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Christina Najjar

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Cilantro Lime Quinoa

April 29, 2013 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

Do you ever come up with a super creative menu for when you’re planning to have guests, but come the day of, you just can’t seem to have time to cook everything? Me too. It happens even if I’m not having guests. I like to bring something along with me when I’m invited for dinner. I often end up bringing cupcakes, because that’s what I’m known for among my friends and my family.

Cilantro lime quinoa is a really good side dish to bring for a dinner. It tastes special without requiring the effort of typical “special” food. I made a salad and a smoothie at the same time as I was making the quinoa. That’s how little effort it requires. You can even prepare ahead of time and soak the quinoa in the broth the night before to avoid having to cook it.

This turned out to be one of those dishes that I just couldn’t stop eating. I was planning to have it last me half the week, but I ended up eating it in two sittings. Oops!

Cilantro Lime Quinoa

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
2 cups veggie broth
1 tbsp lime juice
1/3 cup cilantro

Directions
Rinse quinoa and drain. Place it in a medium saucepan with veggie broth and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low. I like to cook mine uncovered to allow some of the liquid to evaporate, making slightly crunchier quinoa. If you use low sodium broth, you may need to add a bit of salt, depending on your taste.

In the meantime, chop the cilantro and juice the lime.

When the quinoa has absorbed all the liquid, let it cool down a bit before adding the cilantro and lime juice. If you add everything in right away, the cilantro may wilt a bit.

Filed Under: Recipes, Sides, Vegan

Balsamic Roasted Veggies (vegan, paleo)

February 28, 2013 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

I always see really fancy recipes for veggie side dishes that I want to try. But what about the simple recipes? Sometimes, they’re the best. Especially if you want to whip up something that requires little effort. One morning, I had a sudden urge for balsamic roasted veggies, so I dug out whatever vegetables I had in the fridge.

Yes, I like to eat vegetables with my breakfast. It’s pretty much the only way I can ensure I eat enough vegetables in the day. Read tips on how to include more vegetables with your breakfast here. The awesome thing about this side dish is that it contains vegetables of different colours. This means that it has a wider variety of nutrients.

You can use any veggies you have on hand, but keep in mind required cooking times for each item. It’s a good thing I don’t mind slightly crunchy potatoes, because not all my veggies cooked evenly. I won’t include the potatoes in the recipe. If you decide to change any of the items in the recipe, try to substitute them evenly.

Balsamic roasted veggies

Balsamic Roasted Veggies (vegan, paleo)

Ingredients
1 cup broccoli florets
2 small or 1 large red pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
4-5 baby carrots, chopped
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp black pepper
salt to taste

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400F.

Wash and chop all the veggies. Combine all ingredients in a casserole dish. Cook for about an hour, removing from the oven every 15 minutes to toss. Serve hot, or store in an airtight container.

Filed Under: Paleo/Grain-Free, Recipes, Sides, Vegan Tagged With: corn free, dairy free, egg free, gluten free, grain free, nut free, paleo, side, soy free, sugar free, vegan

Hummus in 5 minutes (vegan)

February 4, 2013 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

When I was little, my mom used to make authentic Lebanese hummus regularly. I’m not going to lie. I hated it. I’d put up a fight every time she’d try to feed me the smallest amount of hummus. Then, when I became a vegetarian in high school, I discovered store bought hummus. It doesn’t taste like the authentic stuff, but hell, it’s so much better!

Until recently, I didn’t know that I had a functional food processor. How is that possible, you may ask? I had a food processor sitting in a box in my apartment, but when I had tried to use it in the past, I hadn’t assembled it properly. So, when I tried turning it on, nothing happened.

Every time I wanted hummus, I would dish out the $5 for a small container of store-bought hummus. Then, last week, it dawned on me that I keep all the ingredients for hummus on hand. No need to do groceries to make it, and it’s super healthy! And this time, when I used my food processor, it worked!

I like to use canned chickpeas because it’s so effortless, but you could just as well cook them from scratch. I decided to adapt this recipe to make it taste like the store bought stuff. More lemon, less tahini. More yummy, less icky.

Homemade hummus

Hummus in 5 minutes (vegan)

Ingredients
1 large can chickpeas (19oz/540mL)
1/3 cup reserved chickpea water
5 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp tahini
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Directions
Drain the can of chickpeas into a cup so that you can add some chickpea water to the humus. In a food processor, add all the ingredients and process for 1-2 minutes, stopping at least once to scrape down the bowl.

Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Filed Under: Chickpeas, Recipes, Sides, Vegan Tagged With: appetizer, corn free, dairy free, egg free, gluten free, grain free, main course, nut free, side, snack, soy free, sugar free, vegan

Probiotic Sauerkraut

January 18, 2013 by Christina Najjar Leave a Comment

Homemade sauerkraut

Anyone who spends enough time with me knows how I feel about probiotics. In your digestive system, there are all sorts of microorganisms that help you stay healthy, your gut flora. Medication, alcohol, sugar, and many other factors can harm your gut flora. This can lead to all sorts of health problems. Probiotics help restore your gut flora. Probiotic supplements are available, but not all are of good quality, and the good ones can be really expensive. This is why I’m a fan of sauerkraut (the benefits, not the taste, bleugh). It cost me all of $2 for the cabbage and about $5 for the salt because all I had on hand was iodised salt. The salt will last me for many, many uses.

Now, I know you might be asking yourself why you would make sauerkraut when you can conveniently buy it at the supermarket. Unless otherwise specified, the jarred stuff you buy at the grocery store doesn’t have the probiotic benefits. So, if you’re interested, let’s get started!

Probiotic Sauerkraut

What you need
1 cabbage (red or green)
Non-iodized salt (I use 1 tbsp, but work to your tastes)
A large bowl (or two)
Jars – I reused two pickle jars
Patience

How to proceed
Quarter the cabbage. Remove the really thick ribs and the core. Take one quarter, lay it down on one of the flat sides, and slice it as thin as you possibly can without adding your fingers to the ingredients. Put the shreds into a bowl. I needed two bowls to fit all the cabbage.

Add the salt now – it will help you for the next step. Because I was using red cabbage and I didn’t want to go to work looking like a smurf, I used plastic gloves, but I just ended up ripping right through them. You might as well not bother with that.

This is where the fun begins. What you’re going to want to do now is start “massaging” the cabbage. Basically, you’ll be grabbing handfuls of shreds and making a fist with your hand, squeezing the cabbage. Kind of like when people with curly hair scrunch their hair. What this will accomplish, after you’ve repeated enough times, is squeeze the juice out of the cabbage and soften it. The salt helps speed that up. The first bowl took me half an hour because I wasn’t sure what to do, but the second bowl took me about seven minutes. You want there to be enough of the cabbage juice to cover all the cabbage once you pack it down in a jar, which is precisely what you’ll want to do at this point (unless you’re easily amused and want to keep squeezing the cabbage).

Make sure the cabbage is packed down as much as it can be in the jar so that the juice level stays higher than the cabbage level. Any cabbage which isn’t covered runs the risk of developing bad bacteria. Now you close the jar and you wait. I suggest doing other things while you wait, like going to work and sleeping, because you’ll be waiting a while. For me, that was four days. Some people say it takes longer though. Open the jar once a day to release the (foul-smelling) gasses. If your house/apartment/unspecified dwelling is too warm, you may start to see mold. You can remove a thin layer of sauerkraut without having to discard the whole batch, if that happens.

When it’s done, the finished product will be a different colour than the cabbage was when you bought it (or stole it, not that I encourage this). A few days after it’s started fermenting, taste it once a day to decide when it’s at the point when you like it. When it gets to that point, you’ll want to transfer it to the fridge.

Because I dislike the taste of sauerkraut, I add a generous amount of olive oil and black pepper when I dish it out, and it actually turns out to be quite tasty. You can cook it or fry it or whatever it is that people do with it, but that gets rid of the probiotic benefits.

Filed Under: Make Your Own, Paleo/Grain-Free, Raw, Sides Tagged With: corn free, dairy free, egg free, gluten free, grain free, nut free, paleo, side, snack, soy free, vegan

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