Healthy Vegetarian & Plant-Based Foods
Salad Rolls with Almond Butter Sauce are the most fragrant and healthy way to eat salad as a finger food. They are easy to make, and so much fun to eat!
With a lot of vegetables folded into rice wrappers, and dipped in almond butter sauce, this dish can be great for a party dish or for meals.
We usually eat Salad Rolls during summer when we can pick fresh herbs such as mint, basil, and cilantro right from our own garden….
Stewed Peaches & Nectarines are a good quick dessert that can satisfy a sweet craving easily. It’s the healthiest dessert of the summer!
I love stone fruits, and love them even more knowing they have many health benefits. I don’t make dessert often, but this summer, the idea came to me naturally when I had so many bananas, peaches and nectarines at the same time. The fruits turned overly ripe too easily, so I combined them and made Stewed Peaches & Nectarines. I had no idea they would turn out so good mixed together, but it turned out great and we all loved it. If you are looking for some quick, healthy vegan dessert ideas without added sugar, try this!
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enjoy them with minced garlic, olive oil & vinegar
White Asparagus is a famous appetizer in Spain. You can cook or buy them easily everywhere in the north. They are so pretty, tasty, and most of all very healthy!
I’m sure most of us know how healthy asparagus is, although green asparagus is more common for cooking than the white variety.
Living in spain, we cook White Asparagus more as it is available locally, especially from early April on when they come into season. Even though we eat them as an appetizer, they are very filling, and can end up being full before dinner–that’s actually nice and easy!
However, cooking White Asparagus requires more work as they are bigger, tougher, and the skin is more bitter than green asparagus. First, we have to peel the skin, then boil them ‘til they are soft. From there, we can either eat them plain with vinegar and olive oil, or use them in other dishes.
There is a special kind of a tall pot for cooking asparagus that most people have in Spain, but since we don’t, I use a regular pot I have, and it works fine.…
Stinky Tofu is a famous snack both in China and Taiwan. If you go there and don’t get to try Stinky Tofu, you are not there!
I lived in Taiwan for a year, and I loved having Stinky Tofu as a snack or sometimes, even for a light dinner. The combination of the special marinated tofu, sautéed cabbage, and the spicy sauce give a very unique flavor. It’s the first thing
I used to ask for whenever went back to Taiwan.
However, soon after I learned the secret ingredient to make the traditional stinky tofu was fish or shrimp, and I stopped buying it completely. I tried searching for vendors who make Stinky Tofu without marinating tofu with fish, but there were none. So, I started to experiment my own way. Unfortunately, no matter how much I tried, I can’t make it the same.
I gave up trying to make it to be the same, and started doing it my own way. With just simple ingredients, pan fried instead of deep fried, and the Stinky Tofu vegan style is very healthy and tasty. Are you ready to give it a try?…
Red Cabbage Sauerkraut is the prettiest homemade probiotic I know. It contains loads of good bacteria known to be great for your gut–right from your own kitchen!
Here is a link about the benefits of eating sauerkraut that I think you might enjoy reading.
I make sauerkraut a lot, and like to keep it on hand in the fridge. It’s simple to prepare, with only cabbage and salt. However, making Red Cabbage Sauerkraut, I add water to give it some extra brine as red cabbage is a bit tougher and doesn’t make enough liquid on its own. It always comes out great.…
Fermented Bean Salsa ideas always come to mind when I want to make a quick and easy, yet healthy appetizer. It’s so good for when we crave Mexican-American type foods, and also great for entertaining guests before meals, or simply for taking to picnics and potlucks!
Why fermented beans you may wonder? In case you are not familiar with fermented beans, let me pass on some info I have learned in the past few years. All beans and legumes contain anti-nutrients that make it hard for our bodies to digest them. Fermenting and sprouting before consuming them are the best way to to reduce the anti-nutrients, and to make the beans more digestible, thus causing less gas.
Other benefits you get from cooking your own beans are staying away from the BPA in can linings, and helping to reduce container use.
If you want to know more reasons why I ferment beans (and whole grains) check out my post about why I ferment whole grains.
However, the process of fermenting and sprouting requires some time, and is probably the reason why most people and canned bean companies don’t do it. So, the best way is to do it by yourself. I found it’s hard at the beginning, but not once I got used to it. With some planning, I always have fermented beans on hand….
These Roasted Sweet Potatoes are both healthy and filling, and a little bit of good oil and salt make them taste great right from the stove top!
Sweet potatoes are high on hearty-healthy food lists. I like them because they are versatile, and can be used in many different dishes: from thanksgiving dinners and soups, to simple, healthy snacks such as Roasted Sweet Potatoes.
However, living abroad or somewhere without an oven in the kitchen can be challenging when you want to bake or roast sweet potatoes. I struggled with that and avoided making them for quite some time.
With some effort, I created Roasted Sweet Potatoes in a frying pan. It’s perfectly doable, and in fact it uses less energy when I want a small batch. I can do a small amount of them at a time on a burner instead of heating the entire oven. When I realized how easy it was, I started making it much more often.
If you’d like to try roasting sweet potatoes on a stove top, come along with me, and I’ll show you how….
Fried bananas is a street dessert available everywhere in Thailand. If you want something to satisfy your sweet tooth right that minute, voila, there’s a vendor frying bananas. They are crispy with a perfect amount of sweetness from the bananas themselves, and you can finish a whole lot before you know it!
When I was young, I often stopped by a vendor I was familiar with for Fried Bananas on the way home from school. Then one day, my mom talked to me about how the oil vendors use can harm your health. I wasn’t happy to hear that my favorite snack might be bad for me, but I immediately took action. I started to look at the oil before I bought the Fried Bananas. If the oil looked dark, it meant the vendors had used it too long and it could be harmful, so I wouldn’t buy it.
The info about bad oil really turned me away from buying and eating Fried Bananas. As they are not common in the US, I kind of forgot about it when I moved there. I really wanted to eat them more often without being afraid they are deep fried in bad oil, and the idea of making my own finally occurred to me. So, here I am again, reinterpreting a traditional food I like to eat….
The Thai appetizer, Miang Kham, is one of the healthiest snacks. It’s a perfect mix of savory, sweet, and tangy, along with healthy raw vegetables. It’s actually an appetizer, but we often eat it for dinner!
However, the original Minag Kham recipe from Thailand has fish sauce, shrimp paste, and dried shrimp, all of which we don’t eat. It also requires a lot of palm sugar to make the sauce thick, but I find it too sweet, and substitute a lesser amount of regular, unrefined cane sugar, that is always easy to find. To thicken the sauce, I use shallots or red onions with toasted coconut flakes, and minced crispy tofu instead. I substitute soy sauce for the fish sauce, and replace the shrimp paste with nutritional yeast. It turns out just the way I like, and I enjoy the flavor very much. It actually tastes as great as the authentic dish, but it feels even healthier and is easier to make!…
Living in a different country can be a challenge as far as having everything we are used to–especially kitchen equipment. We could just buy what we want, but it’s better to go without a few things and find ways to improvise.
I regret letting a year go by without trying to accept that and live without an oven, when we spent our year in Taiwan in 2013-14. Most Asian kitchen don’t have ovens, so I went the whole year avoiding cooking anything involving an oven.
This year in Spain, it’s disappointing that our house doesn’t have an oven again. However, I tried harder and figured out how to keep having our favorite healthy snacks like kale chips in the kitchen. It was a big success, and I gained confidence experimenting with new techniques.
I’m obsessed with making dried apples (apple chips) and I have turned so many adults and kids onto them too. I have given away jars and jars to friends as birthday and Christmas gifts, or for my daughter’s school parties, etc. It’s so rewarding to see kids pick the dried apples over other sweet treats!…
My crispy Kale Chips creation started when I planted too much kale 10 years ago. Kale is the easiest vegetable to plant, and you are guaranteed to have leafy green kale all year round, including winter–really! Since I had too much, I wanted to find new ways to eat it, and came across the crispy kale idea. I used my oven to bake it and failed by burning it so many times before I finally got the right temperature and technique to make perfect kale chips.
I’m proud to say, I have turned quite a few grown-ups and kids who don’t like green vegetables onto eating Kale Chips, and some have even asked me to show them how its made.
Crispy kale chips have been a lifesaver for when I don’t have much time to cook, or when my daughter needs some healthy snacks right after school. With kale chips in the pantry, she can prepare a few things and grab a jar of kale too. It’s also a great way to have green vegetables for the road, and on camping trips.
In the past, I could rely on having an oven, or sometimes a dehydrator, to do this, and it was a bit inconvenient when we lived in places without an oven. However, this time in a house without an oven, I figured out how to make the same kale chips. It’s actually easier and faster than using the oven, and that is another thing you gain when you live with less: creativity!…
Being Thai, pomegranates are no strangers to me. For some people, pomegranates look like something from a different world. I know, we can’t just pick one up, wipe it off with our shirt, and eat it. Pomegranates require more work, but every single seed of them is worth your patience!
Pomegranates are full with precious goodness. I have read that pomegranate juice (real 100% juice) has 3 times higher antioxidant activity than red wine or green tea.
Now that you know about the great benefits of eating them, you might wonder how on earth to eat them fresh without fighting to peel them. I have gone through years of frustration trying to add them into my daily fruit dishes when they are in season, and finally I have mastered the technique. I’m proud to share this quick and easy method so pomegranates don’t have to be love-hate fruits to anyone anymore.
The skin is tough, but not too tough to give up eating them. Pomegranates have so many different color varieties, from clear-pale transparent, light pink, light brown, red, to very dark red. It takes a little bit of luck choosing pomegranates, as sometimes they look perfect from the outside but bad when you cut them open.…
Sawatdee Ka, my name is Jeem Elliott and I’m Thai. I'm the creator of Gourmet Vegetarian Kitchen.Com. I have a background in Read More…