Week in the lens of Instagram: 7/9/11

This week’s Instagram behind-the-scenes:

{Sweet potato burrito}

{Us}

{Homemade banana soft serve w/ peanut butter … mmm!}

{Salad for lunch}
{Root vegetables have been eaten a lot this week}

{Raw Blueberry Pie}

{Vegan chocolate milk}
{Just married friend}

{Cutest-nephew-ever pictures of the week}

It’s been a busy, wonderful week!

Now we’re off to our first vegetarian/vegan Meetup group get together!

Coming up in KC & Share the Love; 7/8/11

Time for another wonderful summer weekend!

{Coming Up in KC}

• Westport Food Truck Festival: This weekend in food trucks we have The First Annual Westport Food Truck Festival. Put on by The Pitch and Boulevard, this event will be located at The Backyard at The Beaumont (4050 Pennsylvania Ave, KCMO).
  
  It will be held THIS Friday, July 8th from 5pm-12am, and Saturday, July 9th from 3pm-12am, and feature up to 20 local food trucks along with festival activities including pitchers of Boulevard Brewery beer, margaritas, DJs, bands, food demos, performers, local artisans and more. Cost is $5.00 per day. I love it when all the food trucks come together! (That last sentence is to be said in the voice of Hannibal Smith).

• Meet up:
  Erik and I are attending our first ever meet-up this Saturday with VegKC meet-up group, Kansas City’s vegan and vegetarian group. We thought it would be a fun way to meet people, and we’re eating at Eden Alley, already on my top recommended Kansas City restaurants list. We’ve never been to any meet up groups before, so it should be fun … I will report back later!

{Share the Love}

• Itzy’s Kitchen: Erica’s blog was actually the first food-related blog I found over two years ago, and is a huge reason why I started my blog. It would be hard to someone as sweet and helpful as her! The above link goes to her recent black bean burger recipe (that looks delicious!) On top of all that, she’s very close to having her first little one, and I couldn’t be happier for her!!

• Athlete’s Plate: Most simply put, Matt always has awesome healthy recipes and useful tips, and info. It also just so happens that this week I’m his featured blogger. So go check it out! Warning: you may start drinking kombucha if you stick around Matt’s blog for too long, ha.

• Eat, Live, Run’s Vegan Blueberry Almond Tart: Words really aren’t needed, this vegan tart looks way too good not to pass on!

Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Have you ever been a part of any Meetup groups?

Raw Blueberry Pie

Wednesday already? I guess that’s what a holiday weekend will do to a person.

Now let’s begin with dessert!

Raw Blueberry Pie

This is officially {so far} our favorite raw pie recipe ever. We made a similar version, Raw Raspberry Pie, this past December.

If you click on that link, you’ll find the recipe. For this pie, we simply subbed frozen blueberries for raspberries.

It’s pretty awesome! This pie was gone in just about a day {with a little help from Erik’s dad}.

Root Vegetables

We’ve had a thing for root vegetables lately.

I think it’s spurred on by our love for cashew cheese, added to our latest BADSEED farmers market loot that included potatoes, beets, and amazingly flavorful onions. First up, as Erik so beautifully names it:

Vegan au gratin curry potatoes

These were chopped alongside some onions, fresh garlic, a little hemp oil, and curry spices, baked in the oven, and then topped with easy cashew cheese.

Words just can’t describe how good the garlic and onion tasted together with the potatoes and cheese. Yum!!

Root "Pizza"

{Erik named this one too, ha}.

Not to be confused with actual pizza. He baked the veggies on a pizza pan with a little hemp oil and then put them in a triangle shape on our plates to look like a pizza slice … hence the “pizza” part.

This delicious “pizza” is made up of baked carrots, potatoes, beets, onions and also eaten with cashew cheese. Can you tell we love that stuff?? It’s just that good.

This mixture also tastes great with ketchup, or simply all by its lonesome. It’s definitely strong enough to stand on its own two feet if that’s what your little heart desires.

That’s the latest deliciousness that’s been going on in the Lesley Lifting Life kitchen!

What’s the best thing you’ve eaten this week??

Easy Cashew Cheese

Hope you all have had a great 4th of July!!

My parents and grandma were in town this weekend, my friend flew in from CA, and I was in another friend’s wedding. While it was a great weekend, it was also a busy weekend, to say the least! I'm left here pretty exhausted and when everything calmed down, I took a nice long nap, and have left the mess in my house to clean up at a later date, ha.

Cashew Cheese

I promised a cashew cheese recipe, and a cashew cheese recipe you shall get!

Since beginning to eat a predominantly vegan diet, cheese is the one thing I thought I would miss the most. I mean, what was I going to eat with, well … everything??

After making cashew cheese, I don’t miss dairy cheese at all! As you can see, we’ve been adding it to our normal dinner dishes with things like quinoa and roasted veggies, salads, wild rice and sauteed veggies, potatoes, etcetera. The below meal consisted of veggies lightly sauteed in hemp oil, wild rice, topped with cashew cheese. (And after I took the picture, I added more cheese!)

Yum!

We’ve made several variations, but here is our so far tried and true simple combination:

Ingredients:
-- 1 C raw cashews
-- 1 C water
-- 3 heaping Tsps. nutritional yeast
-- 1/4 ts salt (we use Himalayan)
-- Juice from a lemon (optional, to taste)

Directions:
-- Blend together in a good quality blender, or use a food processor, until smooth.

It turns out creamy and delicious! Make extra to store in the refrigerator for easy, “cheesy” go-to meals throughout the week.

You can make different variations (i.e. creamier, thicker, or thinner, etc) by adding more or less of each ingredient.

We use a similar, thinned down version for summer salad dressings as well, and it’s pretty wonderful!

What’s one thing you would miss the most eating a diet devoid of meat and dairy?

Week in the lens of Instagram: 7/3/11

Happy 4th of July!

This weeks behind the scenes …

{13 more days!}

{Veggies with avocado dip}
{Massaged kale salad}

{Tea at Mudpie Vegan Bakery – it was our first time there, definitely going back}

{Leafy greens about to be crispy chips}
{Our new dehydrator that makes it happen!}

{Homemade raw goji dark chocolate – Erik made this!}

{If only he didn’t live all the way in NE! Another cute-as-a-button nephew Walker picture}

Have a great holiday!!!

Share the Love: 7/1/2011

Can you believe it’s July?? Not only that but it’s time for another weekend, and the Share the Love!

{Coming Up in KC}

• The Truck Stop in the Crossroads: I’m happy to have recently received an email from The Truck Stop team about “The Truck Stop” which, starting THIS First Friday, July 1st, is going to be a “permanent collection of Kansas City’s finest food trucks” every Frist Friday through October. Sounds good to me!

The Truck Stop will be located in the empty lot at 21st St and Wyandotte St from 6-11 p.m. This Friday’s food truck attendees will be:

-- Los Tules
-- Curbside Cuisine
-- Coffeecake KC
-- The Good You
-- Jerusalem Cafe

I would LOVE to go to this very first Truck Stop event and document the festivities via photos and blog post but since I’m in a wedding this weekend, I won’t make it. Have no fear, though, I will be there next month!

{Share the Love}

• The Employee Lounge: The Employee Lounge is a blog started by Linh Trieu and Tina Magee-Jenks. It’s a “daily blog about the service industry in Kansas City and a dialogue about what we can do to make our city better”. I love their blog. Not only are the photos amazing, but the content is awesome too! If you hurry, you can still get in on their 100th Day Giveaway!

• Color Wheel Meal’s Raw Ice Cream Sandwiches: These raw ice cream sandwiches are right up our alley, they look and sound delicious! In fact, most of the food she shares is right up our alley. I would definitely go and eat at Samantha’s house any day, ha.

• Rawxy’s Asparagus & Basil Soup: This asparagus and basil soup caught my eye, it looks fabulous and sounds like a perfect summer food! (Not to mention, we just got some new delicious looking basil plants). Callie also sells delicious treats, “Rawxies”. I promise, they ARE delicious, we got to try them at the Conveniently Natural grand opening.

Have a good one!