Naraya Cooking Health Recipe

 THE VEGAN CHRISTMAS PLATE: baked yams, steamed corn and pepper garlic brussels sprouts with mushroom nut loaf, tahini ginger gravy and orange cranberry sauce 

Cranberry sauce:
5 cups cranberries
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup grapefruit juice 

Nut loaf:
1 cup mushrooms
1 cup walnuts
2 cups black beans
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 tablespoon flax seeds mixed with 6 tablespoons water
1 cup oats
1/2 onion
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons dried rosemary leaves
1 tablespoon dried sage leaves
1 teaspoon sea salt (optional) 
2 teaspoons paprika

Brussels sprouts:
2 tablespoons coconut oil
3 grated/finely chopped garlic cloves
Black pepper
1 teaspoon maple syrup (optional) 
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar 
1 teaspoon tamari, soy sauce or Bragg's 
Water, as needed 

Yams:
2 yams 

Corn:
2 cobs of corn

Gravy:
2 tablespoons miso paste
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon ginger root 
Water, as needed

To make the cranberry sauce: simmer the berries with the juices on low, stirring often, until the berries pop and get mushy and it all becomes a delicious gooey red sauce. This will take around 10 minutes. 

Nut loaf: throw everything in the food processor and process until it all is evenly chopped and starting to stick together. Shape into a loaf in a small bread pan and bake for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. 

To prepare the brussels sprouts: on low heat in a pan, sauté the garlic in the coconut oil for a few minutes then add the sprouts and the rest of the ingredients and sauté until they soften, about 15 minutes. I add water to the pan as they cook, this steams them and helps them to cook without having to add more oil. 

To prepare the yams: bake on parchment paper at 350 for 30 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 20 or 30 minutes. See if they're done by poking with a fork, they should be soft all the way through.

To prepare the corn: steam for 5 minutes! 

To make the gravy: blend everything until smooth, adding water as needed. 

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I called this The Glow Bowl because all the ingredients are superb for your skin so it's gonna make you glow from the inside out (sweet potatoes, greens, pumpkin seeds, and whole grain pasta - click the foods for their skin benefits!) But that awesome aspect aside, this recipe is so damn DELICIOUS I don't even care about the nutrition it gives me. I was shovelling this in my mouth in between gasps of pleasure and exclamations such as: "I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW YUMMY YOU ARE!" Seriously, I must have looked 100% nuts, but again, I don't care. This meal tasted perfect and that's all my mind - and mouth - could focus on while I devoured it. I have a little story to tell you now.

I am the worst cook ever.




Up until about two weeks ago, I didn't know how to bake a sweet potato. Not the right way, I mean. Sure, I steamed them. Sure, I would cut them up and throw 'em in the oven until they were edible. Sure, I thought they were okay. But I wasn't enlightened yet. I had no idea you could bake a sweet potato whole and end up with a creamy, steaming, bright orange inside under the skin and you didn't need to use any oil. I have no idea how I have been alive for 21 years and a foodie for several of those without knowing this paramountly important information. It's a mystery on the same level as stone henge. Then everything changed. A couple of weeks ago Jack and I went to have dinner at his parents house while his grandma was visiting. She is one amazing lady who isn't afraid to speak her mind and teach you a thing or two. Let's just say she's been around the block of life. She is a camp cook so she's used to making huge amounts of food for hungry men, and making delicious food at that. She also knows how to make the best veggie burger on Earth, FYI. She has been to a few vegan restaurants with me and Jack and absolutely LOVED the food every time. She is more than respectable of our choice to live vegan. So when we went over for dinner, she had already prepared a special meal for us: rice, salad and baked sweet potatoes. She had the sweet potatoes wrapped up in tinfoil so they stayed warm. When we sat down and I opened mine up, I couldn't believe it. The whole sweet potato was soft and creamy, I could tear it open with a butter knife! Most of you are probably sitting here thinking "Duh, whole baked sweet potatoes are the bomb - how could she not have KNOWN!?" *shrug* I have no good answer but what I DO know is that I wanted to eat all three sweet potatoes she had baked (oh wait, I did), and I definitely stole most of Jack's. I asked her for the recipe, thinking it must be some complicated process only the best chefs understand. She said: "I just throw 'em in the oven at 450 until they're soft. No oil or anything." JAW DROP. Okay I could go on and on about how amazed I was and how joyous the rest of my baked sweet potato-filled life will be, but you get the gist. Baking a sweet potato whole in the oven has rocked my world, and I am forever grateful to Shirley for showing me the beta carotene light.


THE GLOW BOWL: baked sweet potato with pesto pasta, tomatoes + pumpkin seeds

The main stuff:
1 large sweet potato
8 ounces uncooked whole grain pasta
2-4 heirloom tomatoes
2 tablespoon pumpkin seeds

Kale pesto:
1 cup lacinato kale leaves
2 tablespoons basil leaves
1 tablespoon oregano leaves
1-2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon miso
1-2 tablespoons lemon pepper infused coconut oil (see note)
Sea salt (optional)
1/4 cup walnuts
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 avocado
Water, as needed

To make the main stuff: preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Wash, scrub and dry the sweet potato, then poke holes in it with a fork. Set it on a baking sheet lined with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes, flip it over and bake for another 30 or so (although if your sweet potato is smaller you might just need the first 30 minutes). UPDATE: this actually works just fine if you have the oven at 350, and you don't HAVE to poke holes in the sweet potato or have it on tinfoil. Press it with a fork and make sure it's soft all the way through. Wrap in tinfoil and set aside. Cook the pasta according to directions on package. Slice the tomatoes. 

To make the kale pesto: put everything in your food processor and pulse/process until it begins to get the consistency of pesto. If it's too crumbly, add more water or oil as needed. Adjust according to taste. Coat the pasta in the pesto, then serve with the sweet potato and tomatoes, sprinkling with pepper and pumpkin seeds. Voila! 

Note: you don't HAVE to use that special coconut oil but it literally has magical properties so I recommend you get a jar of it. Otherwise you can just use normal coconut oil and add some lemon juice and black pepper to the pesto. I won't judge. 

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Noodles:
3 zucchinis 

Sauce:
2 tomatoes 
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 onion
1 garlic clove
2 dates
2 bell peppers
1/4 cup walnuts

Toppings:
Avocado (optional)
2 sliced tomatoes (I warmed them up in the oven which also intensifies flavour) 
Oregano
Cilantro

To make the noodles: slice the zucchinis into noodles with a spiral slicer, mandolin or a cheese grater. Set aside in a large bowl. 

To make the sauce: blend all the ingredients until smooth, adjusting according to taste. Mix this into the noodles. 

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This is epic. This is pizza. This is how we broke the liquid fast on this fine day (4/20). I have been thinking about making this since like the second day into the fast, and I think it's pretty much perfect. I wanted to create a raw pizza recipe that was NOT nut-based. Nuts are great, don't get me wrong, but they have a high fat content and so you only need a handful every day. The thing is... I wanna eat a LOT of pizza, and so if I wanna eat a lot of NUT-based pizza, then I'm gonna be consuming too many nuts and too much fat for a day! Get it? The base for this recipe is actually zucchini noodles and other veggies! I got the idea from this dude. So in fact you could make the pizza crust and just eat that because you're essentially making a giant bowl of zucchini noodles in a garlicky tomato sauce... then you just have to shape it into circles and dehydrate it for awhile! I am definitely remaking this recipe but stopping at this giant spaghetti bowl stage and nomming that up. Another bonus about this pizza crust is that you can use your leftover nut pulp in it (from when you make nut mylk)! I used the walnut pulp from when I made walnut mylk a few days ago. Now you have even more reasons to make your own fresh nut mylk. It's approximately 1723 times better than store-bought, and you have an excuse to make the best pizza ever. C'mon. No down sides.

All the ingredients in this are organic and most are from the farmers market. *Beaming smile*. I think I've successfully made the switch to an almost all organic diet! Yes it is more expensive, but it is worth it to me. I want to nourish my body with the most excellent food available, and that means organic! Preferably local too (which will be easier now that summer is headin' our way). The flavour of organic food is also incomparably better. These heirloom tomatoes we got from the farmers market are IN.SANE. You don't even know. Run to your farm market and grab some right now. We got them for a dollar each because they were SO ripe that they burst open while the merchants drove them to the market. Better for me! I dehydrated them and holy LAWD they are like pizza bites. So we've now got pizza bites on pizza slices. Life cannot be improved.

In case you wanna hear about the last day of our liquid feast - we went eight full days and most of today in total - it was fantastic! Energy levels were great, I wrote my last final exam with an optimally-functioning brain, then went to see my friends' band perform at a record store (it was record store day). By midnight I was tired and hit the hay. My partner and I likened today to Christmas, 'cause we were so stoked to eat. Having said that, after I got up, did yoga and went for a quick run, I just wanted a smoothie. But I'm not surprised by this since most of my diet is liquid anyways, except my dinners, so this wasn't a huge change for me; but enough of a challenge to make me REALLY excited to eat solids again, and appreciative of such. Whenever I fast my passion for food is recharged 333%, so then all I wanna eat is zucchini pasta and raw chocolate and fruit bowls... mmm.... *drool*. Oh, and this pizza.
Pizza forever.

ULTIMATE RAW VEGAN PIZZA (LOW-FAT, OIL-FREE, SALT-FREE)

Crust:
3 zucchinis
2 tomatoes (I used beefsteak)
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 onion
1 garlic clove
2 dates
2 bell peppers
1/4 cup walnuts (or nut pulp leftover from nut mylk)

Sauce:
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped zucchini 
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Handful fresh basil leaves 
1 date
1 garlic clove

Toppings:
2 tomatoes (I used heirloom)
2 cups mushrooms
1 bell pepper
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

To make the crust: slice the zucchinis into noodles with a spiral slicer, mandolin or a cheese grater. Set aside in a large bowl. Blend the rest of the ingredients until smooth, adjusting according to taste. Mix this into the noodles. You should end up with a huge bowl of really saucy noodles. Like I said, it's hard not eating all of this by itself. Spread this evenly - keepin' it thick - into a big circle on a dehydrator tray and dehydrate at 115 °F for 6 hours or so, until pliable. Flip over and do the same again. Note: you can use your oven at it's lowest temperature if you don't have a dehydrator. Keep checking on your crust as it is drying though, because everyone's will turn out different.

To make the sauce: put all the ingredients a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Spread on your crust.

To prepare the toppings: slice all the veggies thinly, then coat in the apple cider vinegar and place in a warm spot, dehydrator or oven for around 40 minutes until they soften. Decorate your pizza with the toppings, slice, then ENJOY THE HECK OUT OF IT. Optional: add some raw vegan cheese! I also threw on some avocado, cilantro and hemp seeds. 

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CREAMY CURRY CARROT SOUP with BELL PEPPERS, TOMATOES & ONIONS 

4 cups carrots
1 onion
2 bell peppers
3 small tomatoes
Cumin and coriander 
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 dates
Vegetable broth or water

Roughly chop all the veggies. Cover the carrots and onions with vegetable broth or water in a pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let them cook for about 30 minutes or until tender. Throw all the ingredients (including the veggie broth mix) into a high speed blender and blend until smooth and creamy, adding the spices as you like. Serve with tomato slices and cilantro if you like.

Note: if ya wanna keep this one totally raw, skip the cooking part! Simple. 

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I KNOW you guys are gonna be stoked about dis one. I sure am. I've been meaning to make this recipe and share it for some time but for whatever reason I haven't. Until now, obviously. I was walking home and suddenly thought "Hey, why not make raw curry today!?" I made some delicious organic curry last night for me and my parents and it was SO GOOD, leaving me wanting more today... I figured I don't really wanna eat cooked food like that two days in a row - I'm NOT saying cooked curry is evil or anything, my body just prefers mostly raw - so I should make a raw curry recipe that so many of you have been asking for! Honestly, this was just as amazing if not BETTER than the curry last night (which was freaking fantastic in itself).

This recipe is actually super simple and yet has mind blowing flavours. I don't know if I'll ever make conventional cooked curry again (not because it's not healthy, but because this seriously equals it in awesome taste!) I highly recommend finding some organic curry powder, I got mine from a wonderful little raw vegan cafe and store called Tao Organics in North Van, I used it in the cooked curry I made last night and that is probably why it tasted so good. The flavours are fresher and cleaner.

Basically all this recipe is is cashew milk blended with some onion and curry powder. Done. I added some marinated mushrooms and onion and that's it! You can add whatever veggies you like, I bet this would also be incredible with some zucchini noodles... Mmm... Let's get curried! P.S. I have a low-fat and nut-free option - that's right, I'm always watchin' out for ya.


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These are inspired by crab cakes, but I think they're better 'cause they are healthy and cruelty-free. Also they just taste *freaking amazing*. I honestly wasn't expecting them to be as good as they turned out. I gobbled up 3 in mere minutes. They taste great with avocado, just so ya know. Please don't expect this recipe to taste much like the original thing... the ingredients are totally different and there's no cooking involved. Enjoy the flavours and textures for what they are! Veggies are winners all by themselves! But for those of you who are vegan, seriously craving sea food, and are fine with eating cooked food... try Sophie's Kitchen products (my mom loves them).


I never actually ate crab cakes when I was growing up but apparently (thanks, Wikipedia) they are made up of crab meat, bread crumbs, mayo, butter and eggs... yum? Well, we're throwing that stuff out and bringing in fresh veggies and spices. This recipe is based with jicama, onion, walnuts and lemon juice; and spiced with cumin, chili, coriander, dill, salt and pepper. I had trouble NOT eating all the mixture before shaping it into cakes and putting them in the dehydrator. Again: these probably don't taste anything like real crab cakes but they are delicious in their own right. Ya got me!? The spices liven up the crunchy, sweet jicama and zesty lemon, while the onion gives it a bit of heat. Think of this recipe as like a basic burger or something, add some mustard, avocado, tomatoes, etc. and it comes alive. But it's also delicious on it's own. My mom thinks you should add basil and olive oil to make them "pesto burgers", she's smart. Sorry for all the sporadic-ness in this post. There's not really one focus. Hopefully you just scrolled past this because I don't even know what I am talking about now. C'mon, scroll.

JICAMA ONION CAKES with CUMIN, CORIANDER, DILL & LEMON

1 cup jicama
1/4 cup onion 
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Cumin, coriander, dill, chili, salt and pepper (as desired) 
1 cup walnuts

Peel and chop the jicama and onion up into small chunks. Throw all the ingredients - except the walnuts - into your food processor and pulse a few times until it's a consistency you like. Dump into a bowl and set aside. Now process the walnuts into a thick paste and add this to the first mixture, combining evenly so you end up with a mushy mix... it doesn't sound appetizing but other describing words are not coming to mind at the moment. Shape into cakes (I used a large cookie mold) and then dehydrate for a few hours until they hold together; or use your oven at it's lowest temperature to get the same result. Serve with herbs, avocado, veggies, spreads, crackers, or whatever else you like!

Maybe I make things up in my mind - well, I DEFINITELY make things up in my mind, but I mean in this particular instance - because I thought the cashew cheese tasted a little bit like mustard, which conveniently paired deliciously with the fresh tomatoes, herbs and marinated mushrooms. Serve these "burgers" with salad and a raw dessert (look no further than this blog, hint hint) and you will plausibly be able to convince your most critical skeptics that raw vegan grub is actually kick-ass. 'Cause it is.

The weekend was pretty crazy for me. Friday night I went to a classical music concert that my medieval European history professor told me about; it was performed in a church and was beautiful and moving. Then I headed to a club to see my friend's fashion show and dance like it was the end of the world (in a good way). I licked some celebrities and some people licked me; a great night. I went to sleep at 3 AM and got up at 7 AM - an ungodly hour for me, normally - to jump on my dads motorcycle with him and ride up to Lilooet and back! It took about 8 hours and we had gorgeous weather for most of it. The scenery was absolutely breath-taking, empowering and humbling all at once; the autumn mist and colours made it extra special. I love this province. We stopped in at an Oktoberfest my dad's friends were throwing in West Van just so he could say hi and steal some veggie burgers and strudel.

Got home that night at about 8 PM, had a quick shower, gulped down some raw hot chocolate and headed over to my romantic partner's house for a Halloween party with my friends. It was... eventful and entertaining. Slept for a few hours after FINALLY getting to sleep at like 5 AM, then went for ridiculously delicious Indian food. No seriously, it didn't even make SENSE how good that chana masala tasted. I also have a theory that food tastes better when someone else pays for it. Got home that evening and studied for my history mid term exam, which I wrote this morning.

That was my weekend.


Today, I enjoyed the majestic foggy weather up on campus then headed home to be crafty with beads AND creative with mushrooms. Made these. Photographed 'em. Here they are for you.

Much love.