My Life on a Plate: Plant-Based Recipes to Save Time & Energy

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My day begins with a waking prayer and my homeopathic medication. Because of this I can’t eat or drink anything within 30 minutes of rising but as soon as I can, I have warm water and lemon with a glass straw (especially on grey mornings like this). It’s so warming and cleansing in the morning. And my body is doing so much wonderful work, healing, repairing and keeping me alive – I want to give it all the support I can!

For breakfast I have a green smoothie and green juice. We begin with a smoothie as I kept having a surge of energy on waking and then dipping later. We worked out that a smoothie before juice worked well for my body – but do whatever works for you!

Sweet-Heart Smoothie

green smoothie

Ingredients:

1/4 apple

1/2 cucumber

4 sticks celery

4 lettuce leaves

Big handful of dark leafy greens – kale/spinach

1/2 avocado (hass avocados are creamiest)

1 teaspoon raw white almond butter

Juice of ½ lemon

Top up with water or herbal tea.

Hemp protein powder or super-foods can be added for the advanced student.

Blend, blend, blend! Pour into glass mason jars and put in the fridge — It’ll help keep your green elixir fresh don’t y’know. Accessorise with gorgeous Glass Dharma straws and enjoy. Or just pour into a mug and drink.

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I’ve enjoyed a breakfast green juice for years, and I always likened it to the oil which keeps my body running.

Green juice is so anti-inflammatory, I find drinking it regularly more effective than using NSAID painkillers, and much kinder to my body too. We make our juice fresh daily in the Vitamix – just blend and strain through a nut mylk bag. So much easier than washing the juicer every day. (P.S If you want your own Vitamix use code 06-009931 to get free shipping, my treat!) But on weekends I often make 2 days worth of juice at a time using our Green Star Juicer.

Wellness Trailblazer Juice

green juice another

Try out my award winning green juice recipe, loved by TV Raw Chef and best selling UK author Shazzie.

Ingredients (All Organic):

Nettle tea

Cucumber – lots and lots

Celery – about 1/2 as much as cucumber

Broccoli – for luscious green goodness and all the calcium

Kale – as much as you can fit. I LOVE kale

A little bit of apple, if you need it

Add cinnamon. Sprinkled in it gives such a special sweetness and makes it so easy to enjoy – this is the special bit!

Lemon juice – extra alkalising!

Loads and loads of love poured into it

Home grown greens and herbs, lovingly planted and picked before breakfast juice preparation begins

Juice and drink within 20 minutes for all those lovely enzymes. Alternatively, store in a mason jar, keep cool and drink later.

Juice in your juicer or Vitamix and strain it through a nut mylk bag. Add to gorgeous glasses and enjoy. Be here now. Listen to the birds and feel the green juice working its healing magick!

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I tend to be all-liquid until lunch, and have lots of herbal teas (my current fave is Tulsi). If I’m riding or at the gym I’ll have a chia pudding with hemp protein powder and soaked almonds after my work out. And if I’m hungry in the AM, I generally just have more green smoothie.

Choose Chia Pudding

chia pudding on pink background sprinkled with marigold petals

Simple, delicious pudding, packed with omegas.

Ingredients:

Chia seeds

Almond milk or other nut or seed milk, or juice

Vanilla, scraped from the pod with a knife

Chopped dried apricots (un-sulphured, the ones which look wrinkly and brown)

Add the chia seeds to a bowl, they expand so leave room. Add 3 times the amount of liquid to chia seeds, stir in the chopped fruit and spices. Leave in the fridge overnight, stir a few times before bed so the chia doesn’t clump.

Enjoy the lovely tapioca like pudding as a sweet snack, a few hours later or the next day. Top with chopped almonds and marigold petals to decorate.

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Lunch is my biggest meal.

Lunch tends to be a big salad and then a smaller portion of an alkaline cooked meal.

Grace’s Daily Salad
salad with carrot and radish

Salad is often considered plain or boring, but this is a misconception. Salad is one of my favourite meals in the world. As a child I didn’t like the salads served in restaurants. Most places were not yet used to catering for vegetarians and their salads were little more than bland, flaccid, over grown garnishes, but no longer! Salad, let me say now, is not iceberg lettuce, wilting grated carrot and a chopped tomato.

– Peppery fresh rocket, sweet lambs lettuce, shaved fennel and bright, juicy orange slices — that is a salad.

– Soft oak leaf lettuce, slivers of red onion, chopped chestnuts and marinated red pepper — a salady feast.

– Watercress, big leaves of frilly lollo rosso lettuce, fresh peas and small pieces of toasted gluten free bread, brushed with sesame oil, rubbed with a garlic clove and all tossed together — that is a salad indeed.

I make up a salad based on what’s in season, in the garden and in the fridge. Today it’s mixed greens with peas from the garden, chopped apples from our organic heritage apple trees and a ginger and carrot dressing.

The cooked portion is often soup, or a veggie and alkaline grain. But honestly, I seem to make only 1 thing and that’s soup!

Warming Split Pea Soup

winter soup with split peas and hummus½ a white onion or a whole red onion
1 cup of cooked beans/pulse like white beans, green lentils, chickpeas or yellow split peas
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
Juice of 1 lemon
1 handful of fresh herbs like sage, basil, chopped rosemary or thyme
4lb raw veggies like carrot, beetroot, mushroom or cooked veggies like steamed sweet potato or pumpkin
5 cups of warm vegan broth

Make your choices, like yellow split pea and pumpkin, beetroot and rosemary, sweet potato, ginger and vanilla or sweetcorn and red pepper and add everything to the blender. Blend, being careful to turn off the blender and lift the lid every few seconds if you’ve used steaming hot water. We don’t want steam pressure to build up and be unsafe! Blend it totally smooth or leave some interesting chunks. Serve in bowls you’ve placed in hot water for a few minutes to warm them. I drizzle hemp milk or oil over our bowls sometimes, the oil helps carry flavour and all those yummy good fats!

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green smoothie, blue glasses

As an afternoon snack, I’ll often have green juice. I add spices like cinnamon, ginger or jalapeno if the weather is cold to support my digestion and balance the cold juice from the cold weather.

If I’m still hungry, a go-to snack is avocado toast. Kris Carr introduced me to this wonder through Crazy Sexy Kitchen and some days it’s just what I’m looking for.

Grace’s Avo Toast

avocado topped gluten free toast on cherry patterned plate

Ingredients:

1 ripe avocado
Juice of ½ lemon
Gluten free, vegan bread
Pink himalayan salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Optional:
Sprinkling of paprika
Finely diced red onion

Scoop out the yummy avocado flesh and mash roughly with a fork. Stir in the lemon juice. Spread the mixture over the toasted bread and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle over paprika and red onion if desired.

Grace’s Go-To Gluten-Free, Vegan Bread (adapted from Gluten Free Girl)

gluten free vegan bread with a cup of tea and a book

Ingredients: 2 tbsp of ground chia
2 tbsp of ground flax seed
570 grams of whole grain gluten free flour mix (I make mine in bulk based off this and what I have in the cupboard. I also grind the chia and flax directly into the flour mix in bulk, but you can just stir it in too.)
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar to activate yeast
1 cup of warm water
2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 2 ounces apple cider vinegar as an egg replacer. Or half a mashed banana if you’d like it to taste like banana bread (rasins are great in banana bread too!).

Heat half a cup of water to the temperature your finger is happy with. Dissolve the sugar and sprinkle in the yeast. Leave it to do it’s magic in a warm place for about 10 minutes.
Add the flour to a big bowl and whisk it to aerate.

Mix the baking powder, baking soda and vinegar in a bigger bowl than you think you’ll need because it will expand like a school science project volcano.

Once everything is settled, stir the vinegar mixture, and the yeasty water into the flour. Keep stirring, add as much of the warm water as you need. The dough will look far too wet and sloppy – it will look like you can’t knead it. That’s ok, it’s supposed to look like that, gluten free dough does, and you don’t need to knead it, so bonus! Adding more flour to make it look like gluten dough will make your bread all dry, so resist.

Scrape it into a clean, oiled bowl. Cover and let it rise for 2 hours, or overnight. I leave it on top of my dehydrator.

When you are ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 240 degrees.

With wet hands, shape your bread into little rolls, around 8 (which bake better than huge loaves). Let them rest as the oven heats.

Bake them in a casserole dish or dutch oven lined with baking parchment. This is essential. When I first tried gluten free baking it was easy, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Then I dropped and broke my dutch oven – all my breads failed! So do try and use one if you possibly can.

Bake until the rolls are crusty and the bottom sounds hollow when you tap it. Enjoy!

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Dinner is often a simple meal, a large salad and smoothie, or a pudding bowl of blended smoothie with yummy berry and seed toppings. If it’s a special occasion, we love to make Socca Pizza.

Socca Pizza

socca pizza toppings

 

If you are gluten free, pizza bases tend towards the dry side. Either that or they’re expensive or take forever to make with lots of kinds of flours and other ingredients. Not so with socca; it is easy, soft and scrummy.

Ingredients: (makes 2 pizza bases), but I eat only ½ per meal, so this makes 4 servings.

Socca:

1 1⁄2 cups of gram flour (chickpea flour)

1 1⁄2 cups of water

2 tablespoons of oil

Pinch of salt.

Toppings of your choice. How about:

Sliced red pepper
Red onion
Raw cashew cheeze
Basil and tomato puree
Kalamata olives
Basil leaves
Sun dried tomatoes
Mushrooms
Sage
Garlic
Courgette slices
Artichoke
Fennel
Spinach
Kale

Line wide cake tins with foil, and grease with coconut butter. Or line with parchment paper. Blend or whisk all the ingredients together, pour into the cake tins so the mixture is roughly 1 1⁄2 cm thick and bake in the oven at 250°C (480°F) degrees for 20 minutes.

Add a little less water if you want it firmer or a little more if you want it more custardy inside. Socca needs to be made fresh but it is so quick and simple and you can use it for everything from pizza to wraps.

Once your socca is cooked, add your toppings, and pop it back in the oven for a few minutes, if you’d like your veggies lightly cooked. Otherwise slide it out and onto a warmed plate. Serve with a heaped salad and lots of laughter.

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Originally published on http://www.naturallylauren.com/