Nourishing Spoon

Have friends coming over and want to make a quick snack?  Whether you are gluten-free, dairy-free or not, these Creamy Crunchies are a crispy, savoury treat!  Daiya has just released into the market a line of different dairy-free cream cheeses!  Whohoo for all of us who are allergic to dairy or are vegan!  I stumbled on to these new products at the health food store in Tenafly, Healthway Natural Foods .  As soon as I got home, I spread some of the Chive and Onion Cream Cheese, which I whipped a little, on a couple of gluten free Mary's Gone Crackers; but that didn't hit the spot.  So I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes which I had picked up from Trader Joe's earlier, and voila!  Instant gratification!  Yumm! X-Crunchy, creamy and yet a little "tarty" and definitely tasty. Creamy Crunchies  6 Mary Gone Crackers 3 TB Cream Cheese  1TB Chopped Sun Dried Tomatoes  Easy snack for any time and perfect for the holidays! ...

If you ever run out of nut milk or organic milk and don't have time to soak the almonds, fret not for those hemp seeds in your freezer/fridge can come to the rescue.  It takes less than a minute to prepare fresh, purely delicious homemade hemp milk. 1 cup hemp seeds 3 cups filtered water 2 medjool dates (pitted) - optional pinch salt 1 tsp vanilla extract Put all the ingredients in a powerful blender (I use a Vitamix) and let it run for 45 seconds.  Skip the dates and salt if you are watching your sugar or sodium in take.  If you want it sweeter, add more dates or some coconut/palm sugar.  Pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.  For a creamier, thicker consistency, add less water. Consume within 2 days.  To prepare chocolate hemp milk, add 2 tablespoons of raw cacao.  Enjoy! Tip:   Add hemp seeds to your list of must have "pantry" items. Click here to find ou...

Right from that first bite into the hot, gooey, stringy mozzarella on a freshly-baked slice of pizza, we feel as if we are in seventh heaven.  Just looking at melted, bubbly cheese makes you salivate. The aroma of oregano and tomato sauce uplifts your spirits.  When we eat cheese, casomorphin an opiate-like, feel good chemical which is highly addictive, is released.  That's why we want more and more....and even more. Just as the cheese on the pizza or the rocky road ice-cream, are so comforting and addicting, there are many who break out with acne, aggravate their sinus issues, or experience bloating, gas or other digestive problems, etc. Going dairy-free is no joke.  However, after watching documentaries such as  Food Matters , Hungry for Change and learning about what really is in that glass of milk, makes it even harder to digest it. When you feel lighter and your complexion starts to clear up, when your tummy doesn't hurt as much and you d...

Couple of years ago I was told that I was allergic to casein.  (Casein is a protein found in milk.)  How was I going to survive?  No more cheese, frozen yogurt or chocolate milkshakes?  How could that be?  Where was I going to get my calcium from? When I was a little girl, my mom used to force me to drink hot milk every morning before I left for school.  Yuck! Gross!  In the winter she used to add a raw egg to the hot milk for more protein and to make me stronger to fight the nasty germs so I wouldn't get sick - I could have died before the germs!  Why didn't I find out about this allergy when I was younger?  Could have been spared the tummy aches, coughing and all the spilled milk!  So many children are lactose intolerant. You can get plenty of calcium from almonds, broccoli, chia and sesame seeds.  Definitely better options, true?  These days milk is full of hormones, etc. Little girls are...

Zoe Vaklinova of RAWbundant Happy Valentine's Day!  I had a great sampling of different flavors of raw cashew feta cheeze  by RAWbundant at Organic Avenue this afternoon. Zoe Vaklinova, Chef and President of RAWbundant, explains that she uses the best quality cashews and the secret for the texture and flavor is that she implements the method her grandmother used to make cheese back in Bulgaria. I couldn't stop after the samples, I picked up some of the garlic and dill feta!  Btw, at the cash register, there were samples of dark chocolate.  How could I refuse - it's Valentine's Day!  With all my love, J xoxo

On this rainy afternoon, I ended up downstairs at the new Fairway on 86th Street. My eyes landed on the freebie samples that they were offering - about to pass the table, I casually asked if the bars were gluten-free?  To my belly's delight, the response was in the affirmative!  "It's gluten-free, dairy-free and sugar-free," said Amotz, one of the Co-Founders of Sheffa Foods. WOW! C'est pour moi.  :) The snack bars are really quite a treat - I like their crispy, crunchy texture and they remind of the Indian snacks, but a much healthier version.  Amoz directed me to their "Zesty Snack Mix."  It was lunch time and I could have easily purchased everything I saw.  I did pick up the Zesty Snack Mix and am happily snacking on it while I type. It's really delish and a great new mix to serve to your guests this holiday season.  You could add chopped red onions, a tablespoon of chopped cilantro and some tamarind chutn...

Happy New Year Dear Readers!  I extend to you my warmest greetings on this fr-e-e-zing cold day!  It was 4F when I left for work this morning but it felt like spring when I returned home as the temperature had climbed up to 19F! Thank God!   I have been blogging in my mind everyday, but was determined today to post something. My delicious dinner gave me the push to post about it.  My son had mentioned that he had made some spaghetti earlier and that had brought on a desire for some pasta - yes, my body was asking for some comfort food. So I quickly boiled 2 cups of gluten-free pasta.  I discovered that I still had some dairy-free cheese in the refrigerator; however, I couldn't remember when I had opened the packet. I sniffed to see if there was any odor and crossed my fingers while I made sure there was nothing blue (mold)!!!  The angels were looking after me today! I was in luck! I was going to have Penne with Cheese! Yeah! Why the exclamation and exci...

Gluten-free Steel Cut Oats with a Yummmm Aroma and Delicious Crunch! "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."   Adelle Davis Once that alarm goes off in the morning, some of us hit that snooze button while some of us jump out of bed and start our monotonous daily routine or RAT RACE!  Be it scrummaging for a pair of clean, matching socks or pair of pantyhose with no runs, putting on a tie, looking for the back of a favorite earring, or the car keys, while stuffing a piece of toast in our mouth and sipping hot coffee out of those new Dixie cups (that we see the commercials for), little do we realize that we are gulping down the most important meal of the day - BREAKFAST!  Breakfast is the meal you consume to break the fast that you have maintained since last night's dinner (Oops! Excuse me - midnight snack)!  Breakfast is the meal that sets the "thermostat" for your body. Hence, the saying "Eat breakfast like a king...

Super Bowl Sunday!  While most people were busy preparing delicious edibles for half-time for their Super Bowl party, I was a giving a workshop on sugar. The audience was truly amazed to see how much sugar there is in a 2-litre bottle of Pepsi!  56 tsps!!!  I doubt if anyone who attended today's workshop had soda at their Super Bowl party! When checking out nutritional labels, often times we rush and don't realize that the grams of sugar listed are for a single serving and not for the entire product.  4 gms of sugar are equal to 1 tsp of sugar.  Next time you reach for something from your pantry or refrigerator, look to see how many grams of sugar it contains.  Soon you will be a math wiz - an expert in dividing things by 4 'cause you'll want to know how many teaspoons of sugar you are consuming.  We consume approx. 150 lbs (30 five pound bags) of sugar each year!  If you want to lose weight, try becoming "refined s...

Last Thursday, when I got back from my meditation class I was absolutely famished!  I walked straight into the kitchen, and without taking my coat off, I started opening and closing the refrigerator and pantry doors a few times - it's a little salsa dance in sync - you open the refrigerator, then you close it (disappointed), you open the pantry, then you shut it (clueless), then you go back to the refrigerator - one, two, close and open! Finally, my eyes caught hold of the corn and lemongrass soup which I had bought from Whole Foods.  I love Thai food and was excited when I saw that they had a gluten-free corn soup with lemongrass! Yum! Love that lemongrass!  While it was warming up, I took out the boiled corn cob that I had in the refrigerator and started removing the corn from the cob. I love texture and the extra corn made it taste more homemade. After I added the corn, I noticed on the side of the box a suggestion to serve with noodles!...