I hope these recipes will come in handy for those hungry kids after school!  Day Two is all about recreating a childhood meal. This one always hits close to home because my mother, a single parent, did not cook. The only time my family had a sit down meal together was around holidays or birthdays. I admit, reading narratives from other blogs about spending an afternoon with their family around their dining table making homemade ravioli or their Sunday traditional roast always made me a little jealous.My early life was not surrounded by homemade food and perhaps this is why I have committed my adult life to good and wholesome meals. This is no fault of my mother’s, she worked 2 jobs to support my sister and I and we never went hungry. Our meals were usually from a package so it was quick and easy for my mother to make between her two shifts that day. My sister and I went to a Catholic high school so it let out an hour earlier than most, which meant our lunch hour was at 10:40am. By the time we got home, we were so hungry and could not wait for dinner. My mother, standing in the kitchen, wearing her server uniform, would be chopping apples, slicing cheese, and piling crackers onto a plate for us to eat as soon as we got home. We chatted about our day, my mother would tell us what she prepared for dinner and how to reheat it for later, we started our homework while my mother sipped Earl Grey tea, and then she kissed us goodbye to leave for her other shift. This was our family time and I did not appreciate it when I was younger. I wanted the typical nuclear family that I saw on television, the kind that had pancakes from scratch on Sundays, and the mom that made cookies for bake sales at school. 

I did not get that kind of mom. I got a fighter, a woman who sacrificed and pushed to make sure her kids had the best childhood she could provide. There were times that she and I did not see eye-to-eye but looking back now, I can see all the hardships she took on by herself.

This is not your typical childhood meal recreation. These recipes were not passed down from generation to generation on an old faded cue card. My mom did not make the best Mac & Cheese or the best chocolate chip cookies but she did make the best with the short time we had with us, which suits me just fine.

2 recipes down, 28 more to go! See you tomorrow for Day 3: Quick, Easy, and Delicious! Missed Day 1? 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. 

5 Nut-Free Afterschool Snacks: Avocado Sourdough Toasts

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Total time

5 mins

 

Avocado toast is da' bomb and I eat it as a snack on the regular. The creamy, green avocado pairs wonderfully with the tang of sourdough bread. I add on red chili flakes but you can omit them unless your child likes spice!

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Snack

Cuisine: Vegan

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• Avocado Sourdough Toasts:
• 2 slices sourdough bread, toasted
• ½ ripe avocado
• ½ teaspoon hemp hearts
• Fat pinch of fine grain sea salt
• Pinch of red chili flakes (optional)

Instructions

1. With a fork, smash the avocado onto the toasted sourdough bread. Sprinkle with hemp hearts, salt, and red chili flakes. Cut the toasts into halves or even sticks. Serve and enjoy!

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5 Nut Free Afterschool Snacks: Fruity Pink Smoothie

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Total time

5 mins

 

Bright and fruity, I tested this recipe out with my 8 year old nephew and he loved it! This raw smoothie will keep their energy up to do some homework but won't ruin their dinner. This recipe makes 2 cups.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Drinks

Cuisine: vegan, raw

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• Fruity Pink Smoothie:
• ½ cup fresh or frozen strawberries
• 1 frozen banana
• ½ peeled orange
• 1 cup seed milk
• 2 tablespoons hulled hemp hearts
• Ice (if your fruit is fresh vs. frozen, you will need to add ice)

Instructions

1. Add all the ingredients to a high power blender. Blend until smooth. Serve with strawberry garnish and enjoy!

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5 Nut-Free Afterschool Snacks: Apples with Cinnamon Date Caramel

 

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Prep time

7 mins

Total time

7 mins

 

I love this easy finger food for kids. All natural sugars, easy to make, and kid approved. This Cinnamon Date Caramel is a great after school snack.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: snacks

Cuisine: vegan

Ingredients

• Cinnamon Date Caramel:
• 10 soft medjool dates, pitted
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons melted coconut oil
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Water
• Pinch of salt
• 
  Apple wedges to serve

Instructions

1. Add the pitted dates, lemon juice, coconut oil, cinnamon, and a teeny pinch of salt to a high power blender. Turn on the blender and slowly add water, 1 tablespoon at a time until you have reached your desired consistency. I added about 7 tablespoons of water so the caramel would stick to the apples when dipped. Serve with apple wedges and enjoy!

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5 Nut-Free Afterschool Snacks: Celery & Cheese Dip

 

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Prep time

2 hours

Cook time

5 mins

Total time

2 hours 5 mins

 

Say no to Cheese Whiz! That jar of bright orange spread haunted most of my childhood since my sister loved it. This one is nutritious, delicious, and kid approved. This recipe also makes awesome salad dressing on my Big Ol' Texas Bowl Salad

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: snacks

Cuisine: vegan

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• For the Nacho Dip:
• ½ cup sunflower seeds, soaked for 2-8 hours*, drained and rinsed
• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• ½ red pepper, chopped fine
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon ancho powder (use regular chili powder for a flavourful but not spicy nacho cheese)
• ¼- ½ teaspoons fine grain sea salt
• 4-6 tablespoons warm water
• 
  Celery Sticks to serve

Instructions

1. Add all the ingredients to a high power blender and blend until completely smooth.
2. Serve with celery sticks.

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5 Nut-Free Afterschool Snacks: Frozen Grape Skewers

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Total time

5 mins

 

Literally just one ingredient and so easy to make. Don't have skewers? Just freeze them on a baking sheet instead.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: snacks

Cuisine: vegan

Serves: varies

Ingredients

• Grapes

Instructions

1. Add the grapes onto the skewers.
2. Place skewers onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and place in the freezer. Once the grapes are frozen, serve!

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The post Day 2 Vegan MoFo: 5 Nut-Free Afterschool Snacks 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.

Five months ago, I published a post about my Champagne Birthday, styled by the wonderfully talented soon-to-be-mama Holly Bowman. In the post, I wrote down some goals I wanted to accomplish before my next birthday. A little recap:

Some major goals I have for this year are:

-Write and develop an e-book   (To receive your FREE copy, subscribe along the sidebar!)

-A full layout redesign including my recipe index (HUGE thanks to Minimalist Baker for their video tutorials)

-Posting more frequently (this will much easier when I am not in school full time)

-Taking more photographs besides food

-Find a form of exercise I enjoy (just signed up for a ballet class! Yes I am going to be terrible but that’s ok!)

-Take an overseas trip

-No more buying coffee (especially since I buy excellent coffee beans for home) 

-Get my drivers’ license (yeah I know…)

I keep a little notebook with me everywhere I go so I can write down goals as I think of them and better yet, crossing them off as I accomplish them. For me, it is the best way to stay on track. Every few weeks, I write down my action plans to best accomplish these goals and it is wildly satisfying to cross them off my list in ink. So my progress so far:

-The eBook in is the works and I have an editor! I recently attended a “How to Build an eBook” seminar lead by David from The Healthy Maven which was an invaluable source of inspiration.

-The redesign is coming soon with a much better recipe index layout.

-With school officially done (for now), posts will be more frequent. I am aiming for twice a week minimum.

– The season has changed and green things are popping up all over the place. My camera will be making trips with me outside of my kitchen!

-Finding a form of exercise: I tried a 7-week ballet class and it wasn’t for me. I did sign up for hot yoga with my best bud. We actually became friends after working out together for a 5K run and it has been amazing to reconnect with her through this experience. Exercise regimes are made better with a support group or friend.

– My overseas trip has been cancelled but for good reason! I opted to go to Texas for Vida Vegan Con instead of an overseas trip. I feel that this trip would benefit my other goals better than a vacation. Plus, I get to meet some of my favourite vegan bloggers in person! I will probably fangirl so hard that I will be too shy to actually speak to any of them.

– The daily trip to the café near my house has been made much easier since they moved across town so no more coffees that I did not make at home. I have saved $60 a month times 5 months = $300!! 

– I have not done a single thing to get my driver’s license. Yikes!

But I have added the goal of writing at least 500 words a day and not just about food related things. I was recently tagged on Instagram by Amy Le to reveal some things about myself that may not have come up on my site. I confessed that I originally started this blog to become a better writer but because of school, my non-blog related writing has taken a backseat. With school being over now, this is the time to get into a writing routine and creating the habit of sitting down to write. No more excuses! This is my time to better myself and I plan use every moment I can.

This guacamole is a favourite among my friends that I work with (We are all too close to call each other “coworkers”). I brought it into work and we all devoured the container in a matter of minutes. Restaurant servers are always hungry since no one actually gets a break from work and our dinners usually consist of cold fries and maybe a slice of garlic bread with buffalo sauce. They kept asking when this recipe would make an appearance and their persistence has paid off. Roasting the jalapeño adds complexity to this guacamole but the avocado maintains its buttery taste. I originally added 2 full roasted jalapeños to this recipe but found it overpowered the fresh taste of the guacamole and left my mouth on fire. One jalapeño was still fairly mild so I used one and a half peppers but if you like it hot, feel free to add two.

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Yum

Roasted Jalapeño Guacamole

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Serving Size: 4

Ingredients

• 1-2 jalapenos
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 2 large ripe avocados, pitted. 1½ to smooth and the other half diced.
• ½ cup lightly packed cilantro leaves
• Juice of 2 limes
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1/3 cup diced fresh tomato
• 1 small shallot, minced
• ¼ - ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt*
• Serve with:
• Corn chips*
• Veggie sticks
• Cherry Tomatoes

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a small baking sheet with tinfoil or parchment paper. Drizzle the peppers with the olive oil on the sheet. Roast for 20 minutes, turning halfway through the cook time. Set aside to cool.
2. Meanwhile, in the bowl of a food processor add 1½ of the avocado, cooled roasted jalapeno, cilantro, limejuice and garlic and blend until smooth. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and add the tomatoes, minced shallot, cubed avocado and ¼ teaspoon of sea salt. Mix until just combined.
3. Cover and press the guacamole with plastic wrap, refrigerate for 30 minutes to let the flavours meld together. *If you are serving it with salted corn chips, try some of the guacamole on the chip before adding more salt.

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Does anyone actually follow the serving suggestion on a tub of hummus? Two tablespoons is the serving size on most purchased hummus. Like on one pita chip right? If you follow this serving suggestion then you have a greater will power than I do but I am just a mere mortal who loves her hummus. If I feel I have been indulging a little bit more than usual or eating a lot of takeout, hummus is one of those things that help me get back into the groove of healthful eating. I know I have food in the fridge if there is hummus and I have been known to really bunker down and eat my fill of it. Can you overdose on hummus? To me, the limit does not exist. (Still love Mean Girls)

Since starting school again I have noticed my hunger levels have gone up but my brain needs to be alert, focused and fuelled with good unrefined foods. Nothing is worse than a caffeine/sugar crash mid-test or exam so it is better to get your brainpower from whole food rather than stimulates like caffeine. Traditional store bought hummus is pretty good but uses a lot of canola oil (generally the second or third ingredient on the list) so it isn’t the best kind of fat you can eat. Store bought works in a pinch if time is not on your side and you need a snack ASAP!! I call these moments Snack-Attacks when I come home from work or school and literally tear apart the fridge on a mission to find the fastest snack I can shove in face. The hunger is animal-like and nothing can stand in my way.

Cooked dried beans make the best hummus. I don’t say this lightly but it is well worth the effort to soak and cook the beans for hummus. Cooked beans take the hummus to a freshness level that canned beans simply cannot and are way less expensive, even organic beans. I buy mine in bulk to make them even less costly and store them in large mason jars on my pantry.

Za’atar is a new spice in my pantry and I find myself eating more hummus because of it. This Middle Eastern blend consists of dried thyme, sumac, toasted sesame seeds and sea salt, making it a perfect pairing for hummus. Mark and I sprinkle it onto warm naan or pita bread drizzled with olive oil. A friend of mine who was raised in the Middle East says that at the Starbucks there they serve za’atar on warm buttered croissants. Sprinkle this spice on any Mediterranean or Middle Eastern dish that you fancy but also on roasted vegetables, hot rice with a squirt of lemon juice and with this hummus.

The post Lemony Za’atar Hummus appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Destiny’s Child on FULL blast!

Watch ALL the new Once Upon A Time episodes Netflix just released! Marathon it! (ALSO NEW THE WALKING DEAD!!!)

Practice the Single Ladies dance routine along side Beyonce on YouTube….pretend that I AM Beyonce.

Eat as MANY olives as I can!

Mark does not like olives which is a real problem for me because I LOVE olives. I am a huge fan of the briny, leathery fruits. Sometimes when Mark is working late I will prepare a little plate of olives, sauteed mushrooms, roasted red peppers, capers, balsamic vinegar, fresh cherry tomatoes and mustard to serve on crusty bread slices for dinner with a glass a red wine and feeling oh-so French! Unfortunately for me, cooking with olives is a no-go since I dread the idea of someone picking out an ingredient out of a dish. Maybe I am just too un-picky? I knew I needed to make a dish with some of my favourite ingredients that Mark is not a fan of while he is off being a rockstar. 

These potato rounds are banging good! Salty salsa, spiced potatoes and cool cashew tzatziki sauce come together to create this recipe. It is a bit fussy since you have to make a salsa, a sauce and the potatoes but if you follow my game plan, it will seem effortless. First, preheat the oven, salt the cucumbers, make the sauce and refrigerate. Secondly, chop and toss the potatoes in the spice oil and roast. While the potatoes are roasting make the salsa and prep the parsley garnish. When you break it down, it doesn’t seem so daunting.

Since olives are the star of this dish I encourage you to buy the best olives you can afford: from an olive bar, cheese shop or high-end grocery store. Jarred olives are far too salty and lack the richness and depth of a good quality olive. I tried this recipe with nicoise olives but this olive is more expensive than the recipe recommended Katamala and impossible to find pitted (believe me when I say they are a b*tch to pit these tiny French olives).

The best part of being in a relationship is that you like when your person is there and when they are not there. A little time alone is needed sometimes: just me, some olives and my cat Barb. And Beyonce on full blast.

What dish do you make when your partner is away? Anything you love and they hate?

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