Coming back to the city, we realized how much we craved meals from our own kitchen and needed huge bowls of veggies asap. Going on vacation, I tend to go crazy on snacks, wine, and coffee so I needed a reset meal to get me back on track. This bowl is simple, quick, gluten free, full of veggies, and dressed with an addictive spicy peanut sauce. Sometimes to eat a giant bowl of veggies, all you need is a great sauce and this one is a winner. I highly recommend using the red chile flakes but if spicy food is not your jam, feel free to omit it. 

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Reset Power Bowl

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

7 mins

Total time

27 mins

 

This is my go-to bowl when I have been eating a less than optimal diet. Huge portion of veggies with protein from whole soy beans and a spicy sauce. If you don't like the spice, feel free to omit. This recipe is vegan, gluten-free and grain-free. This serves 2 large portions or 4 smaller ones + extra sauce.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: main course

Cuisine: vegan, gluten free

Ingredients

For the Spicy Peanut Sauce

• 3 tablespoons natural crunchy or smooth peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons tamari or Liquid Bragg's
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon pure maple syrup
• Fat pinch of red chile flakes or a squirt of Sriracha (optional)
• Sesame seeds (optional for garnish)

For the Reset Power Bowl

• 2 zucchinis, made into zoodles
• 1 carrot, cut into matchsticks
• 1 red pepper, cut into matchsticks
• 1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
• ½ cup frozen edamame
• 5-6 green kale leaves, stems removed and roughly chopped*

Instructions

For the Spicy Peanut Sauce

1. In a blender, add all the ingredients and blend until combined. Set aside until the bowls are ready.

For the Reset Power Bowl

1. In a medium sized pot, bring some water to a boil and cook the edamame for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
2. Add about 3-inches of water into the empty pot and set a steamer basket inside. Over medium-high heat, add the broccoli and steam under al dente, about 2 minutes. Add the kale and steam for an additional minute.
3. Meanwhile, transfer the zoodles and matchstick veggies to the serving dishes. Add the edamame, kale, and broccoli. Drizzle with Spicy Peanut Sauce and top with sesame seeds.

Notes

If you prefer the kale raw, shred the kale and massage with some sesame seed oil at least 15 minutes before serving*

3.3.3077

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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

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I was at The Big Carrot, a fancy grocery store, and they have a juice and smoothie bar connected to the main entrance. I had my eye on coffee but the sun was out and I was feeling refreshed so I went into the juice bar. On their huge menu, I was searching out smoothies but a juice caught my eye, a kombucha and beet juice mixture. Say what? Like kale chips, I have a small addiction to kombucha and I generally treat myself to it when I do well on a test or assignment. This is an expensive reward system since most small bottles are priced at $4 each. Kombochu almost has a beer-like quality to it but it has very little alcohol. For those who don’t know, kombucha is a naturally carbonated fermented tea and before you go running for the hills over this hippy-dippy sounding drink, it is actually delicious and good for you. Fermented foods and drinks have loads of good bacteria in them to keep your insides happy by promoting detoxification. Now we are going to get really hippy… what if I mixed it with a green juice? The beet + kombucha juice was amazing and I almost chugged it while grocery shopping but it didn’t have too many greens in it. I bought a few bottles of Tonica*, some green vegetables and went home to make my own version of this drink. Like the beet juice I had at The Big Carrot, I drank this one without making a sourpuss face and wanted more. I never thought I would like green juice at all but now smoothies have a little more competition.

Don’t have a juicer? Me neither. If I buy one more kitchen appliance, I will be labelled as a bad cohabitator by Mark and forced to sleep on the balcony. I used my Vitamix and a cheesecloth over a fine mesh strainer to make my juice. Just blend and gently squeeze through the cheesecloth. A nut milk bag would also work as long as you don’t mind your bag having green stains on it. Don’t squeeze the bag or cheesecloth too hard or the pulp will come shooting out and get into your juice. I fill 2/3 of my glass with green juice and top with chilled kombucha the rest of the way. Serve with a thin slice of lemon and enjoy! Could this drink be any healthier?? If you are feeling really hippy awesome, add a tablespoon of chia seeds to the drink to make a “bubble green juice tea”. The chia seeds will swell up and acts like the tapioca in bubble tea but with a nutritional punch. 

What have you done to turn something you didn’t like into something you love? I never use to like kale until I made kale chips and now kale is a staple in my household. Leave your comments and suggestions below. Happy juicing!

* I do not have any affiliation with Tonica, I just like their kombucha. 

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Whenever someone at work bugs me, since I work in a restaurant this occurs as frequently as breathing, my friend Maeghan and I play the game “You know what grinds my gears?…” I think I saw it on a Family Guy episode though I am not crazy about the show. It is just a silly way to rant about the shenanigans that happen like:

“Why are we waiting on salad?”

“Oh em gee that kid barfed all over the table!”

“I AM MAD WEEDED!!”

“Yes, I will have a well done steak…” ordered five minutes before we close.

“That guy just snapped his fingers at me”

“Don’t ask me for my number and stiff me when I say no thank you….”

“That table just called me something really offence while speaking French”

As ridiculous as things seem, they happen on the regular. The last one happened to a friend of mine and she speaks fluent French so unfortunately heard all the nasty things that the table was saying about her.

It helps to say these things out loud to her since usually it is just ridiculous things that get my blood boiling. Sometimes I tell her to hop aboard the Complain Train when I feel like being a whiner. To you all reading this, hop aboard because we are going on a trip!! CHOO CHOO!!

My friend Katie was at Starbucks last week and ordered a fancy latte but with half of the sugary syrup they normally put it. The barista asked her, “Oh are you trying to be healthy?” She handled it better than I would have and simply said that she just didn’t like how sweet the drink was normally served. Katie told me that she was being judged for her size and this person was assuming she is unhealthy. Katie is a champ, does yoga and eats healthful meals all while working and going to school full-time. My gears were grinding so hard that sparks were flying!!  

This reminded me of a similar incident I experienced at the grocery store checkout when I first started my site. I was sipping on a mason jar filled with my green smoothie, cause that’s just how I do, and the rather buff man behind me questioned my drink. I told him what was in it thinking maybe he just wanted the recipe but instead he asked me if I had lost weight. I said no since I was just starting out and was just in shock that a stranger would ask me that.

 “Some people will try anything,” he muttered to his companion.

I said nothing, paid for my purchases, put on my sunglasses and cried the whole way home. It seems crazy that I let this strangers comment affect me in such a negative way but it did. At that time in my life, I was very self-conscious about my appearance since I did not look like the “typical” vegan.

I remember a few years back that I was probably the unhealthiest person ever; I chained smoked, drank only diet drinks when I wasn’t drinking huge quantities of coffee and took over the counter diet pills everyday. I was skinny but definitely not healthy and no one said anything about it, even when I had a cigarette between my lips and double-fisting a Diet Coke and a Red Bull. This image did not get a rise out of people enough for them to say anything to my face about how unhealthy I was because I was thin but as soon as a curvaceous girl has a green smoothie in hand, everyone seemed to have a damn opinion about it.

I have a high self-esteem when I am alone and this is common occurrence. I think I am beautiful and love my green eyes, bright smile and my great curvy body but this all goes down the drain when people make comments like that. I start to question my self-esteem, maybe I am not as pretty as I think? Maybe I could lose some weight?

I decided that I had to practice confidence for the sake of my self-esteem. People are always going to be rude and unforgiving but I needed to change my reaction. I would not longer beat myself up for not being their ideal, I am my own ideal person and I am enough and guess what?? So are you!! 

 I used this recipe for the sauce. To go nut-free, substitute the cashews for soaked sunflower seeds. 

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