I love trying new ingredients purely for the sake of experimentation and education. So when I saw a package of lentil flour from Joseph’s Grainery, a local favorite, I had to buy it.

Lentils are a pulse and an excellent source of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. A single tablespoon of lentils has a whopping 4 grams of fiber and 3 grams of protein. You can even sprout lentils (delicious on salads) to magnify their nutrition.

Lentil flour is simply ground lentils. If you have a food processor or high-speed blender you are all set to grind your own.

Because they are a pulse they make an excellent option for gluten-free baking and cooking. While I’m not gluten-free I am sensitive to the fact that many find their digestive issues eased switching to a diet low in gluten or gluten-free. This is a recipe all of us are sure to enjoy.

Lentil flour much like coconut flour is very dense so it’s recommended to dilute it with other favorite flours. In today’s pancakes I used oat flour, because it’s an easy one to whip up and I always have oats on hand. If you happen to try these using a different flour, please let us know in the comments how it worked out.

How do they taste?

They have a wonderful light crumb for how dense lentils are and a subtle nutty lentil flavor. They were amazing with fresh strawberries and a little maple syrup.

This single-serving recipe is PACKED with good stuff.

 8 g fiber • 17 g plant-protein • 33% iron • only 300 calories

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Lentil Oat Silver Dollar Pancakes [vegan + gf]

• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 12 minutes
• Total Time: 17 minutes
• Yield: 5 small pancakes

• Calories per serving: 300
• Fat per serving: 4g

additional nutritional information // total carbohydrates: 51g • fiber: 8g • sugar: 7g • protein: 17g • vitamin a: 6% • vitamin c: 5% • calcium: 45% • iron: 33% • zinc: 18% • selenium: 17% • potassium: 15% • manganese: 84% • magnesium: 22% • folate: 53% • pyridoxine/b6: 14% • thiamine/b1: 24%

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup lentil flour (43g)
• 1/4 cup oat flour (28g)
• 1 teaspoon coconut sugar (4g)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (3g)
• dash of sea salt
• 1/2 cup almond milk +1-2 tablespoons if needed
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Instructions

1. Whisk all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until wet and dry are well combined. Don't over mix.
2. Preheat a non-stick skillet on medium heat and pour batter using about an 1/8 cup of batter at a time. A 3-tablespoon scoop works amazing!
3. Cook 2-3 minutes a side. Serve with vegan margarine, fresh fruit, and syrup.

https://feedyourskull.com/2016/06/08/lentil-oat-pancakes/

©Feed Your Skull

Want to eat these with a homemade fruit syrup? Try our 2-ingredient blueberry or strawberry syrups!

I would love to see your food pics! If you give this meal inspiration a whirl, let us know. Leave a comment below and don’t forget to tag a picture with #feedyourskull on Instagram! xx

The post Lentil Oat Silver Dollar Pancakes [vegan + gf] appeared first on Feed Your Skull.

Looking for a summery vegan dessert? Crisps are the perfect choice. Plus it’s a perfect excuse to melt a little scoop of your favorite dairy-free ice cream on top.

I almost called this a cobbler, but then I wondered if that was right, so I did some googling.

A cobbler is a sweet or savory filling topped with a batter or dough of some kind and then baked.

A crisp or crumble is usually a fruit base covered in a streusel-like topping and baked until crispy.

This baby is definitely a crisp. A delicious easy-to-make crisp. I made it using the rhubarb from our first CSA of 2016, a sad-looking green apple, and some sad farmers market strawberries.

I probably could have called this Sad Fruit Crisp, but the rhubarb was really happy, so I didn’t.

Tip   Use the fruit you already have • plums, mangos, banana, blueberries, apricots, or cherries would be

After chopping the fruit I cooked everything down with a little mineral-rich coconut sugar until a thick preserve-like compote formed. The smell was amazing!

While that magic simmered on the stove I preheated the oven and made the oat topping. All you need for a perfect crispy top is some old-fashioned rolled oats, coconut oil, coconut sugar, a little flour, and baking soda.

When the fruit is ready mix it with some oats and pour into a greased 8×8 pan, cover with topping, and bake for 30 minutes.

So easy.

It’s absolutely fantastic a few minutes out of the oven, but also tastes good cold. This crisp will be good for up to a week stored covered in the fridge, but of course tastes best within the first few days.

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Rhubarb Apple Strawberry Vegan Crisp

• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hour
• Yield: 9 servings

• Calories per serving: 231
• Fat per serving: 8

Additional nutritional information // total carbohydrate: 38g • fiber: 3g • sugars: 19g • protein: 3g • vitamin a: 1% • vitamin c: 31% • calcium: 5% • iron: 6% • manganese: 11% • folate: 4% • thiamine/b1: 4%

Ingredients

Fruit Base
• 2 big stalks of rhubarb, chopped (366g or 3 cups)
• 1 large green apple, cored and chopped (229g or 1 3/4 cups)
• 1 1/2 cups strawberries, stems removed (222g)
• 1/2 cup organic coconut sugar (90g)
• 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (53g)
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Streusel Topping
• 1 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (100g)
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour or flour of choice (47g)
• 1/4 cup softened coconut oil or Earth Balance coconut spread (58g)
• 1/4 cup organic coconut sugar (38g)
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda (1g)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease an 8x8 glass baking dish with coconut oil spray and set aside.
2. Add rhubarb, apple, strawberries, coconut sugar, and balsamic to a large sauce pan and cook on medium heat for non-stick or medium-low for metal for about 15 minutes, stirring every several minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 1/2 cup of oats and vanilla extract.
3. In a medium mixing bowl whisk remaining oats, flour, coconut sugar, and baking soda. Add coconut oil/spread and whisk until little clumps form throughout the mixture.
4. Spread fruit mixture in the greased baking dish and cover evenly with streusel topping.
5. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.

https://feedyourskull.com/2016/06/06/rhubarb-apple-strawberry-crisp/

©Feed Your Skull

I would love to see your food pics! If you give this meal inspiration a whirl, let us know. Leave a comment below and don’t forget to tag a picture with #feedyourskull on Instagram! xx

The post Rhubarb Apple Strawberry Vegan Crisp appeared first on Feed Your Skull.

Our second CSA haul is here and it’s full of vibrant luscious greens. We will devour.

I don’t know if I just really missed our share the last few months, but I feel like the full-share has even more veggies than it did last year?? I’ll have to go back to last year and take a look at some of the pictures. Part of it could be that they were just moving the farm to a new location in 2015 and we had two later frosts that effected some of the spring crops.

Week Two Run-Down

1. Bunch of rainbow chard
2. Carrot greens and carrots
3. Bunch of arugula
4. Bunch of collards
5. Bunch of green onions
6. Head of bok choy
7. Bunch of turnips
8. Head of romaine
9. Bag of spinach

Green Life

This was like a cabbage patch head of romaine, round rotund and gorgeously green.

Rainbow chard brings unicorns and faeries out of the woodwork. Eat a lot of it.

A large bok choy as big as my forearm. We love dipping stalks in guacamole. They are also delicious steam/sautéed and even fermented.

The WSU collard leaves are always bigger than your head. What do you do with seriously large collard leaves? Stuff them with fresh burrito fillings and call it a day.

Sometimes I get so used to buying something like baby spinach at the grocery store that I forget there’s full-grown spinach too. These leaves were enormous and so full of flavor.

With turnips you can eat the white globe as well as the green tops. Tops and bottoms are great in stir-fries, smoothies, juices, roasted, and on sandwiches.

Colorful Carrots

Garden-fresh carrots are simply out of this world. They have a sweet earthiness that store-bought will never possess—even organic.

Follow me on Instagram for ideas on how to put these CSA veggies to good use and say Hi! 

xx

The post CSA 2016 • Week 2 appeared first on Feed Your Skull.

Today’s post makes perfect use of these crazy little Dr. Seuss-esque greens we call garlic scapes.

It’s a creamy savory garlic scape pesto that melts in your mouth and all over your favorite pasta or zucchini noodle sauté.

Meet garlic scapes. If you’ve never grown garlic or spotted it in the wild it’s pretty cool. We received these in our CSA share from WSU Organic Farm.

Garlic. We are most familiar with the white-purple bulbous shape that grows just underneath the ground’s surface. From there it stretches up as a tall firm-reedy green stalk and will grow up to 4 ft in height.

At the top it spindles into a white and green cone-shaped flower. The top as seen in the photo above is the garlic scape. These are trimmed near the middle to end of June to help promote full growth of the garlic bulb we love so much.

Eat scapes raw or cooked, they have a mild flavor compared to garlic cloves.

Need cooking inspiration? Sauté or roast them like asparagus.

Other garlic geekery

1. Can grow year-round in mild climates
2. Might scare off rabbits and moles [I wonder if they fend off voles too??]
3.  China produces 81% of the world’s garlic coming in at 44 billion pounds a year
4. Put to antiseptic use during WWI & II to prevent gangrene
5. Garlic will keep longer if the stalk remains attached
6. Braided strands are called plaits or grappes
7.  Elephant garlic is actually a wild leek
8. We’ve been using it for over 7,000 years
9. Grown in every state except Alaska
10. Takes 1-2 months to dry out

The Pesto

Garlic scapes are the base. Because of their size and quantity they balance out the bulk given to traditional pesto by basil, spinach, or kale.

Garlic cloves. Because yes. We are garlic lovers.

Fresh basil.

Ripe avocado. For a creamy full-flavored texture.

Salt.

White miso. Exceptional experience with food usually has a balance of salty, sweet, sour, and fat. Miso adds a little salt, but also that umami sense of flavor. Savory. Mouth-watering.

Lemon juice for the tart sour flavor. The liquid also helps open up all of the ingredients creating the sauce-like texture that we love.

Nooch aka nutritional yeast. Also falling under the umami category, nooch adds a helping of b vitamins and that cheesy flavor we expect and crave.

Print

Creamy Garlic Scape Pesto + Meal Idea

Ingredients

• 8-9 garlic scapes (91g // bunched together about the circumference of a quarter)
• 5 cloves garlic (14g)
• 3 loose cups basil (47g) // non-woody stems are okay
• 2 tablespoons of avocado // quarter of an avocado
• 1 tablespoon organic white miso (18g)
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ground black pepper to taste
• 2-3 tablespoons of water

Instructions

1. Add garlic scapes and garlic to a food processor fitted with the s-blade. Process until ground, but not puréed. Next add in basil, salt, miso, lemon juice, ground black pepper, and nutritional yeast. Pulse 2-3 times then add in the avocado and pulse until blended adding in any water—if needed—to achieve desired texture.
2. Store leftovers in the fridge with a layer of saran wrap pressed to the surface to keep color and flavor fresh.

https://feedyourskull.com/2016/06/01/creamy-garlic-scape-pesto-meal-idea/

©Feed Your Skull

Meal Idea for two

Since we have the propensity to consume large amounts of pasta I measured out a serving size of noodles for each of us.

For once leftovers will be damned.

Cooked the pasta according to package instructions and dropped some broccoli florets in the last several minutes of cooking – usually < 5 minutes.

While that’s going I whipped up a batch of Garlic-Italian Style Chickpeas. They’re warm and soft with a few crunchy edges.

When the pasta is done drain into a colander. If broccoli finishes before the pasta use a slotted spoon to lift it out and then run it under cold water to prevent overcooking.

Stir pesto into the warm pasta – about 1-2 tablespoons each. Serve with broccoli and chickpeas.

Oh man this was a good meal!! I love pesto and it’s another one of those foods I didn’t try until my 20s. On a goal to make up for lost time.

I’d love to see your food pics! If you give this recipe a whirl, let us know. <3 Leave a comment below and don’t forget to tag a picture with #feedyourskull on Instagram!

Have you ever had garlic scapes before?? How do you like to eat them? xx

The post Creamy Garlic Scape Pesto + Meal Idea appeared first on Feed Your Skull.

I can’t believe it’s been a year since I wrote about the vole ravishing of our snap peas in last year’s CSA share, but 365 days plus a few have passed since then. We had a delicious 2015 rich with locally grown organic produce.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried when the CSA season ended in October. To not have to think about what veggies to get at the supermarket from May-October is a marvelous thing. Every decision about what to buy? and how many? were made for us.

Would we know how to shop for vegetables again? How would we ‘survive’ the coming winter months?

I’m happy to report Jeremy and I are doing just fine. We managed to get accustomed to shopping for greens again and even figured out the quantities we could use over 1-2 weeks. Produce miracles.

And now somehow we’re already back at the start of a new CSA season with the WSU Organic Farm. I couldn’t be happier.

We again went with a full-share based on the same figurings as last year. A two-person mostly vegan household (Jeremy’s pescetarian, but mostly vegan). Due to the CSA we eat a LARGE amount of produce this time of year plus recipe creation equals a good investment thus far.

We are excited about our second season of local love.

What happens to our share when we’re out-of-town? We usually offer it to a friend or co-worker and if that doesn’t work out the farm donates shares not picked up. Love it!

Let’s see  what’s in our first share for 2016.

The Haul

Greens

1. bunch of arugula
2. radish greens
3. carrot top greens
4. bunch of kale
5. bag of spinach
6. bag of spring greens
7. bok choy
8. head of green leaf lettuce

How great will this taste in a big salad??

Underground

1. bunch of carrots
2. bunch of radishes

I’ve already turned those lovely green tops into a vibrant vegan carrot top pesto. recipe coming soon

Last year the CSA helped us appreciate radishes on a whole new level. They are something we rarely bought at the grocery store, but each week we found ourselves craving them. We often snacked or added them to salads. We did branch out and roast them a few times. They also taste amazing sautéed with onion and asparagus.

The Others

1. rhubarb
2. Moskvich tomato plant (large tomatoes)

I also used up the rhubarb right away. It went straight into a cobbler with apples and strawberries. Heavenly.

Making the Most of Our CSA

If I had to put a number on how much of our CSA was used versus went to waste in 2015 I would put the used number at 85-95%.

I learned a few things in the first few months as well as over the whole season, like how to keep tender greens from freezing in the fridge.

I also learned what we’re apt to use right away and what doesn’t get used. Carrot top greens were often tossed last year. I think I juiced them once or twice, but felt meh the rest of the time. So with this week’s share I removed and washed the carrot greens immediately and turned them into pesto. Pesto can be frozen or keeps up to a week in the fridge.

I would guess most CSA’s send out a newsletter at the beginning of the week. Ours lets us know what to expect come pick-up time. I’ve started using it as a guide to loosely meal plan or organize different greens into different meals/days.

I’ve brought our dehydrator out of retirement. When we moved rentals last year I kept the dehydrator boxed up and in the back of a closet. I was inspired to get it out when I made rejuvelac recently and I know it will help keep us on track with our share this year. Instead of kale smoothies, I can make kale chips.

Besides a few apples or bananas here and there produce buying mostly comes to a standstill this time of year. It makes our shopping trips substantially lighter.

My goal is to post these hauls as they happen as well as the recipes I create. Have you ever participated in a CSA? What is your favorite part or biggest struggle? I would love to hear from you. xx

The post Did the Voles Leave Us Alone? First CSA Share of 2016 appeared first on Feed Your Skull.

Today’s smoothie is absolutely gorgeous and equally delicious. It’s composed of only 2 fruits and neither of them are bananas.

While I love bananas and will probably put them in most of the smoothies I make until the end of time I’ve come to understand that some folks aren’t fond of bananas and some are even allergic to the lovely banana. sniff sniff

I’m happy to say this smoothie is banana-free. Even though it’s void of bananas this strawberry orange smoothie is incredibly creamy and smooth. Thank you strawberries!

A small pint of fresh farmers market strawberries and organic oranges make up this tasty treat. I added a little water to thin it out and ice to make it refreshingly cold. You can skip the ice if you use frozen strawberries.

I think it took less than 20 seconds to blend to perfection and I did it all in a Nutribullet personal blender cup (not the short one).

The red-orangey coral hue reminds me of the time I added too much tequila to someone’s tequila sunrise. That sun rose and set in a few seconds thanks to my accommodating hand.

This will make a lower calorie breakfast so if you’re prone to mid-morning hunger try adding a few tablespoons of old-fashioned oats and a teaspoon or two of chia flour. The extra fiber and minimal fats will help slow digestion and keep you fuller longer.

Smoothie Time…

I would love to see your food pics! If you give this meal inspiration a whirl, let us know. Leave a comment below and don’t forget to tag a picture with #feedyourskull on Instagram! xx

The post Strawberry Orange Smoothie [banana-free] appeared first on Feed Your Skull.