Vegan recipe: pear vinaigrette

Nothing beats changing your salad dressing in order to add a whole new taste to your regular veggie side or main dish or green salad.

Ingredients (for a big salad)

• 0,5 a ripe pear
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• A dash of lemon juice
• 1 tsp Dried parsley (can be fresh)
• Himalaya or sea salt
• Ground black pepper
• 1 tsp of agave sirup or ginger & pear jam (recipe will follow) – optional

Preparation

Put all the ingredients (except the salt & pepper) in a blender and mix until you obtain a nice consistency. If the consistency is too liquid, add some more pieces of pear. If it’s too thick, add a bit more olive oil and lemon juice.
Season with salt & pepper.

Tip: replace the ripe pear with red fruits such as strawberries, or with Cantaloupe melon. If you don’t have jam at home, use some agave syrup if you like.

Yogi recipe: vegan parsley pesto

I’m a huge fan of pesto and I’ve already posted a recipe of kale pesto before. Now that kale is no more in season (at least not here in Belgium), I’ve started exploring other ingredients to make pesto. Parsley is an excellent replacement for kale, it’s cheap too. It’s very nutritious, easy to find, to cultivate yourself (on your balcony if you don’t have a garden). Parsley is a great source of antioxidants, vitamin A and C, folic acid and iron. I love to mix parsley with sunflower seeds in this pesto recipe. Sunflower seeds are high in vitamin E (anti-inflammation), magnesium (keeping nerves and muscles relaxed), selenium (improved detoxification).

Ingredients

• Bunch of parsley*
• A handful of sunflower seeds
• Juice of one lemon
• Olive oil
• Sunflower seed paste (optional)

Tools

• (Jazz max) slow juicer

Preparation
Wash the parsley. Put it in your juicer, add sunflower seeds in between sprigs of parsley (to not jam your machine, don’t put all the seeds in at once). Squeeze the lemon. Mix the parsley & sunflower seeds paste with the lemon juice and cover it with olive oil to keep it fresh longer in your fridge. You can add some sunflower seeds paste if needed as well as black pepper.
The pesto is delicious on toast or with raw or baked vegetables as well as with a pasta or gnocchi of your choice.

In this picture (right), the pesto is served with orecchiette pasta and some nutritional yeast.

* I use organic produce.

 

Yogi snack: NAKD raw bars

I discovered these Nākd bars some years ago in London. They are delicious and a very good snack for an after yoga practice craving 😉

They are 100% raw, vegan, sugar+wheat+GMO+soy FREE with no hidden extras. Unfortunately, currently they are not (yet) organic or Fairtrade. Personally, I find that snacks can be part of a healthy diet, as long as you don’t use them as your main meal and it remains an exception rather than the rule. Nākd bars are an easy way to eat nutritious, healthy food without compromising on taste.The bars are made from natural ingredients such as fruits and nuts which are squeezed together into a bar and are easy to bring where-ever you go.

Besides some retail outlets (that I yet have to discover) they are only available through web order in Belgium: 18 euros for 18 bars. 6,20 euro shipping, which is waived if you order 3 boxes or more. I’d say, order a bunch with some friends and enjoy the healthy snack every now & then!