3 recipes down, 27 more to go! See you all tomorrow for Day 4: Weird Food Combo. Missed Day 2? Check it out here. 

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

Savoury Za'atar Socca

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

16 mins

Total time

26 mins

 

This savoury chickpea pancakes takes less than 30 minutes to make from start to finish- including the sauce! This dish is filling, protein packed, and delicious. Perfect for a savoury breakfast or light lunch. Top with whatever vegetables you like! In the winter, roasted vegetables would be a great toppings. Feel free to use any toppings you like. This recipe is vegan, gluten free, nut free, and soy free. This recipe makes 2 9-inch crispy soccas + extra sauce.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Breakfast, Lunch

Cuisine: vegan

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• For the Savoury Socca:
• 1 cup chickpea flour
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 teaspoon za'atar
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper chili flakes + more for garnish
• 
  
• Za'atar Tahini Sauce:
• 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon white miso
• ½ teaspoon pure maple syrup
• ½ teaspoon za’atar + more for garnish
• Splash of filtered water to thin out if necessary
• 
  
• Toppings:
• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• 10 fresh basil leaves, cut into ribbons
• ½ teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• Pinch of fine grain sea salt
• Sliced avocado
• Pea shoots
• Za'atar

Instructions

1. In a bowl, whisk together the chickpea flour, water, 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, baking powder, and salt. Whisk for about 15 seconds until it is completely smooth with lots of bubbles. Set aside while you make your sauce.
2. Add all the for the sauce ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth. Set aside until ready to dress your soccas.
3. In a bowl, mix together the tomatoes, basil, oil, and salt. Set aside until the socca is ready.
4. In a non-stick skillet over medium heat, heat ½ tablespoon oil until hot. Add ¾ cup of the socca batter and cook for 5 minutes. Flip and cook the other side for 3-4 minutes. Keep the socca warm while you cook the second one. Add the remaining ½ tablespoon of oil, heat, and cook the second socca.
5. Top with tomato basil mixture, avocado, pea shoots, Za'atar Tahini sauce, and extra za'atar.

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The post Day 3 Vegan MoFo: Savoury Za’atar Socca appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

I am so excited for this year’s Vegan Month of Food! Last year, I posted 18 recipes in just one month but this year, I am committed to doing the full 30. A year has past, I feel more confident as a food blogger, S&C has had a major redesign, I released my (free) eBook, and the response about my new philosophy of 12 ingredients or less has been overwhelmingly positive. A huge thanks to all my readers. If you are new to Vegan MoFo or just want to say hi, leave a comment below to introduce yourself. I will be so happy to e-meet you. 

Let’s get started!

Breakfast is a meal that gets a little neglected since most of us are busy in the mornings and our only goal is getting out the door to go to work, preferably with both shoes on. These days can be tough to get an actual meal in and I admit, I have relied on just coffee more than a few times but I am hoping with these recipes, we can change that.

Normally for breakfast, I have a green smoothie that I drink at my desk while I check over emails and plan my to-do list for the day. The roar of the Vitamix blender means that good things are happening. I eat more greens now than ever before thanks to my blender and green smoothies. Drinking greens in the morning is like my little insurance policy for my health, just in case I don’t have the most balanced diet for the remainder of the day. With this smoothie, you are getting 2 full servings of raw green vegetables, 2 servings of fruits, some healthy fats, and protein from the hemp seeds. Good morning indeed!  But what about those lazy mornings? Those weekend mornings when you sleep in, tuck into a large mug of steamy coffee, and want to eat a big breakfast? Good morning Tofu Scramble!  There was once a time I ate eggs every single day, not the yolks, just the rubbery hard boiled whites. Blah. How I detest the smell of eggs now. I swore off anything that looked like eggs for a long time but thankfully, tofu scramble has won me over. I first had it at a breakfast place that also served tofu scramble along side its regular diner-style breakfast menu. It tasted great but was served white and definitely still looked like tofu. Turmeric, a natural anti-inflammatory spice, colours the plain white tofu into a breakfast that looks more familiar. Pair with some fresh tomatoes, sourdough toasts, and, of course, coffee and you have yourself a fine weekend breakfast. 

1 recipe down, 29 more to go! See you all tomorrow for Day 2: Recreation of a Childhood Meal. 

P.S. The S&C Green Smoothie photographed above is available in my free ebook! Subscribe to get this recipe and 14 other no-cook, vegan, and gluten free recipes. 

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

4.0 from 1 reviews

Easy Tofu Scramble

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

12 mins

Total time

22 mins

 

Breakfast should not be an all day cooking event, especially when you wake up hungry and just want to eat. This Tofu Scramble is as easy (and quick) as Sunday morning. This recipe is gluten free and nut free.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Breakfast

Cuisine: Vegan, gluten free

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• For the Tofu Scramble:
• ½ block extra firm tofu
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• ½ small red onion, diced fine
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
• ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• 
  Serve with:
• Toast
• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Ketchup
• Salsa
• Hot Sauce
• Maple Sriracha Bacon

Instructions

1. Wrap the tofu in a clean dish towel or paper towels and set under something heavy, like a book, to press the water out of the tofu. Set aside for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil over medium heat in a skillet and dice the onion.
2. Cook the onion until softened and slightly brown, about 4 minutes. Crumble the tofu with your hands into the pan. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring often.
3. Grind the spices and salt in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. Transfer the ground seasonings to the tofu mixture and stir well to coat. Cook for another 4-6 minutes. I try a piece after the 4 minute mark to see if the raw tofu taste has been cooked off, if not continue to cook.
4. Once the tofu is cooked to your desired taste, serve with your favourite breakfast fixings and enjoy!

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The post Day 1 Vegan MoFo: Weekday & Weekend Breakfasts appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

My bad habit is binge watching TV so to break this habit, I committed to not turn on my television for the entire month of August. This is a challenge for me but it is possible. A few articles I have researched on breaking bad habits were informative and I want to apply them right away.

One good tip I saw was replacing your bad habit with a good habit. What is your one of your bad habits? What is one good habit you want to get into? Is it reading more, working out, or taking on a new project? Is your bad habit distracting you from these mindful activities to better yourself and get closer to your goal? If yes, how can we change it?

The next step identifying your trigger. When do you do this bad habit? How are you feeling before doing this activity? Stressed? Bored? For me, whenever I am stressed or bored I want to zone out of my state of being and watch someone else’s life for a little bit. This is my band-aid from dealing with these feelings myself. By not watching television to distract myself, I am able to address these feelings head on and deal with them as they come up.

So what to do instead of your bad habit? Ask yourself what else you like to do and write it down on a Post-It. I wrote down five activities I could do for free so whenever I feel like turning on the TV, I could do these things instead. I stuck the Post-It on the television so it is in my sight when I am in the living room. I also deleted the Netflix app on my phone. Whenever I feel the urge to turn on my television, I can look at the list, and pick an activity to do instead. With this method, I hope to change my behaviour when I am bored or stressed. Over the month, I will give you some updates on how this challenge is going, any advice I can give, and what I decided to do with my free time. I hope you can join me. Whatever your bad habit is, you can change it! If you have any tips or tricks for breaking a bad habit, please leave them in the comments section below. I will be delighted to hear from you!

This challenge is inspired by this Sarah’s Scribble comic. I am pretty sure the artist, Sarah Andersen, is depicting my entire life through these comics. I turn into a monster when my wifi goes down, Mark can attest to that. 

Happy Saturday! 

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

Crispy Cornmeal Pancakes w/ Blueberry Sauce

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

30 mins

 

These pancakes aren't your typical diner pancakes since they are vegan, gluten free, lightly sweetened, and crispy from the addition of cornmeal. They are, what I imagine, a Southern grandma makes on a Sunday morning. The blueberry sauce is simple, quick, and pairs well with the corn-flavour of the pancakes. I added 2 tablespoons of maple syrup to the sauce but if you want it sweeter, add more to taste. I used frozen blueberries for this recipe and if you are using fresh ones, you may have to add an extra splash of water to the sauce. Frozen berries release more liquid when cooked. This recipe serves 10- 5" pancakes and ¾ cup of blueberry sauce.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Ingredients

For the Pancakes

• 1 tablespoon ground golden flax
• 3 tablespoons warm water
• 1 very ripe banana, peeled
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons unsweetened almond milk*
• 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil + more for greasing the pan
• 1 tablespoon baking powder (yes, a tablespoon)
• ¾ cup gluten free prepared flour (I used Bob Mill’s 1:1 GF flour)
• ¾ cup fine cornmeal
• Pinch of fine grain sea salt

For the Blueberry Sauce

• 1 ¼ cups frozen blueberries, divided
• 2-3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
• 4 tablespoons water
• 1 teaspoon arrowroot powder
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Instructions

For the Blueberry Sauce

1. In a small saucepot over medium heat, add 1 cup of blueberries, maple syrup, and water and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Once most of the berries have thawed, mash the mixture with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon.
2. Add the arrowroot powder and stir consistently until thicken slightly. Add the lemon juice and remaining blueberries and stir until the additional berries have thawed. Take off heat until you are about to serve the pancakes.

For the Cornmeal Pancakes

1. While you are making your sauce, preheat oven to 200 degrees and set a wire baking rack over a baking sheet. The pancakes will stay crispier if they are kept warm on a wire rack.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flax and water to create a flax egg; let sit to gel up. Once the flax egg is ready, add the banana and mash with a potato masher or fork until smooth and no large lumps remain.
3. Add the milk, maple syrup and coconut oil. At this time, heat and oil your griddle or skillet over medium heat to cook the pancakes. You want it to be hot before the batter hits it.
4. Add baking powder and whisk until foamy and mixed thoroughly.
5. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk until no large lumps remain but a few streaks of flour are ok.
6. Measure out ¼ cup of batter and pour onto the hot skillet; smoothing out the batter with the back of a spoon. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until you see bubbles on the top of the pancake; flip and continue to cook for 1-2 minutes.
7. Transfer pancake to the wire rack in the oven and continue with the rest of the batter, regressing the pan as needed.
8. Once all the pancakes are cooked, reheat the blueberry sauce until warm. Stack the pancakes up and pour on the blueberry sauce. Best served with a large cup of coffee. Enjoy!

Notes

*Measure the milk and let sit out of the refrigerator while you prepare the sauce. Refridgerator cold milk will solidify the melted coconut oil.

Nutrition Information

Serving size: 10 Calories: 155 Fat: 4g Saturated fat: 2g Unsaturated fat: 1g Carbohydrates: 29g Sugar: 9g Sodium: 19mg Fiber: 2g Protein: 2g

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The post Crispy Cornmeal Pancakes w/ Blueberry Sauce {GF} appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

This is the big announcement part….

Moving forward, each recipe featured on Sprouts & Chocolate will be 12 ingredients or less! My archived recipes will remain on my site for you to access but any new recipe posted will follow this new rule. What counts as an ingredient? Any ingredient that isn’t water, salt or pepper.

I am excited to start this new chapter of my site and I hope you readers love these easy methods and ingredients! Within this eBook, there are over 15 vegan and gluten free summer recipes that don’t require an oven or stove PLUS are 12 ingredients or less. Recipes include:

Frozen PB+ Fudge Squares (on cover)

Rainbow Kale + Cabbage Slaw No-Cook Tomato Sauce over Zoodles Black Cherry Nice Cream Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Pops This project was challenging but whenever I started to waiver, I remembered that any accomplishment started with trying. I feel a lot of us drown ourselves in the details of a project, creating long to-do lists and feeling defeated before we even started. I know I did with this eBook but I just looked at my list and started. Just start. The first thing I did was pick a topic, and from there, one by one, my tasks list became smaller. A person can only do one thing at a time, so pick your one thing and start today! You just have to try. 

You don’t have to do it alone. Two months ago, I knew nothing about creating an eBook so I reached out to fellow bloggers. With their experience, they become an invaluable source of information to me. I attended The Healthy Maven‘s How to Create an Ebook seminar and purchased Minimalist Baker‘s How to Publish and Sell Your eBook video tutorials. With these resources, I went from being technology-illiterate to creating my own eBook. A huge thanks to Minimalist Baker for creating the best and most comprehensive video tutorials. If you want to create your own eBook for your site, I highly recommend purchasing this tutorial package.

Crossing this goal off my list has made the unpleasant parts of this experience worth it. Yes, even that time I had to restart my entire eBook because my external drive wasn’t plugged in all the way. Each struggle I faced getting to my goal has made the accomplishment that much better.

So how do you get your FREE copy of Sprouts & Chocolate: Uncooked? Subscribe on the sidebar, confirm your address and you will receive an email on how to download it to your device at zero cost to you.

Thanks again to my readers for continuing to follow me throughout this experience! Here is to another year blogging! 

Sincerely,

Jessica DeMarra
Sprouts & Chocolate

The post Sprouts & Chocolate: Uncooked eBook + Big Announcement! appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

This is for my mother, who taught me to love who I am and what I do,

Reading is my favourite thing to do beyond cooking, writing or photographing since books have been a wondrous habit of mine since I was young. My mom, a real champ about my book addiction, would stop at garage sales to look for new books for me, would fill out my order card for the book fair at school every year with at least three new books and we were frequent card users at our local library. She was a single parent for the majority of my life, worked two jobs to feed and clothe my sister and I but she never complained or questioned my need for books. Whenever we were at a family gathering and my social anxiety was at an all time high, she never pushed me to “go play with the other kids” since she knew I was most comfortable under a tree in the backyard reading a book. I had a bad habit of hiding in odd places to avoid my younger sister or cousins so I could read in peace. One of my favourite places to do this was the linen closet in the hallway. I would climb up the shelves, tuck myself in between the sheets or towels, turn on a battery-operated push light that my mom taped to the wall and read my book in a little space all to myself. It really freaked my mom out to see a small child’s head amongst the linen whenever she opened the closet. Her reactions were always very funny to me.

When I was eleven, I started reading the Harry Potter series and absolutely fell in love with the magical world, as I am sure all of us who read it did. Money was very tight during this time of my life but my mom, bless her heart, still bought me the newest Harry Potter books when they came out. She told me that there were worse things to spend money on than her daughter’s books and kept encouraging me to read. She hugged me when I sobbed over a character’s death and never once suggested that, “it wasn’t real,” even though I was sixteen when the seventh book came out. She knew that I was emotionally invested in the story and my feelings about it were very real to me. I will always appreciate her compassion. The Harry Potter series is still on my bookshelf, 17 years later, and I have refused to lend them out since they are my most special collection, thanks to my mom.

My sister and I played dress up quite often since we grew up with tinfoil covered rabbit-ear antennas and a VHS player that occasionally ate our beloved Disney tapes, we were left to entertain ourselves for the most part. For Halloween one year, I was Belle from Beauty and the Beast and I loved that bright golden dress with the matching gloves. I definitely pretended I was Belle and would hang out in the yard wearing that dress and reading a book. My mom never said anything about me wearing a Halloween costume in July but simply reminded me to bring out a blanket so I wouldn’t mess up my dress. 

My mother has helped me become a life-long reader and introduced me to my ultimate passion in life. She encouraged me to be myself, that odd book-reading kid who hides in the linen closest to catch up on her R.L. Stine and stood up for me whenever a family member questioned my desire of isolation. Sure, I was a weird kid that got really excited when I saw my mother carrying old dusty books in a grocery bag but she was more than happy to feed my addiction.

A special thanks to my mom for encouraging me to do the things that make me the happiest and allowing me to be myself, despite what others might think. Happy Mother’s Day to you.

Love, Jessica

This recipe is adapted from At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen: Celebrating the Art of Eating Well

*This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a *teeny* commission if you make a purchase using this link.

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