Healthy Meal / raw tonic
Quinoa Pizza Crust
Our friend Lottie came up with this gluten free quinoa based pizza crust. The recipe is from her blog, Running On Veggies, where she shares her love of healthy eating through recipes and health coaching, check her out!
"I’ve never been much of pizza eater, but I do love a crispy crunchy texture you get from the crust of a pizza. In the past, I always would take a brown rice wrap and toast it until it was crispy. This pizza crust reminds me exactly of that! But this is so much better and so easy to make! Lately I found that I don’t make or even attempt most recipes because it always seems complicated and has way too many ingredients (Still upset about all those times I attempted cauliflower crust pizza, but failed!). So I pride myself for my recipes with minimal ingredients and easy directions.
For this crust, all you really need is quinoa and water! Everything else in here just gives it more flavor. Just remember to leave yourself enough time to soak your quinoa for at least 6 hours. I soaked mine the night before, but you can totally do it before heading out for the day. And for an additional reason to try this recipe, it takes under 30 minutes to put together!
I used Unsweetened Fire Cider that added extra flavor to the pizza crust! I am so excited to play around with this product; the smell alone is incredible. The original is sweetened with honey, so naturally I was excited to see them come out with an unsweetened version. It’s really mild in taste, not like traditional apple cider vinager because it’s mixed with other flavors such as: Oranges,Lemons,Onions,Horseradish,Ginger,Habanero Pepper,Garlic and Turmeric. Along with a ton of health benefits, it tastes great on its own. To my surprise traditional pizza dough has a ton of sugar, so instead I used Fire Cider and it gave it that sweet flavor found in pizza dough!
Take a look at whats in regular store bought pizza-
Traditional Pizza Crust Ingredients:Enriched bleached wheat flour (bleached flour, malted barley flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, salt, sugar, soybean &/or cottonseed oil, whey, may contain 2% or less of enzymes &/or datem, vital wheat gluten, potassium sorbate (preservative), ascorbic acid, sodium stearoyl lactylate.
HA what are half of those ingredients?! Try this instead:
Recipe: Preheat 425 degrees
- 1 cup of quinoa uncooked (soaked for at least 6 hours or overnight)
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 tablespoons of Unsweetened Fire Cider
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast(optional for extra “cheesy” flavor”)
- 2 cloves roasted garlic (optional)
Directions:
- Rinse your soaked quinoa with a strainer really well.
- Place all your ingredients in a blender, blend for a couple minutes till really smooth and creamy. It should look like this:
- Place parchment paper on a 10-12 inch pizza pan or baking dish, Spray with non-stick spray, and spread out batter on to the dish.
- Cook for 15 minutes, then flip and cook an additional 10-12 minutes till crispy and brown.
- Place your favorite toppings on top get creative! Place back in the oven for an additional 3-5 minutes or until desired.
Butter Braised Collards with Fire Cider
A guest blog post by Alana from Eating From The Ground Up a Berkshire based blog about food, family, and the wonderful chaos that ensues when the two combine. Check her out after you try Alana's Butter Braised Collard recipe!
"We’ll start with the butter. In general if you hand me a vegetable, I’m going to steam it. I’m a big believer in the steamer pot (that’s a shorter pot with holes that fits into a larger pot) as opposed to those funny collapsable things that are THE MOST FUN thing in the kitchen drawer for toddlers to play with, but even in a pinch I’ll lazy steam with an inch of water and a covered pot. This is the vegetable cooking method I was raised on, and, picky kid that I was, I probably wouldn’t have grown about 5 feet without my daily dose of steamed broccoli. I’ll steam anything except cauliflower, as cauliflower was put on this earth to be roasted.
And yes, that brings us to roasting, the hip method of the moment way to cook all vegetables. Like most hip food trends ( kimchi, good chocolate, cronuts), it got that way from being delicious, and I fully support roasting.
But then there’s braising, which, in the case of vegetables, involves a bit more water and time than lazy steaming. This all started when Alice Waters (or the army of Californians who make up Alice Waters) told me to braise cabbage in water with a big nob of butter. I think it’s called buttered cabbage in her book, and I’d choose it over most foods. Even if you’re not a cabbage lover, buttered cabbage will turn you.
This method–the hearty green, the inch or two of water, the big knob of butter–it lubricates the very fiber of the green so that it becomes plump and buttery through and through. I’ve come to do this with cabbage whenever I have the chance, but also with broccoli raab and most recently, collards. Lately I’ve been loving the final addition of Fire Cider, a magical spicy concoction which I usually just drink straight (a shot every day, plus extra if I’m not feeling my best), but is so so good with butter and collards. This Fire Cider is made by my friends who, since the last time we spoke of them, have gained full organic certification and have continued to stretch their reach farther across the country, spreading wellness and deliciousness as they go. I feel very proud to have them here in this little county, and especially there in my sidebar.
If you don’t have any Fire Cider, let’s try to remedy that, you can find store locations here. But if you want to make these greens right now, a fitting substitute in this recipe would be some apple cider vinegar just there at the end, maybe with a little extra garlic and something spicy.
Butter Braised Collards with Fire Cider
2 tablespoons butter
1 large bunch collard greens
3/4 cup water
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Olive oil
Salt
2 to 3 tablespoons Fire Cider
1. First, prepare the collards: Cut the stem out of each leaf, and roughly chop the stems. Then cut the collard leaves into thin ribbons.
2. Melt the butter in a large skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped stems and 1/2 cup of the water and bring to a low boil. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium low, and cook until the stems are tender, about 10 minutes.
3. Add the collard leaves to the pot along with the remaining 1/4 cup water. Cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for an additional 10 minutes. Remove the lid, raise the heat to medium high, and add the garlic, stirring to combine and toss the greens in the buttery liquid for about 30 seconds. Remove the pan from heat. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and toss with 2 tablespoons of Fire Cider. Taste, and add an additional tablespoon of Fire Cider if you like."
View the original post HERE!
