter and give it all the love it needs while you’re off galavanting on vacation.

Åsa Johansson at Urban Deli told The Local about how the idea started as a nursery for sourdoughs. “Then we took it further and came up with the hotel idea. It was just for fun really, we didn’t think it was going to get this big,” she said.

As owners of sourdough starter know, having one requires some maintenance. To keep it active it needs regular additions of flour and water, and while a dried one can be brought back to life, the thought of letting a living sourdough starter die out is unthinkable to some. Plus, your travels may have you dreaming of baking, and this way, you get get a new crusty loaf started the second you return home.

The amazing thing about sourdough starters is that if you take good care of them, they can last a lifetime. And then some. In fact, the Urban Deli has a sourdough starter collection that it runs in collaboration with Josefin Vargö, a student at the University College of Arts and Crafts and Design, who came up with the idea for her masters project. A “living archive” so to say. They have one that comes from America and dates back 130 years.

According to the Living Archive website, “Anyone with a sourdough starter can take part and join the network. It investigates how to use existing platforms of knowledge to create new social relationships. The project is under constant development as new forms of information and contacts are established.”

Sounds like it’s time to pack our bags and take our sourdough starters to Sweden. Or if a plane ticket is too much, just send in your sourdough starter by post:

Josefin Vargö
Brännkyrkagatan 13b
118 20 Stockholm

Bon voyage little sourdough starter.

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Image: Bev Sykes

The post There’s a Hotel for Your Sourdough Starter… in Sweden appeared first on EcoSalon.

Would you pay 42 cents for this 1977 version of egg nests?

A 42 cent lunch would be nice! However, I’m not quite sure I’d even fork over that amount, measly it may be, for the above egg nest featured in a March 1977 publication of Homemakers. From the looks of the recipe, there’s nothing in the dish but the elements to a satisfying breakfast! The picture is what gets me. The egg yolk looks raw and the egg white puff looks like some sort of mold overgrowth – not the best thing to imagine on a sensitive morning stomach.

My modern adaptation of an egg nest breakfast uses similar ingredients to those in this retro recipe, but the result looks a lot less worse for wear. I use the egg whites to coat the bread and seal in the moisture, form a nest for the egg yolk, and then give the dish a hint of sweetness with honey and a touch of light earthiness with the fresh mint.

French Toast Egg Nests

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon milk or cream
• Dash of sea salt
• Dash of black pepper
• 2 slices of a thick, fluffy bread
• 1/2 teaspoon butter
• 1 tablespoon honey
• A few mint leaves for garnish

Directions:

Separate the egg white from the egg yolk. Reserve the egg yolks for later, keeping them whole.

In a small bowl that has the width (or greater) of the length of the bread slices, whisk together the egg whites, cream, salt, and pepper.

Over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Soak both sides of each piece of bread in the egg white mixture so that both faces’ areas are covered, and place in the saucepan.

Let the bread sit over the head for 1 minute, or until slightly browned, before flipping. Once you rotate the bread, delicately pull apart the center of each slice to create a small nest. Fill each nest with the reserved whole egg yolks, one for each bread.

Pour any remaining egg white mixture in the nests as well, equally distributing it among the two. Don’t worry about the egg whites leaking outside of the nests. Embrace the rustic look!

Immediately transfer the entire saucepan into the oven. Broil on high until the egg yolk cooks to your liking – approximately 2 minutes.

Remove from oven and present the dish in the center of the breakfast table while the toast is still in the saucepan. However, not before drizzling with honey and garnishing with mint.

Enjoy!

There is nothing quite like flipping through the pages of grandmother’s faded cookbooks in all their imperfect glory — the worn edges, the rampant sauce stains and the cluttered pencil marks. With their casseroles, ham dishes and affinity for elaborate presentation, the Betty Crockers and the Joy of Cookings provide a glimpse of food before it all became so much more complicated. At EcoSalon, we love good vintage inspiration, even when it comes to food. Welcome to Vintage Revamp, where we take old and classic recipes and refresh them with a modern-day twist.

Image: JBCurio, Aylin Erman

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post Vintage Recipe Revamp: Egg Nests With Fresh Mint and Honey appeared first on EcoSalon.

Tis the season for picknicking-whip up one of our team’s 10 must eat dishes.

With record high temperatures soaring around the world, there’s no better time to keep the cool outdoors—under a tree and on a grassy knoll. And, foodie or not, the principles behind ecopsychology say there’s no better way to reconnect and nurture relationships than out in the fresh air. Breaking bread together with brie (or sticky chocolate cake), makes the whole picnicking affair that much more meaningful.

So, grab a blanket and try one (or  all 10) of our favorite picnic recipes—a compilation of our team’s favorites and enough to make a complete menu.

Snacks & Appetizers:

• Fruits & Nuts
• Brie & Bread
• Picnic-side Guacamole

Main dishes:

• Quinoa Salad
• Smokey Jicama Salad with Kale and Corn
• Cold Soba Noodle Salad

Desserts:

• Sticky Chocolate Cake
• Nutella Donut Muffins
• Strawberry Shortcake

Drink:

• Honey Ginger Sparkling Lemonade with Rosemary

1. Fruits and nuts

For our shelter writer, K. Emily Bond—who sometimes seeks refuge under trees—fruits and nuts are a staple picnic snack. While it may sound sinfully simple, we know that sometimes it’s the simple things that make life so much sweeter. All it takes is 5-minutes in your kitchen, and you have a delicious medley of homemade trail mix. We love this “Not Your College Boyfriend’s Trail Mix” from our archives.

2. Brie & Bread

If you’re anything like Behind the Label columnist Jessica Marati, whose picnic mantra is “take knife, dip in Brie, slather on baguette,” you’ll love this grab & go solution. It’s literally that simple.

Directions:

• Pick up your favorite brie & local, freshly baked bread
• Grab a knife and voila, enjoy!

3. Picnic-side Guacamole

Crowd pleasers like me, (your Vegan This columnist and fashion writer) will agree, there’s nothing like fresh, made-on-site guacamole to get a picnic party started. My boyfriend and I love this dish because it’s so versatile (avocados are your canvas), so fresh (see everyone’s eyes light up as you whip this up before their eyes), healthy (packed full of heart- and skin- healthy fatty acids and vitamins) and easy to tote (just pre-chop your garnishes, grab a few avocados and a to-go container, and you’re out the door).

Ingredients:

• Ripe avocados (as many as you need depending on the number of people you’re serving—to be safe, plan on 1 avocado per person)
• 1/2 onion
• 1 handful cilantro leaves
• 1/2 red or yellow bell pepper
• 1/2 lime
• 1 teaspoon, or so, salt
• 1 bag organic tortilla chips or crackers of your choice

Other:

• To-go container
• Serrated knife

Note: Adjust the lime, salt and garnish amounts according to taste and the number of people you’re serving

Directions:

Pre-chop the onion, cilantro leaves and bell pepper. Put in a to-go container large enough to hold the finished guacamole (this will also serve as your mixing bowl). Squeeze the lime and sprinkle the salt over the veggies and mix together. When you arrive at your picnic spot, simply cut your avocados open, remove the seeds and scoop out the fruit. Add to your veggie, lime and salt mix and mash together until you’ve reached the desired consistency. Grab some chips or crackers and enjoy!

4. Quinoa Salad

Life, according to Foodie Underground columnist Anna Brones, is all the better when quinoa is involved. “Quinoa salads are my go to summer meals. They’re easy to make and easy to pack, which means that if you make a big batch one day you have leftovers for a few more. They’re also the perfect picnic item, light enough that they feel like summer food, dense enough that you’re full after eating them. As a base I tend to do a mixture of red and white quinoa, greens and some type of vinaigrette. Then you simply add in whatever you have laying around the kitchen. Nuts, vegetables, fruit… whatever you’re in the mood for. But the Summer Carrot and Date Quinoa Salad is one that I can’t live without, so if you’re in need of a recipe, start there.”

5. Smokey Jicama Salad with Kale and Corn 

One of our resident raw foodies and trendy fashion columnists, Johanna Björk, packs her picnics with a healthy punch.
“This cold salad is super easy to make, which makes it perfect for an impromptu summer picnic. It also doesn’t get soggy easily, which means it can keep for a while in that picnic basket, even if you didn’t bring a cooler. The jicama is fresh, somewhat sweet and crunchy, the kale is hearty and nutritious, the fresh herbs are so summery delicious, and the chipotle gives it a bit of a kick. It also just happens to go really well with a cold beer.”

Ingredients:

• 1/2-1 jicama (depending on how large it is), thinly sliced or grated
• 6 leaves kale, thinly sliced
• 1-2 cups corn (leave out if you want it to be 100% raw)
• 1 large handful mint leaves
, olive oil, 
hemp seeds
, chipotle chili powder
, sea salt

Directions:

Mix the jicama, kale, corn and mint leaves together. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and chipotle chili powder and mix well. Finish with a sprinkle of hemp seeds.

6. Cold Soba Noodle Salad

Fashion and food really go hand-in-hand, and Rowena Ritchie, our west coast fashion editor, proves it with this dish from none other than Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.

“Goop’s cold soba noodle salad is my go-to pot luck recipe because it’s so easy to make. I generally have soba noodles, mirin, soy, and sesame oil in my cupboards, so I just have to grab some scallions and cilantro. My meat-eating friends seem to love it as a side, and if it’s the only vegan dish at the party, it makes for a full and nutritious meal for me! If you can get hold of Eden Shake’s Furikake, I highly recommend using it—it’s full of protein, vitamins A, B & C and calcium and it tastes great. And, I’ve always found the recipes on goop to be top knotch. Gwyneth Paltrow is known for both loving food and for being health conscious.”

7. Sticky Chocolate Cake

There’s nothing like a fika-style picnic to elevate the mood. Just take it from our Swedish chef and artist extraordinaire Johanna Kindvall. And, if you tend to picnic with a core group of friends, this sweet delight will never get old—change it up with a splash of rum, a dash of mint or even some licorice or cardamom.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs (or one large duck egg)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 4-6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Valrhona)
• 1 teaspoon salt (less if using salted butter)
• 1 cup freshly milled almonds (or almond flour)
• 4 oz butter
• mint leaves (optional)
• powdered sugar (optional)

Directions:

Whisk eggs and brown sugar together in a bowl. Stir in the milled almonds, cocoa powder and salt. Add the butter and stir until smooth. Pour the mixture into a greased 9” spring form.

Bake the cake in the oven at 350 F for about 15 minutes. The cake should just be set on top and sticky inside. Let the cake cool down. Decorate with some fresh mint leaves and/or powdered sugar. Serve it plain or with whipped heavy cream.

Note: if you want to spice up the cake I suggest the following flavors: rum, cognac, mint, licorice or cardamom. Just add the flavor to the batter before baking.

8. Nutella Donut Muffins

If you’re picnicking with sensitive foodies like me (think vegan, gluten-free, soy-free and more), then this delicious, easy to pack recipe is the perfect picnic companion. All you need is a re-usable container to carry these in, and you’re sweet-tooth ready.

For the donut muffins:

• 1 ¾ cup flour – follow the following gluten-free flour blend:
  • ¾ cup sorghum flour
  • ¼ cup sweet rice flour
  • 3/8 cup white rice flour
  • ¼ tapioca flour
  • 1/8 cup almond flour
• ½ teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup oil (I used cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil)
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 egg substituted (I blended 1 tablespoon ground flax seeds with 3 tablespoons water)
•  ¾ cup non-dairy milk (I used almond milk)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Nutella (I made this homemade, vegan version)

For the coating:

• 3-4 tablespoons vegan butter (I used Earth Balance coconut spread)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F, and grease a muffin tray with vegan butter or coconut oil.

In a medium bowl, whisk together your gluten-free flour blend, and add in the baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar, egg-substitute and non-dairy milk. Add the dry ingredients and stir only until fully combined.

Follow these instructions to whip up your Nutella hazelnut spread.

Place 2 tablespoons of the muffin donut batter into your prepared muffin tins. Add 1 teaspoon of Nutella and cover with approximately 2 more tablespoons of batter until the muffin tins are ¾ full.
Bake for 18-22 minutes. (Mine were perfectly done after exactly 18 minutes).

Prepare your coating by melting your vegan butter in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together your cinnamon and sugar.

While the muffins are still warm, shake them out of the pan on to a cooling rack.
Dip your muffin donuts into your melted vegan butter and then into your cinnamon sugar mixture.
Allow to cool for approximately 10 minutes. These are perfect when warm and still wonderful when cool (up to 3 days—especially if making these gluten free). Store in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator if storing longer.

Note: These would also be delicious filled with your favorite homemade jam, in lieu of the Nutella, or simply plain, filling-free.

9. Strawberry Shortcake

For an authentic taste of summer, strawberry shortcake embodies it all. Earlier this summer, I packed all the parts of this dish (biscuits, strawberries and cream) and assembled it on-site at a friends-of-EcoSalon picnic. I love this version, adapted from Martha Stewart, for its freshness and simplicity. Vegan, gluten-free or not, you’ll fall fast for this fresh delight.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ pounds (6 cups) strawberries—rinsed, hulled and quartered (For the fullest flavor, I recommend using local and fresh strawberries.)
• 1 ¼ cups + 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 cups gluten free flour blend
  • 1 cup sorghum flour
  • 1 cup white rice flour
  • 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour
  • 1/2 cup potato starch flour, minus 2 tablespoons
  • 2 tablespoons almond flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons cold (1 ½ sticks) unsalted vegan butter, cut into small pieces (I used Earth Balance coconut butter)
• 2 cups coconut cream (I used So Delicious coconut creamer, blended with approximately 3 tablespoons of dissolved agar-agar to thicken)
• 2 egg substitutes (I blended 2 tablespoon ground flax seeds with 6 tablespoons warm water)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a medium bowl, toss the prepared strawberries with ¾ cup sugar. (I suggest starting with ½ cup and tasting to see if more sweetness is needed.) Let sit to bring out the juices.

In a food processor, pulse together your gluten free flour blend. Add the baking powder, ½ cup sugar and the salt, and pulse until combined. Add the cold butter, and pulse until the mixture resembles course meal with some pea size bits of butter remaining (pulse approximately 10-12 times).

In a medium bowl, whisk together ½ cream (before the agar agar has been added to thicken) and the egg substitute. Pour over the flour mixture, and pulse until some large clumps begin to form (pulse approximately 20-30 times).

Using a half-cup measuring cup, gently pack dough into the cup, invert and tap out on to a lightly buttered or parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat to form 6-8 biscuits.
Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool for at least 15 minutes.
Beat the remaining 1 ½ cups cream, with the prepared agar-agar mixture, 2 tablespoons sugar and vanilla until smooth and creamy (Note, this will not form peaks like a traditional heavy whipping cream, however, I assure you the taste and texture will not leave you craving cream.)

Slice the biscuits horizontally with a serrated knife. Spoon the strawberries and their liquid over the bottom of each biscuit just before serving. Spoon your whipped cream over the strawberries, and top with the other biscuit half.

10. Honey Ginger Sparkling Lemonade with Rosemary

Amy DuFault, EcoSalon’s Editor-in-Chief says, “I am always the last one to leave the party because I won’t stop talking. This lemonade from our lovely Foodie Underground columnist Anna Brones is a sure cure for talker’s mouth. You can spend an entire picnic having good conversations and the ginger and honey make it so that your voice never breaks. Oh, and that you are of course refreshed. That’s important.”

Ingredients:

• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup water
• Juice of 7 Meyer lemons
• 1/2 cup minced ginger
• 6-10 full rosemary stalks
• 1.25 liter bottle of sparkling water
• Ice cubes
• Optional:
• Your liquor of choice. We recommend bourbon or vodka.

Directions:

To make simple syrup, place honey, water and two rosemary stalks in a saucepan and warm over medium heat while constantly stirring until honey is completely dissolved. Add in ginger. Leave on heat for a 2-3 more minutes, regularly stirring, to increase rosemary flavor. Let sit for 30-60 minutes to cool down. Note: for a stronger rosemary flavor, muddle the rosemary first and let the simple syrup sit for longer.

Strain simple syrup into a pitcher and add in lemon juice, top off with ice cubes and sparkling water.

Garnish with rosemary and serve in mason jars.

Images: Paul and Christa, Rich Anderson, Pink Mochi, Jennifer Barckley, Anna Brones, Johanna Bjork, Goop, Jennifer Barckley, Amy DuFault

The post EcoSalon Team Picks: 10 Picnic Foods to Impress Your Friends appeared first on EcoSalon.

A beautiful short video that explores the process of baking bread. 

There is an artistic process in baking. That process is beautifully captured in this video by Kinfolk, which is a simple exploration on making Dutch Oven Bread. Taking the necessary time to slow down, the process of bread making ends up being a process in much more.

In learning how to make bread for this film we had to get used to how the process drove our day, leaving us only increments of time to do other things. After a few batches we embraced it, getting those little things done that never seemed to find their way into our schedule. Books were read, letters written, house tidied. All which felt just as much a part of the recipe as adding water and kneading dough.

Dutch Oven Bread from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

The post Lustables: The Art of Bread Making appeared first on EcoSalon.

There are smarter ways to get your fiber.

Is there any food in the world more celebrated than bread? It’s been a daily staple in the human diet for thousands of years, and it’s been drilled into our heads that a meal isn’t complete without it. The words “fiber” and “wheat bran” are practically interchangeable. You know you need fiber for good health, so bring on the bread, right? The fact is, the mass of gluten you’ve got clutched in hand is not the best source of fiber at all. In fact, it’s a bad source. Here are some reasons why, along with some healthier high-fiber alternatives.

In America, we wear our love of wheat in mid-western farm fields and on our supermarket shelves. But most of the wheat grown here is only of two or three varieties that have been crossbred and hybridized over decades to become high-yield plants. This lack of diversity – known as monoculture – means that wheat requires more chemical treatment in the form of fertilizers and pesticides.

White bread products are among the junkiest foods you can put in your body, full of empty calories and practically bereft of nutrition. Worse, the chemicals used to whiten flour so that bread will look fluffy and appealing can include carcinogens like benzoyl peroxide and chlorine dioxide. Even wheat bread usually contains bromide, a dough conditioner that disrupts the endocrine system and actually slows down metabolism. The UK banned bromide in bread in 1990, and Canada did the same in 1994, but it’s still present in nearly all flour and bread products sold in the United States.

For many people, bread is difficult to digest, and for those with gluten sensitivities, it’s literally poison, causing a severe immune response. Even if you aren’t gluten intolerant, bread can have negative impacts on your health. Bread is a high-glycemic food, meaning it causes your blood sugar to spike. According to Dr. William Davis, a preventive cardiologist in Milwaukee, two slices of wheat bread increase blood sugar more than a candy bar. This results in a sugar crash, leaving you feeling shaky, foggy and hungrier than ever two hours later.

Ultimately, the most important point is that bread doesn’t have nearly as much fiber as you think it does. Refined white bread might have a single gram per serving, while even the most robust whole-grain varieties usually don’t top 4 grams. Per calorie, bread is one of the most inefficient ways to get your fiber. Does that mean bread is totally bad for you and you shouldn’t eat it? Not necessarily, but you definitely shouldn’t rely on it for your fiber needs, especially because there are so many other foods that kick bread’s ass in the fiber arena.

The World’s Healthiest Foods’ website notes that for pure fiber-packing power, nothing beats beans. Navy beans are the best, with 76.4% out of 255 calories coming from fiber. Dried peas, lentils, pinto beans, black beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans and soybeans have similar nutritional value. Barley rates as high as many of these beans, which isn’t surprising given that it’s a grain. But did you know that cinnamon, turnip greens, eggplant, collard greens and raspberries are among the healthiest high-fiber foods? Other surprising sources of fiber include figs, raisins, avocado, papaya, broccoli, green peas, pears and sweet potatoes. And of course, whole grains that haven’t been processed to death are still a smart choice.

As with anything, eat bread in moderation. A diet rich with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as minimally processed whole grains, is the key to making sure you’re getting the real fiber you need.

Photo: goblinbox

The post Bad Fiber: Why Bread Isn’t Best appeared first on EcoSalon.

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1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

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2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

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3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

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4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

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5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

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6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

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8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

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10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

Images: little blue hen, FotoosVanRobin, St0rmz, Taras Kalapun, avlkyz, R’eyes, lucianvenutian, Karl Palutke, Emily Carlin, blgrssby

The post 10 Foods You Didn’t Know Were Processed appeared first on EcoSalon.