Vegan Almond Mayonnaise with Roasted Asparagus and Leftover Pasta

The magical world of almonds has opened my eyes to vegan food without processed soy products!

After tasting delicious raw vegan almond mayonnaise at Rohvolution a few weekends ago, I set out to find a recipe to make my own raw vegan almond mayonnaise. I found the magical one on page 35 in the Healthy Living Cookbook - Excellent Vegan Recipes from HerbalLegacy.com, which they call "Almonnaise--a Perfectly Mucusless blender Mayonnaise".

I adapted their recipe somewhat to my taste, because I like stronger flavors and wanted something more like aioli.

Blend, in the following order:

1/2 cup whole raw almonds soaked in water for 24 hours
1/2 cup water
1 tsp nutritional yeast
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp salt or kelp
1-1.25 cups olive oil
5 Tbs. lemon juice

Keep up to 10 days in the refrigerator, tightly sealed.


Since asparagus is in season, I decided to pair the creamy, tart mayonnaise with the flavor that can only be described as asparagus--unless you want to call it "pee-ish". Which is not so appetizing...

I roasted a few asparagus stalks at 240 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes after tossing them with some oil and salt. These are from Morocco as Germany's aren't ready yet; at least, I haven't seen them at market.

I paired the asparagus and dressing with some left-over whole-grain pasta from last night, and the raw vegan almond mayonnaise was pretty good with the pasta too--a creamy lemon sauce.

After I took the photo, I added some roasted black sesame seeds for contrasting color and smell. Yum yum yum. I really can't wait to make more!

Simple, Flexible Salad Recipe

Photo by LollyKnit

The photo above is for a gorgeous fruit salad of watermelon + mint + raspberry with honey + lime juice as the dressing. I can't wait for summer to indulge!

Almost every weekday, I eat a vegetable-based salad for lunch. I don't like leaf lettuces unless they are ultra-fresh, so I mainly use vegetables and fruits.

Here is my basic salad recipe:

Dressing (olive/flax/sesame oil + lemon juice/cider vinegar + mustard)
Aromatic (like ginger, scallion, shallots, garlic, onions)
Green (like spinach, kale, kohlrabi tops, cucumber, zucchini)
Colorful Vegetable (bell pepper, tomato, carrot)
Protein (like nuts/seeds, tofu, boiled egg, cheese, beans)
Herbs
Fruit, fresh or dried
salt + pepper


I usually start with the dressing at the bottom of the bowl, then I add the aromatic so it has time to infuse the salad dressing.

Next I try to add the green so that it has enough time to soak up the oil and become tender, especially zucchini. If zucchini doesn't soak up enough oil, it can be bitter.

I try to make my salads colorful and have a variety of flavors, like sweet and bitter with apples + daikon radishes together or fennel + orange.

If I want extra texture, I add mushrooms or avocados to contrast all the crunchy raw vegetables.

Juicing versus Blending, or: Why I am not buying a Juicer

Photo by *Solar ikon*

With my new immersion hand blender, I have been drinking more smoothies as a way to get more fresh fruits and vegetables into my diet. I usually do banana + a sweet fruit, like strawberries, apples, or kiwis. If I feel like an extra boost, I also add a dash of cocoa and a handful of almonds.

After reading The Raw Food Detox Diet, which touted juicing as the foundation of eating raw (pp. 49-52), I started wondering what the differences were between juicing and blending as well as which one was better for me.

Here is what I found:

What is the difference between juicing and blending?

Juicing separates fiber from juice to make juices, while blending blends fiber and juice to make smoothies.

According to the Raw Food Detox Diet (pp.49-52), juicing releases organic water—or ‘hydration’ as Natalia Rose calls it, chlorophyll, and enzymes from the fibers. These we cannot absorb from the fibers without juicing. Without fiber in the way, all the fresh water, chlorophyll, and enzymes go straight to the cellular level.

Organic hydration is water from plant sources, not from a spring, well, or faucet. This organic water released by juicing contains all the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes from the plant. Furthermore, Rose asserts that no more water is needed on her diet because of organic hydration (!). And without the fiber to fill us up, we can drink even more organic water.

I don’t know if I believe everything Rose has to say about juicing. According to her, the minerals in mineral water and sea salt may even leach minerals from the body! Not that she provides documentation on this, however.

How are juicing and blending good for you?

Both blending and juicing saves you time on chewing, chopping, and digesting. By blending and juicing, you get to eat more and facilitate more and faster absorption in our ‘compromised’ intestines. Apparently, eating trashy food will compromise your intestines.

Freshly juiced and blended juices are better than bottled. Bottled juices are pasteurized, which kills live enzymes through heat. In fact, when Alissa Hamilton, author of the soon-to-be-published book Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice, explained pasteurization, she also revealed how ‘fresh’ Tropicana orange juice really is:

“In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it's ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.”

Now who still wants to drink juice from a box?

So to juice or to blend?

Here is a summary of juicing and blending pros:

Juicing juices :

+ good for getting unpalatable greens into your diet by mixing with apples

+ high volume is possible

+ absorbed in 20 minutes, little energy to digest without fibers

Blending smoothies :

+ good also for mixing unpalatable greens with fruits

+ high volume also possible

+ whole food, no wasted fibers, but longer to digest

+ high-speed blender can also break cell walls for easier absorption

+ noisier than juicers

+ easier to clean because you eat all the fiber

Both blending and juicing are good for getting unpalatable greens at a high volume into your diet. But I already eat plenty of greens in my weekday salad lunch.

The main difference between the two is the fiber. Fiber is important roughage that is good for you, but a raw food diet already has a lot of fiber. Because I am only about 50% or less raw, it is important that I get fiber from whole vegetables and fruits.

Moreover, juicing refines vegetables and fruits so that they are no longer whole foods. Whenever possible, I try to choose the least-refined food.

I also don’t want to spend the money or the storage space on a high-speed blender or juicer.

In conclusion, I will continue to blend smoothies at home for my own food enjoyment and buy juices from the café downstairs if I need to digest some nutrients fast—like right before I head off to yoga.

Review: The Raw Food Detox Diet

In the tradition of my of my favorite personal finance blogs, every other Sunday, Eat with Integrity reviews a book about food.

I picked up Natalia Rose's book, The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss, because I wanted to learn more about eating raw. Instead of finding motivational research or scientific facts, I found a lot of misinformation and an unfortunate attitude towards food.

What is the raw food detox diet?

Rose is stridently against "waste" in this book. According to her, "waste=weight". If you get rid of waste, then you get rid of weight. Rose's diet focuses on removing as much "waste" as possible from the diet (basically, everything that is not fruit or vegetable) and eliminating the toxins that have built up in your cells from birth, toxins that come from eating anything other than fruits and vegetables.

To that end, her diet encourages you to eat "quick exit foods in quick exit combinations,"that is, eating food that leaves your body quickly. Practically speaking, this means eating only fresh fruits, starches, meat-proteins or nuts/seeds/dried fruits (fat-proteins) together. Rose offers no scientific explanation for why a longer digestion time might be harmful to the body.

Questionable suggestions in the book

The sad thing is that she advocates using the artificial sweetener Splenda for sweetness. While Rose does not advocate completely eliminating all processed foods from one's diet until one is ready to be 100% raw, Splenda is a sugar-free chemical whose safety many question. The fact that Rose recommends the chemical Splenda as a white sugar replacement suggests that she is not concerned with completely eliminating processed foods nor with safe foods.

Moreover, the diet is only one part of her detox plan. The other half entails "waste elimination specialists" to help you get rid of current and past toxins. Among activities like sweating and deep breathing, which I'm all for, colonics and enemas are what she most recommends. In Rose's interview with her colonics therapist, they both agree that certain people may not need help to "eliminate" at first, but eventually everyone reaches a point where they come up against "post-putrefaction", waste that has been lodged in the body for so long that it needs professional help to leave the body.

For starters, no one needs a monthly or weekly professional treatment to eat healthy. I sincerely think each individual can heal her- or himself. Second, colonics has been debunked! Even by the raw food community! One of the supplements Rose's colonics therapist advises is psyllium. I found out through rawveg.info that psyllium becomes a gel that conforms to the shape of whatever container it is in, so that once you ingest it, it creates a gel that is in the shape of your intestine! Add clay for color and herbs for gunkiness, then your poop looks really like shit, like post-putrefaction.

While I didn't research into any other of Rose's claims, the fact that she recommends Splenda and psyllium as part of her detox plans made me less inclined to believe her other claims.

Meal planning ideas

After Rose explains her diet philosophies, she gives a quiz to diagnose your detox transition level. If you have been eating unhealthy for a while, you are a level 5, whereas if you are ready to go 100% raw, you are a level 1.

I was on the low side of a level 3, so I read both level 3 and level 2 weekly menu plans. A level 3 was basically 80% raw for breakfast and lunch with dinner open to almost anything as long as it was "well-combined." She mostly advocates a "green lemonade" vegetable juice first thing in the morning, then fruits for breakfast and snacks before and after a raw vegetable salad lunch. A level 2 was someone who incorporated more creative raw dinners into her diet.

I am ready to try gourmet raw recipes for dinner, but one thing made me hesitate: Rose asks Level 2 to stick to mono-fruit meals, that is, eating one type of fruit for a meal. I cannot ever imagine enjoying a meal of 16 bananas or an entire watermelon. I crave variety and diversity in every one of my meals, and this type of mono-fruit meals will never be something that appeals to my instincts of eating with joy and abundance.

Good ideas from Rose

Helpfully, Rose advocates planning ahead to avoid temptations in real-life scenarios, like at the office or at other people's parties. I really appreciated the extra motivation she offered about changing habits at the office, which is one of my weak areas. I really need to replenish my healthy snacks at the office, such as nuts, dried fruits, and chocolate with over 70% cocoa content.

I appreciated a few of Rose's philosophies. Rose is not concerned with making anyone 100% raw. In fact, she is against anyone "transitioning" too fast to a 100% raw diet. She also wrote about not labeling herself as even an "aspiring raw foodist." If she felt like eating something mainstream, she does without worrying. She recognizes that as long as we mostly eat healthy, indulging in meat or raw cheese is ok. She just eats what she eats when she wants to. And that is something I agree with: find liberation and joy in your meals rather than be limited by an identity label like vegan or raw.

Is The Raw Food Detox Diet worth reading?

Because Rose presents her diet along a continuum, there are a few good ideas and recipes you may find useful in this book. In fact, I did see a few recipes I wanted to try and may share on the blog later.

Nonetheless, I found her book filled with misinformation and a weird distrust in the joy of food that I would not recommend it. Also, Rose recommends a lot of brands of food to buy. While these specific kinds of recommendations may take the thinking out of eating, what if the manufacturers change their recipes? Her book is not a resource for people who want to become more conscious about what they eat, but for people looking for a specific program about which they don't have to think too much about.

Welcome to Eat with Integrity!

I am starting this blog to help me eat with integrity. Part of eating with integrity will include defining what integrity means to me.

For a while now, I have been playing with the idea of going raw for 30 days. But I decided that I didn't want to be 100% raw. Then I started reading the Vegan Sourcebook and decided that I want to try eating vegan for 30 days. The temptations are many, even when I have been a vegetarian for almost eleven years.

One of my challenges going vegan is that I don't like soy or rice milk in my coffee. It simply isn't creamy or thick enough. I thought about substituting coconut milk, but eventually settled on the simpler and healthier solution of cutting coffee out of my morning routine. I replaced it with some nice green tea which I supplement with fennel or mint whenever I need a little something extra.

So while I am not able to eat completely vegan yet, as a by-product, this month, February 2009, I am going without coffee.

I would like to explore the twists and turns of my eating journey as well as document my DIY education in eating healthy with integrity.

Eating with integrity means eating according to my values. Some values I would like to live by:

+ cultivate my taste buds
+ pay attention to hunger cues
+ resist instant gratification for cooking at home
+ eat until only 80% full
+ cook well and eat well
+ eat with friends

On a more practical level, I would like to say goodbye to
- white sugar
- white flour
- dairy*
- eggs

* Except that I would like to make an exception for raw cheese and yogurt with live cultures. I love my lacto beasties, not sure if I can give that up. I still want to make kefir and work at a sheep's cheese farm in, say, northern Spain or on Crete. I have not evolved enough to give those dreams up!

And say hello to:
+ raw vegan lunch on weekdays
+ raw smoothie dinner/appetizer 3x per week
+ raw shakes on Sat and Sun mornings

I already eat a raw vegan lunch most weekdays unless I am celebrating a co-worker's birthday or having lunch out with a friend. On average, this happens 3 x a month.

I got the idea for a raw smoothie dinner three times a week because going to class straight after work 3x a week makes cooking tiring. So why not drink it up?

And I thought that it would just be a good idea for weekend mornings to wake me up.

To eating with integrity in 2009!