raspberry hemp coconut smoothie

INGREDIENTS 

• 1/2 cup of coconut milk
• 1 tbs of Hemp protein powder
• 1 banana
• 3/4 cup frozen raspeberry
• 1/2 cup cubed pineapple
• 1/2 tsp of coconut butter

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix all ingredients in your Magic Bullet or blender and... voila! There you have a sweet and nutritious smoothie loaded with vitamins to start your day.

quinoa tabouli

Photograph by Leslie Perez. All rights reserved.

The following recipe comes from Gigi Cohen's and Karen Dubrofsky's Nourishing Friends Cookbook.

INGREDIENTS

- 2 cups of quinoa, rinsed
- 2 medium tomatoes
- 1 English cucumber
- 1 red pepper
- 1 parsley
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 15 black olives
- 1/2 cup of lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- Olive oil
- 1 tsp sumac ( Lebanese spice)
 - Sea salt to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Rinse your quinoa and boil it in a pot of water. Dice your vegetables, chop your parsley and blend with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, sumac and sea salt.Once your quinoa has cooled, blend the vegetable mixture with the quinoa.

'nourishing friends:' a new mediterranean and natural whole foods cookbook

I was at my local kosher fish market on Westminster in CSL  in need for some sea lled with a newly released cookbook entitled Nourishing Friends by co-authors Gigi Cohen and Karen Dubrofsky.  Excited at the notion of a new Montreal whole-foods 'fundraising' cookbook, I bought the book without hesitation. Evenmore, Celine Dion was one of benefactors who contributed a foreword in the cookbook.

www.nourishingfriends.com

This cookbook is a concoction between Mediterranean vegetarian 'clean-eating' with a minor Jewish slant. I personally tasted Gigi's lasagna, quinoa burgers and tuna salad in her restaurant; recalling the accentuated tastes of whole-hard veggies blended with just the right combo of oriental spice mixes. So far, I am learning about the basics of hemp seeds, kombu and nutritional yeast. I find her cooking very interesting, a wide range of tofu recipes I never heard of, including Tofu cutlets. The book is truly meant for the vegetarian at heart.

Gigi Cohen opened and ran a kosher cafe on Monkland and Harvard street in Cote-des-Neiges-NDG for a couple of years. She is currently the owne of Juicy Lotus, a vegetarian restaurant and take-out counter and she offers cooking classes.