After having had a nice vacation on the Mallorca I have to make a post on some of the vegan food spots located on this beautiful island. Now of course I couldn’t go on a vacation without checking out some of their vegan food spots, right!? One thing I found out during my stay…
vegan
Blackberry Crumble Bars
To celebrate the one year anniversary of this blog I’ll be sharing some indulgent and some healthy dishes so we can all celebrate together! This recipe will be a little more on the indulgent side of the spectre, but sometimes I just need a little
junk. After a tiring week I felt like indulging myself with something scrumptious (I’ll make up for it with some juices), and for a while I’ve been craving something fruity and baked, so the second it was Friday afternoon I decided to use my off time to do just that. As my fruit of choice I went with blackberries, because I’ve been craving a baked blackberry treat for a while now, I am very specific when it comes to my craving!
These bars are the first of many celebratory dishes that I will be sharing this month, and of course I’ll wont be letting anyone out of the festivities, if you are gluten intolerant to don’t want any added sugar or fat, or maybe enjoy living a raw vegan lifestyle, there will be a recipe for you as well, so keep your eyes peeled for those.
Recipe Blackberry Bars
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup sugar (try using raw cane sugar or coconut palm sugar)
- 1 tsp spirulina and turmeric (optional to add colour)
- 1/2 tsp almond extract (or vanilla if you’d prefer that)
- 8 tbsp vegan butter or coconut oil
- 2 tbsp peanut butter
- 250 gram blackberries (I used frozen)
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celcius or 350 Farenheit.
- In a bowl mix the flour, sugar and optionally the spirulina and turmeric.
- To this add the vegan butter, almond extract and peanut butter and mix it (with your hands) until you get a crumbly dough.
- Cover a baking dish with parchment paper and use about 3/4 of the dough to make the crust, raise the edges a bit and place the blackberries on top of the crust, now crumble the remaining dough on top of the blackberries and place the dish in the oven.
- After about 45 minutes you can remove it from the oven and let it cool down completely, cut them in bars before they are completely cooled down. Keep in mind that the blackberries I used were half frozen the moment I placed it in the oven so if you’re using fresh blackberries check your dish after about 35 minutes and take it out when the crust gets a bit golden on the edges.
Now warm up your oven and lets share some blackberry goodness! You also might notice that the format of this and the post before are a bit different. I’m experimenting with different styles, but I think I’ll go back to the original recipe format. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below.
As usual feel free to customise these to your own liking by adding different kinds of fruits like raspberries and strawberries, or maybe you want to leave out the spirulina and turmeric and keep the dough white, there are no rules!
If you make this dish leave a comment below to let me know how you liked them, or tag me in your creations on my social media accounts.
One Love,
A.J.
2 types of Bulgur Salad – Spicy & Fresh
It’s summer, the barbecue season has started and often people ask me what I eat at a barbecue, and to be honest, there are many vegan dishes you can enjoy at such an occasion. One thing I love to eat during a barbecue or picnic is a good salad, a salad with body. I love simple light salads, but to call it a dish it has to have some body, like a potato or couscous salad, which will get a recipe in the future, but for now I’d love to share two different recipes for a bulgur salad.
Bulgur is a type of cracked wheat most commonly made from durum wheats. It is not suitable for people allergic for gluten (so expect a gluten-free summer salad soon). In some dishes like a stir fry or salad you can use it to replace rice and it has a high amount of protein and some vitamins and minerals, which is always a win in my books.
At first I was going to make a spicy bulgur salad, but then I had to think of all the times I cooked spicy food and other people couldn’t eat it because it was just to hot! Thats why I had to make two different variations, when it comes to food I love to share, I don’t want anyone to feel left out, we should all be able to enjoy good food together!
Recipe Spicy Bulgur Salad:
Ingredients:
- 1 cup bulgur
- 1 Onion
- 5 Cloves garlic
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1 cucumber
- 2 tbsp gochugaru (or chilli flakes)
- 2 tsp ras el hanout
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- as much olives and sun dried tomatoes as you’d like (I used about an handful of both)
Directions:
- chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a pan with a little bit of oil over low/medium heat and saute the onion, garlic and bulgur until the bulgur browns a bit (this took me about 4 minutes)
- Now add the water and and bring it to a boil, as soon as it boils turn of the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Set it aside for 10 minutes.
- During this time you can chop all of your ingredients and let the bulgur cool down.
- Once the bulgur cooled down add it to a bowl and add all the remaining ingredients and add salt and pepper to taste.
Recipe Fresh Bulgur Salad:
Ingredients:
- 1 cup bulgur
- 1 onions
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1 cucumber
- 2 tbsp dried basil (or fresh basil)
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- red cabbage (about 1/4 piece)
- 2 tomatoes
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds (optional)
- artichoke hearts (optional)
Directions:
- chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a pan with a little bit of oil over low/medium heat and saute the onion, garlic and bulgur until the bulgur browns a bit (this took me about 4 minutes)
- Now add the water and and bring it to a boil, as soon as it boils turn of the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Set it aside for 10 minutes.
- During this time you can chop all of your ingredients and let the bulgur cool down.
- Once the bulgur cooled down add it to a bowl and add all the remaining ingredients and add salt and pepper to taste.
Now you have the option to choose to either go spicy or fresh, or be like me and just have both. they are both very simple and easy to make and both deserve equal loving. the spicy salad has a nice Mediterranean twist with the olives and sun dried tomatoes and the fresh salas is a bit more subtle and gentle to the taste buds.
As usual feel free to customise these to your own liking, you can add hemp seeds, marinaded tofu, tempeh bacon, kimchi, pickled jalapenos or any maybe some toasted sesame seeds to jazz things up. There are no limits to our imagination so let it run wild and make yourselves an awesome salad!
If you make this dish feel free to leave a comment or tag me in your creations on my social media accounts.
One Love,
A.J.
Why am I Vegan!?
This is a question I get asked frequently, well why not, I commonly answer? There are so many reasons to go vegan and everyone has their own, I’m not gonna share statistics or facts, no, today I want to share my personal reason of going vegan. I’m sure I’ll make more posts about the benefits of veganism for the planet, animals and our bodies, but today I’ll try to speak from my heart, this is going to be personal.
A little back story.
About two years ago I reached a point in my life where I definitely hit rock bottom, just getting through the days was a struggle by itself. I’ll not go into detail too much, but it must have been the conclusion of some of the darkest years I’d ever experienced, I felt lonely, confused and desperate for a way out. One night when things got out of hand I felt like I had an epiphany, something clicked and from that moment on I knew what to do, I had to make some changes.
That is when I decided to really commit to changing my lifestyle, I was busy exploring spirituality, meditation and yoga. The reason I decided to dive myself into the realm of spirituality is because I was looking for answers, answers about myself, life and all of the between. During this period of my life meditating was a life changing experience, for once I felt like everything was fine and experienced a sense of calm and tranquility, together with yoga, and therapy (which is a whole different post by itself, which I’m not ready to share), I started to build a stable foundation for myself.
How I found veganism.
One thing I stumbled upon when I started to research a little about chakras, was something called a chakra diet. This diet heavily promoted plant-based foods, so of course, open-minded as I was, decided to do some more research about this lifestyle, which led me to some youtubers talking about veganism. It all started with Teal Swan and infinite waters, because at this point my main focus was still spirituality and cleansing my body of any “bad” energies. This quickly led me to YouTube channels like freelee and Kristina who shared more about the vegan lifestyle. All of this made me very curious so one day I decided to go vegetarian for a while, well this didn’t last long, only five days later I decided to go all the way and try this vegan “diet”.
The first few weeks were challenging to say the least, I no longer ate with my family and had to make my own meals, which were often a hot mess! I’m not even joking, I even tried eating raw eggplant, yup, my knowledge of vegan cooking was small, oh so small. Besides that I started shoving veganism down my families throats, which would definitely help them change to this lifestyle as well, right!? Wrong, this absolutely backfired and caused lots of fights, so I decided to be the change I’d like to see in the world. I quit smoking, took control of my alcohol problems, stopped using medications and started a new chapter in my journey.
Why I stayed vegan.
“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” -Pythagoras
At this point I watched some documentaries like forks over knifes and some YouTube videos like 101 reasons to go vegan. This quote by Pythagoras also changes a lot for me, for some reason it spoke to me on a whole new level! I no longer did it for my physical and mental health, but it totally took on a more environmental and cruelty free approach, while still trying to be healthy of course.
Not only did I become more conscious of what I put into my body, this vegan and yogi lifestyle thought me to truly kind to myself and others, make real inner and outer connections and it helped me find a sense of purpose. I love connecting with you beautiful people through this website and my Instagram account.
It’s quite hard for me to be so open and personal, but I feel a need to share them with you. We can all learn from each other, more importantly from out pasts and current mistakes, struggles and tragedies. Lets grow together and create a loving and bright community.
In the short two years of me being vegan so much has already changed, people are actually becoming more conscious about what they’re doing with their bodies, the environment and the animals. Studies have come out supporting this lifestyle and stores are starting to sell more and more plant-based products.
So why did I go vegan? I believe in a clean planet where we can all life peacefully. Feel free to let me know how you felt about this post and if you would like to see more (personal) lifestyle posts.
One Love,
A.J.
Week 1 – Raw Vegan Challenge
Move over Freelee the banana girl, there is a new banana freak in town! Today marks my first week going raw vegan for a month. I’ll be making weekly updates on how I experience this cleanse and what kind of an effect it has on my body and mind. After this month is over I am going back to my normal diet, planning to eat less junk and more whole foods. I am going to be very honest and won’t sugarcoat anything. First let me explain why I decided to start this challenge.
My main reason for going raw vegan for a month is because I feel like my body needs a good cleansing. My initial reason for going vegan was for my health, but that soon shifted into a more ethical driven decision, heavily outweighing my initial reason. Because I am kind of an emotional eater and the past few years have been turbulent, this shift caused me easily binge on vegan junk food. Here is where reason number two comes in place, I want to stop binging whenever I’m feeling like crap, this cleanse is not only for my body but even more so for my mind. And reason number three is that lately I started to drink more frequently and I want to control and one day even stop my (vegan of course) alcohol consumption. My last reason was my eczema which all of the sudden appeared a couple of months ago (if anyone has any tips you are more then welcome to share them with me).
Ok let me start by saying that timing is everything! I decided to start this cleanse after my birthday because I turned 25 and wanted to do this with a bang, knowing I would probably drink one to many (vegan) wines, it felt like the right thing to do. Well for someone living in the Netherlands, February might not have been the easiest month to go fully raw, because it gets cold! So take notes everyone, if you ever feel like doing this, I advise you to plan it during warmer months as your body will be craving more fruits and vegetables, making it easier then during the colder months, in my opinion.
I hope these daily journals are helpful and entertaining. Throughout this post i’ll add some pictures of the foods I’ve been eating as some inspiration for anyone interested!
Day 1
Day one was definitely the hardest and this was partly my own fault, due to my outrageous hangover I couldn’t keep anything down, not even water. I tried my best to keep myself hydrated but my body kept rejecting anything I gave it. Still trying to get my nutrients in, I decided to made a salad with some carrot, while knowing i’m allergic to raw carrot (I just wanted to give it another try). Normally when I hide thinly sliced pieces of raw carrots in big spring rolls i’m fine, i just don’t eat to much of it. Well this went horribly wrong and only magnified my agony as I felt my throat closing up and decided to discard the carrot and take a pause from eating. After this I had to throw up and after an hour or so I tried to finish the remaining salad and decided to lay down, to ease the nausea.
Day 2
Waking up I immediately drank a liter of water because my body was definitely dehydrated. After drinking the water I had a big smoothie bowl, noticed my voice was gone and started my day. Throughout the day i had some snacks like dates and nuts and in the evening i had a salad, but I really didn’t eat enough and was still feeling weak from the day before. My body was weak and sore and my voice was gone. I craved a lot of cooked foods.
Day 3
Today I made more effort to make sure i ate enough throughout the day. My energy levels were still not where they would be normally but at least I wasn’t feeling sick anymore. I also noticed that my belly wasn’t bloated at all and didn’t feel heavy. In the afternoon I did quit an intense exercise and I tried to eat enough food an hour before that, but although I was full, the food wasn’t very calorie dense so my energy levels were still not there yet. My cravings for cooked foods definitely didn’t diminish I made an observation that to thrive i’d need to include one extra smoothie throughout the day to maintain my energy levels.
Day 4
Today started as usual with at least half a liter of water and I rolled out my yoga mat to do my morning practice. After a few sun salutations I noticed my body felt weak and my mind was distracted, all I could think of was food, I decided to do some asanas and go over in savasana (the final pose). For a split second I felt a bit bummed my body was to weak to do the things it normally does, but I could quickly let go of this disappointment and accepted where my body was at that moment in time. In the afternoon I started making cinnamon rolls because I promised someone i’d make some, i’m not gonna lie it was very challenging to not try one myself. This day I had a lot of raw vegan snacks such as raw chocolate and date bars which ended up being kind of an overkill, because i started to notice my belly felt a bit bloated after eating one to many treats.
Day 5
At this point my morning routine is the same, I start with water immediately after waking up and have a smoothie before leaving the house. At lunch I ate a pomelo and a raw chocolate bar while everyone around me were eating the cinnamon rolls I made a day earlier. Now i have to admit that this wasn’t as hard as I expected because my belly was full with the pomelo. I do have to add that I feel its kind of struggle to eat out without bringing your own food because there are not many different raw vegan options to choose from besides (un)fruit. After coming home i had a smoothie and some fruits and a salad for dinner.
Day 6
I feel that my energy levels are back to what they used to be, which is something i’m very happy about. Over the day I had two smoothie bowls and two salads. In the morning I decided to go to yoga class which was awesome because my energy levels were on point. My observation is that two smoothie bowls are definitely a minimum for me to thrive throughout the day.
Day 7
Today was a rough morning as I realised there were no ripe bananas, at this point i also used up all my bananas I had stored in the freezer. I still had a couple bunches of bananas but none of them were ripe and I really do not like unripe bananas! So I went to the store and bought more bunches of banana to prevent running out of bananas in the future. Of course there this is a luxury problem but because I feel like my options are already limited I really need to have my banana based smoothies because this exactly what my body desires to thrive! The rest of the day I decided to relax, work on a recipe and play zelda wind waker HD.
My observation of my first week going raw comes with a couple of tips.
- Have plenty of ripe bananas! Use my mistake as an example, bananas are a great base for smoothies or raw vegan ice creams and will give you the energy you need throughout your day. Always try to have a some frozen (peeled and chopped) bananas for quick meals.
- Make sure you eat enough food! If you want to maintain a steady stream of energy you really want to get enough food in which can be a challenge because i personally am not a big fan of huge salads, so I make sure i have big smoothies to fill me up and have a salad in the evening.
- If you ever feel like doing anything similar i advise you to plan it around the summer/spring.
- My belly doesn’t feel bloated at all and I experience almost no gas.
- Go easy on the raw vegan snacks and gourmet foods like nut and date bars and raw chocolates, but be sure to treat yourself from time to time, because you deserve it!
- Be kind to yourself!
I also faced some struggles in my first week!
- My energy levels were really low the first half of the week.
- The weather made me crave more warming foods and if it wasn’t for my own discipline to pull through and finish this without cheating, I would have definitely had some cooked foods.
- I didn’t plan that well and ended up not always having enough food to sustain me during the day, ending up eating date bars and raw chocolates, which bring me to number 4
- most raw vegan gourmet food and snacks are super expensive and I am really considering buying a dehydrator but because the “good” dehydrators are also very expensive I’m not sure if i will.
Conclusion:
For now my cravings food cooked foods are still there but not as extreme as the first half of the week. My belly feels flatter because I do not feel bloated. I do not recommend anyone doing this during cold months and when this month is done I’m gonna work on a recipe for a calzone pizza, which of course I’ll be sharing with all of you. Next week is gonna be a challenge because my nephew is turning 1 and I’ll be surrounded by tons of delicious food I won’t be able to eat. With that said I see an awesome opportunity to make a raw vegan cake, right!?
I’ve got some raw vegan recipes in the works so you can expect some healthy recipes coming your way soon! I hope you liked this post and feel free to leave me tips in the comments below or on my instagram and make sure to stay awesome!
bless.
