Raw Kale Chips

With the recent bout of warm weather, I've been experimenting with a high raw diet. So far I'm really digging it and feeling great.

Most of my meals are simple salads, fruit or smoothies. Occasionally, I've prepared a more involved entree like raw tacos. This week I'm planning on raw pizza. The crust is actually in the dehydrator right now!

Awhile back I checked out Prana Raw Cafe and really enjoyed the kale chips that came with my meal. These have been on my list to make for awhile. Google turned up some complicated recipes, so I opted to wing it.

Basically, I mixed together a little cold pressed olive oil, nama shoyu, and raw sesames seeds. Then I poured the mixture over some kale leaves that I had torn up. After mixing it up well and making sure all the pieces were coated, I tossed them in the dehydrator for about 5 hours. These came out great. Prana definitely used more oil, but I was happy with these results.

The yellow/orange you see in the picture is some nutritional yeast.  I sprinkled about 1/3 of the chips with nutritional yeast, to add some cheesy flavor.  Both varieties are great.

Many people make kale chips in the oven, so no dehydrator necessary.  Soy sauce works fine in place of the nama shoyu if you aren't trying to adhere to a raw diet.

Give these a try, kale chips will surprise you.

Puerto Rican Pink Beans

Joyfulgirl415 posted a family recipe for Puerto Rican Pink beans on a vegan forum I frequent.  The post got a lot of attention and I decided to give it a try.

The first thing I needed to figure out is what exactly pink beans are.  I originally though this was just another name for pinto beans.  That is incorrect.  Pintos and pink beans are good substitutions for the each other though.  It turns out pink beans are their own variety.  Sometimes they are also called chili beans.  They are smaller and lighter in color than kidney beans.

I bought a bag of the dry beans and used the pressure cooker for 5 min to avoid the long soak time.  Then, I followed the recipe here.  Note that Joyfulgirl415 originally forgot the green olives and listed them later on in the thread.   When I googled around to learn more about this dish, I found that it is commonly topped with slices of avocado.

The recipe is simple to make, healthy, and really delicious.  Give it a try, you won't be disappointed!

Update:  The link above doesn't work, so I googled and found the recipe on her blog.  It can be found here.