I was in New York earlier this month for a wedding. It was truly one of those New York minute type trips, but I did fit in some yummy eats and walking around my old haunts in Union Square, the East Village and the Lower East Side. I lived in many neighborhoods in New York over the years, but my first apartment was on Avenue B and I later lived off the F train in Brooklyn, which made those neighborhoods the ones I was often in.  I also worked downtown, so the Tribeca Whole Foods was one of my go-to grocery stores.  The wedding reception was in Tribeca, and I was in need of a few snacks – I got to eat a lovely meal at the wedding, mainly because the Tribeca Grill had no problem coming up with a gluten-free vegan dish on the fly, kudos to them, but I still wanted some snacks.

I was tired and congested after a super early start to a day of travelling (let’s just say Amtrak almost broke) followed by immediately going to the wedding (which was lovely), so I was grateful to down the green juice.  I am not a fan of the Blueprint cleanse system (I am not a fan of liquid cleanses, period), but I do like that they have vacuum packed green juice that I could buy at Whole Foods.  This is a world apart from getting any other kind of bottled green juice or smoothies I have seen at stores – most taste off to me since they are not freshly pressed, which is why I prefer to make my own or buy freshly made, but I am always thrilled to find vacumn packed freshly pressed (as it can be stored for a couple of days).

I was also very drawn to these kale chips, which I bought despite not being organic (I am usually a stickler about organic greens). I assumed it was because I was dying to try spicy miso kale chips (it was almost 11pm when we were at Whole Foods so I was not thinking that clearly).  I will be making my own version but once I looked up New York Naturals Kale Chips, I concluded it was because of the name of the company.  When I lived in Brooklyn, I always lived close enough to a health food store by the same name on Flatbush, so had shopped there for years.  Turns out, that store is closed as the couple owning it went into the kale chip business:

Amy Hamberry was working in the New York Naturals health food store owned by her and her husband when she started wondering why they couldn’t get a good supply of the hot new item: kale chips. She decided it was time for New York to have its own kale chips, and started making them and selling them in the New York Naturals store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. With plenty of feedback from customers, she eventually created a delicious chip that is now sold in more than 180 stores in New York City and on the East Coast as well as online.

The chips did so well that Amy and Joe decided to shut down the retail store in order to focus on kale chip production, opening a facility at the Monti Building in Brooklyn, a 100 year old warehouse with one of the country’s largest solar installations on the roof.

Small world, right? I hope these chips become more widely available and switch to organic. The spicy miso chips were amazing.

The snack bars are British and called Pulsin’ Bars.  They are a less sweet, more complex version of a Lara Bar. Perfect post-wedding dessert.  I ate half of each that night, and the other halves the next morning before going to the hotel gym.

As for the DC discovery? Within a few days of returning from New York, look what I found at the Foggy Bottom and P Street Whole Foods locations:

As someone who likes her green drinks (they do wonders for keeping my hydrated and my belly happy) this was a very exciting discovery. I still plan to make juice and green smoothies at home, but I do have a bottle of the above in my freezer for a back-up, which I probably will use once a week (and replace so I have one on hand).  Also I love that I can always pick up a bottle as a snack, whenever I want. For me green juice is either half of breakfast or a late afternoon snack, while green smoothies (loaded with seeds and protein powder in addition to fruits and veggies) tend to be a small meal.  Still, freshly pressed green juice within a few blocks of where I live is a pretty sweet addition to my options.

Last weekend, after yoga on the mall, my friend and I walked back to the Dupont/Logan Circle area, and we both had the worst craving for something frozen – I mean, witness how we had spent a couple of hours:

You cannot see the 90 degree temperature, but you can see how blue that sky is – i.e. no clouds, at all.  My yoga mat was so warm it was starting to get sticky in a strange-is-it-melting kind of way.  This would give anyone most people (there is always an exception I suppose) a craving for something icy. 

My friend was debating between gelato and tangy frozen yogurt, whereas I just had one thing in mind Blue Mountain Cashew Creamery Cappucino Ice Cream.  I generally make my own ice cream (black mission fig, spicy chocolate, strawberry, or pumpkin are the recipes I have shared) to keep the sugar as low as possible, but I love the vast selection of vegan ice creams out there, many of which are gluten-free and several have lower sugar options.  When I stumbled upon Blue Mountain Cashew Creamery last year, I was in love, mainly because the ingredients are exactly the same as I would use for making ice cream myself (i.e. they skip the stabilizers and so forth), and it was excellent. I stumbled on it over Memorial Day Weekend last year – I left the office and stepping into the oven-like heat made me instantly remember summers and my mom and my grandmother eating coffee ice cream (a favorite of theirs) which I found too bitter at the time, much preferring hazelnut and chocolate. Food nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it?  That was the day I came upon Blue Mountain and when I saw Cappucino, I was thrilled.  I also wanted raspberry ice cream to go with it (I have no idea why) but settled for frozen raspberries for expediency’s sake.

The upshot of this is that I told my friend this whole long story about how this raw coffee ice cream is wonderful and how I last had it a year ago and how I remember not liking coffee ice cream as a child, but now I enjoy it.  Basically, I was rambling, but she was kind and figured my brain had melted along with my yoga mat, though she’s known me for almost a dozen years, so she must know I ramble any time of year. We get to Whole Foods and guess what? That location no longer carries Blue Mountain Cashew Creamery.

Standing in the frozen foods aisle, I resolved that I needed to share this ice cream brand with you – it competes with Luna and Larry’s Coconut Bliss for my favorite packaged ice cream (though I also like certain So Delicious flavors).  I remember Blue Mountain Cashew Creamery being a little less sweet and a little more dense then either Coconut Bliss or So Delicious, and I did like that the ingredient list would mirror a homemade cashew ice cream.  If you like Coconut Bliss Mocha Maca Crunch, you would probably like Cashew Creamery Cappucino, particularly if you added some unsweetened cacao nibs.  

I would have picked up Coconut Bliss Mocha Maca Crunch but that is also no longer carried at my local Whole Foods, and none of the So Delicious flavors were calling my name. Incidentally, while Cashew Creamery and Coconut Bliss are all agave based,  So Delicious uses a variety of sweeteners in their ice creams – some are entirely low-glycemic, while some have small amounts of cane juice, so be sure to read the labels if that is something you are focused on.  Having found nothing that drew me in in the ice cream aisle last weekend, I was about to go home and make myself some sort of cacao nib ice cream, when I spotted this:

I had been wondering lately if I could make an almond milk ice cream recipe in my ice cream maker, so this piqued my interest.  Mint Chip was the only certified gluten-free flavor available – the texture is about as close to gelato as I have seen for vegan ice cream, so I am definitely interested in more flavors, as I used to love gelato.  

I hope you are having a lovely weekend where ever you are, even if no holiday is involved. And if ice cream is involved, no matter your preferences, I am sure you will find something wonderful.  Or, you can always make your own.

This is the first Memorial Day Weekend since 2008 that I have not worked or, as I was in 2010, stuck in traffic, so I decided to celebrate it by doing something I have said I would do pretty much every federal holiday weekend (you know, the ones that also mean that some great sales are going on) for about two years, i.e. spend some time thinking about clothes and trying stuff on and taking advantages of sales.  As someone who used to have a job that generally involved working federal holidays and at least some part of those weekends, today was particularly novel in that sense.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about clothes lately (and even making a couple of spreads in my art journal, such as above). At one point in my life, what feels like long ago (basically the four years after college), I was very focused on clothes, and then pretty much figured out my personal style and stayed with it.  I tweaked it a bit in law school, but not very much.  Then, as I put on weight after law school, I streamlined my approach to clothes to almost have a uniform – in fact, when I did this end-of-year meme in 2008, I wrote that my personal style was lots of black suits during the week, comfy bamboo clothes on the weekends, and ballet flats. That had been the status quo for a while and continued to be the status quo until late 2010, when I started thinking about updating my casual clothes – I figured that as I had lost weight, I should first focus on weekend wear, since that was where I had put the least time and thought for a long time.  That’s when I bought some new sweaters and skinny jeans and pants.  While weight loss was not mandatory for me to start exploring clothes again, it definitely served as a concrete reason – after all, my wardrobe was shrinking in options, as opposed to shrinking with me (wouldn’t that be great by the way?).  Eventually I moved into shifting my style with workwear too, with new suits and dresses entering my wardrobe.   

Almost all of that shopping was done online which, while wonderfully convenient, is not the best for pushing one’s comfort zone. The nice thing about trying on clothes at a store is that you try on more more variety without commitment – I just think it sparks more creativity with clothes, and I felt long overdue for an afternoon of browsing stores.  So I did just that today.  I went to two favorite stores and tried two fairly new-to-me stores. 

Initially the plan was to come home afterwards and make salads and do laundry, but since my husband and I were by Lebanese Taverna already, we decided to go there for an early dinner.

The only issue?

I did not bring my camera. I was so focused on shopping and being practical today (not to mention planning to eat dinner at home), that for the first time in a long time I did not bring my camera.  Normally, I do not like to do pictures from my phone on the blog, but the food was so good, it was worth sharing with you all.

I have a like-hate relationship with Lebanese Taverna. When the food is good, it is excellent, but once in a while they have an off night.  Today, however was great. One of the things I appreciate very much about the restaurant is its commitment to gluten-free and allergy-friendly dining.  I recommend you ask for their gluten-free menu and their allergen list and cross-reference. I consistently find a nice number of gluten-free vegan options.

Also – their hummus never has an off night and is naturally gluten-free and vegan.  In fact, I would say that when you go to Lebanese Taverna, you must order one of their hummus options (their menu has a Hommus “bar” where you can pick different toppings). I went with the garlic hummus:

Alongside it, you see a picture of their m’saka, which contains oven-roasted eggplant, tomatoes and chickpeas.  I also had the Fattoush salad, adapted to be gluten-free by omitting the pita bread. I love the pomegranate dressing:

And doused the hummus and m’saka with homemade harissa. I also requested cut veggies as my dippers for the hummus (though gluten-free rice crackers are also available):

It was a great dinner, and I brought the m’saka and some of the harissa home. My husband’s (non-vegan, non-gluten-free) dishes were fantastic too, so I think we will be back sooner rather than later, at which point I will be sure to bring my camera.

Thank you for the lovely comments on my post announcing my return from my accidental blog break – it was so nice to see familiar names as well as new ones.  In return for your kind comments, I am making good of my promise to share a recipe for a cilantro hummus.  If you know me, you know that might not necessarily involve two mainstays of hummus, namely chickpeas or tahini.  I have had such luck using black-eyed peas in hummus and dips (as with this lemony dip or this spicy lemon hemp hummus) that I was inspired to see how black-eyed peas would combine with cilantro. I made a couple of versions of this, and the one with scallions was my favorite (no surprise, considering how much I love my recipe for scallion cashew vegan cheese).

What really makes this recipe, though, is avocado oil, and for that I have to thank JL for her recipe for Lentil Humus.  In describing this recipe, she mentioned that avocado oil is light and fresh-tasting – it was those two words that actually made me finally splurge on avocado oil, which I had been eyeing for a while, but kept putting off buying.  I knew from making cilantro-based hummus in the past that somehow olive oil did not quite work with it, as I always found myself adding more lemon for a fresh note.  As I was playing around with the recipe, Gena posted a Cilantro Hummus as well, which is fantastic by the way.  This dip is a little earthier and even heavier on the cilantro.

I am submitting this recipe to this month’s Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten-Free, created by Naomi of Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried and hosted by the lovely ladies of Flip Cookbook. The theme is Mother’s Recipe Box – oddly and sadly, there are no recipes that I associate specifically with my mom, though she always cooked when I was growing up, and still cooks a lot today. I do associate specific techniques and methods, however, and the fact that she does not like to follow recipes to the letter. I should add my mom would always shoe me out of the kitchen when I was a child and teenager, telling me it was more important that I go study than learn how to cook. I soon realized this was my mom’s approach to asserting some feminism in my upbringing – i.e. valuing the importance of studying and excelling at school over homemaking – and for that I am grateful. I had that revelation when I was about 13 when she told me about a friend of hers in school who was smart and studious but whose parents only encouraged her to excel at homemaking and how upsetting it was to her friend (this was, I should add, the 1950s in a very conservative and fairly rural town, and I had met this friend growing up). So in that sense, I appreciate her approach to my lack of homemaking skills as it was a real departure for her.

Practically speaking, though …I graduated from college and had to teach myself how to cook and, err, make a nice bed (I never had to make my bed growing up). To this day, I make a lumpy bed and cannot understand how to achieve nice crisp corners – but I think I am caught up on the cooking front. Since then I have cooked with my mom, and realized she is more about techniques and methods than specific recipes. And, sometimes to my frustration, she does not like to be hemmed in by recipes. I bet she would make the above dip using mint instead of cilantro which would probably be pretty delicious, come to think of it, but is not the recipe. So for Mother’s Day, I think this recipe is perfectly appropriate for my GAHIGF submission – my mom loves all hummus and bean dips that I make, and the recipe is just as much about a method and creativity as the recipe, so it seems appropriate..

Cilantro Scallion Black-Eyed Pea Dip (gluten-free, vegan, soy-free)

Inspired by Gena’s Cilantro Hummus and JL’s Lentil Humus and some of my own recipes, this dip is fantastic atop all the usual hummus dippers – veggies, crackers, tortillas or directly off a spoon.  All you need is just a tablespoon of avocado oil, but for a decadent result, feel free to double or triple that amount.

• 2 cups cooked black-eyed peas (equivalent to 1 15oz can drained. Eden Foods is a good brand with transparent standards for managing allergens, including gluten)
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ½ to 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon avocado oil
• 1 cup cilantro (I used stems and leaves)
• ¼ cup chopped scallions

Warm black-eyed peas by steaming or simmering for three minutes.  Place in bowl of food processor. Add remaining ingredients except for cilantro and scallions and process until smooth, occasionally stopping the food processor to scrape down the sides.If you find that the hummus is very thick, feel free to add a tablespoon of water to make the processing easier. Add cilantro and process until incorporated.  Add scallions and pulse briefly until incorporated. 

I am submitting this to several blog events, including:

• Wellness Weekend, hosted by Ricki of Diet, Dessert and Dogs.
• Sugar-Free Sundays, hosted by Flip Cookbook
•  Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, hosted by Amy of Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free.
• Gluten-Free Wednesdays, hosted by Linda the Gluten-Free Homemaker.
• My Legume Love Affair, created by Susan of Well Seasoned Cook and hosted by Mharo Rajasthan’s Recipes.

The one thing I dislike about taking blog breaks (and mine are generally unanticipated and few and far between) is that it takes me a few posts to reconnect with my blog-flow, so to speak.  Despite now five years of blogging, if I take a blog break, I become the blogging equivalent of tongue-tied. And shy. And feeling like I have nothing to say, which is, of course, impossible, since blog breaks invariably happen when I have a lot going on.  That said, I have learned over the years that the best thing to do is to get right back into blogging, and the flow comes back too.  So here are a few things that have been going on:

1. New job, same lunchboxes – I started a new job last month.  While I am still practicing the same type of law I was before, it has definitely been a chance to my routine. My commute is a bit longer, my hours are different, and it is all so new.  One thing that has not changed, though, are my lunchboxes – I still bring lunch to work on daily basis.

2. Maintaining routines -  Historically, whenever I start something new in my life (job, school), my workout routine, if I had one at the time, would always suffer. Last month, when I started this job, I told myself this time would be different and, with some advance planning, I have been able to continue working out 6 times a week in some fashion despite the new job and working through a weekend for a conference, not to mention being out of town for a wedding (see #4).

3. Life in Washington, DC – Cherry blossom season started early, which meant that the Cherry Blossom Parade  (see, cherry blossom float, top of page) was kind of late by comparison. I had seen the cherry blossoms before, but the parade was new to me. 

4. Weekend in New York – my husband and I went to New York for a wedding.  Even though we were only there briefly, I did make it to JuicePress, One Lucky Duck and Babycakes – we also walked around the Lower East Side and the East Village, which were two neighborhoods we spent a lot of time in when we lived in New York. 

5. I have grown to like beets – Gena had the brilliant idea to suggest trying them raw, which I did at SweetGreen since they have raw cubed beets for their salads.  And I like them.  Roasted beets are still far from my favorite (such as in the salad above from Zaytinya’s – I will be sticking to my tried and true favorites there from now on) but I love my raw beets in salads – they are like carrots in texture. 

6. I did more yoga on the mall – Cherry Blossom Yoga last month was not enough – I went back for DC Yoga Week’s Yoga on the Mall event this month.

7. I think I might stop the weekly updates – I started them as a way to keep myself accountable for doing a variety of things, including keeping up with working out – but the thing is, my weeks often fuse together (I don’t like the term bleed together) and I have maintained my working out and yoga schedule. I would like to get back to the point of consistent (even daily) updates rather than an attempt to do them weekly. 

8. Life, gluten-free – I have been thinking a lot about it lately, seeing as I am coming up on a three year anniversary, but also in light of the Domino’s not-so-gluten-free-pizza-crust fiasco. 

And with that,  I must get some sleepbefore early morning yoga.  I will be back soon (really!) with a recipe for cilantro hummus.   

One of my absolute favorite children’s series is Anne of Green Gables -  I loved her imagination, her friendship with Diana, her college years in Anne of the Island, and of course, always wanted her to end up with Gilbert.  While the books are at my parents’, somehow, the Anne of Green Gables Cookbook is on my cookbook shelf (my edition is from 1988 and has survived the years well). I made several dishes from the book as a child, including the Raspberry Cordial (not to be confused with the raspberry liqueur that got Diana drunk) and the Lemonade.  These two recipes, along with several others, are true to the books in terms of ingredients and techniques. The others, a little less so.

When Zoe of Z’s Cup of Tea announced that the theme this month for Go Ahead Honey It’s Gluten-Free (created by Naomi of Straight to Bed Cakefree and Dried) was Fictional Food – Treats and Dishes from Children’s Stories, I immediately pulled down the Anne of Green Gables cookbook.  After debating a stevia version of the Rapberry Cordial, I settled on an interpretation of Marilla’s Caramel Pudding Sauce (you know, the same sauce that had Anne saying “Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at fining a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce).  In the book, the Pudding Sauce is served with Marilla’s Plum Pudding, but had to be served dry considering the mouse mishap.  My version of the Caramel Sauce below has no mice, or butter, flour or refined sugars.  I used dried mission figs as the base to for both its caramel undertones and dried fruit flavor reminiscent of the plum pudding itself.  You could also use pitted dates instead. 

Reinterpreted Pudding Sauce (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Soy-Free if you do not use soymilk) – Makes 2/3 cup.

I used dried mission figs as the base to for both its caramel undertones and dried fruit flavor reminiscent of the plum pudding itself. You could also use pitted dates instead. The recipe is sweet but not very sweet, and the palm sugar serves more to enhance the caramel flavor than to sweeten, so feel free to add additional palm sugar or stevia.  This pudding sauce could be a topping for dessert tarts, but I ate it with apple slices and I could see it working atop some banana soft serve too. One last note: the flavor is not a traditional dessert sauce so might not appeal to all palates (my husband, for one, really disliked it – more for me!) 

• 1 cup dried mission figs
• 2/3 cup hot water and 2/3 cup room temperature water
• 2 tablespoons tahini (I used this roasted tahini variety)
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened non-dairy milk (optional – avoid rice milk as it is too thin. good choices are almond, cashew, hemp,coconut milk and soy milk)

Trim figs of any stems. Place in a bowl. Pour hot water over figs. Soak figs for at least an hour. In a food processor, place figs and soaking water and tahini.  Process until you have a chunky purée. Scrape mixture down the sides. Dissolve palm sugar in remaining 2/3 cup water by whisking together in a bowl (if your sugar is very grainy, slightly heating the water should help).  Whisk in vanilla extract and salt.  Add mixture to food process and process until smooth and puréed, stopping to scrape down sides.  For a creamier texture, add in non-dairy milk and briefly process to incorporate. 

In addition to GAHIGF, I am also submitting this recipe to the following blog events:

• Wellness Weekend, hosted by Ricki of Diet, Dessert and Dogs. While a treat, this recipe does contain whole foods ingredients.
• Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, hosted by Amy of Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free.
• Gluten-Free Wednesdays, hosted by Linda the Gluten-Free Homemaker.

I do not always remember the blog’s anniversary on time (see, 2010), especially as my initial post no longer exists, but I do remember how I wrote my first post on April 11, so I wanted to be sure to mention this milestone today. 5 Years!   Thank you so much for reading – I keep blogging because I love to write, but also connect with all of you, so I am so grateful you come visit. 

Remember these small notebooks which my friend Christina gave me?

I finally put them to good use, as I decided to a couple of months ago.  I decided to turn them into mini art journals, as my friend Lisa had suggested.  I had been meaning to turn these journals into a tiny project, but only finally got around to it when I met up with Lisa last week to catch up, have tea, and indulge in some creativity (she brought knitting, I brought a few art journaling supplies).

I particularly liked working with a smaller journal because I ended up using many of the smaller pictures I had cut from magazines but which never managed to look right for use in my larger art journal.

A couple spreads I completed:

It was a lovely afternoon.  See here for Lisa’s recap.

• 4 7am yoga classes + yoga on the mall on Saturday (followed by a 2 mile walk) + 1 elliptical session at the gym + 1 restorative yoga
• Wrapped up at my old job
• Dinner with Gena at SweetGreen
• Tea with Lisa, and some art journaling (mini version!)
• Brown rice sushi with a side of Ocean’s Eleven (I love the Ocean’s movies) with husband on Saturday night
• Successful decluttering – more next weekend
• Had raw pizza at Café Green, and tried out some of their new spring menu items (review to come)

Last Saturday I went to Cherry Blossom Yoga, which was sponsored by Lululemon and drew quite a crowd. Christine of Yoga Twist on Life wrote a great recap of the occasion, which I encourage you to check out.

This was my second time doing yoga on the mall (see last time, at DC Yoga Week’s yoga on the mall event in 2010) and I have to admit I was just as distracted as last time. Even though my yoga practice tends to be very focused when I am practicing at a studio, the second I practice outside, I get completely distracted by my surroundings. For example< I had to take a picture of the view under my arm when in downward dog:

The sky was a brilliant stunning blue and I was grateful for sunshine as, despite enjoying being there, I suspect I would have been far colder without the gorgeous blue sky and warming sun.  I plan to do yoga on the Mall again, though I do hope to get more focused as I practice outside more.