Spelt Salad With Mint, Parsley, Artichoke Hearts, And Cannellini Beans

Salads make a great summer meal; I often eat them once or twice a day. However, as we headed into August, I began to want a change from my usual salads. So, I dug through a stack of recipe clippings and found an old Cooking Light recipe (from the days of their Inspired Vegetarian section) for a spelt salad with mint, parsley, artichoke hearts, and cannellini beans. It turned out to be a great pick: the spelt has a nice, nutty flavor; the mint and parsley blend smoothly to create a pleasant herb taste; and who can resist artichoke hearts? (I think they are a close runner-up for "vegetarian bacon.") Plus, the recipe uses canned beans and artichoke hearts; the only real cooking involved is simmering the spelt for 30 minutes. Which is perfect for a salad in August.

Cannellini Beans With Tomato And Basil

From Jack Bishop's Italian Vegetarian Cookbook: a vegan caprese salad, with seasoned cannellini beans in place of mozzarella cheese. The beans require a little work (the recipe calls for dried cannellini beans to be soaked and then simmered with garlic and bay leaves) but can be prepared in advance. Once the beans have cooled, simply toss them with basil, diced tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and pepper -- very easy, and very refreshing.

Served with polenta and spinach.

Lavender Chocolate Bars

Veggie Belly recently posted about several interesting things to do with lavender (both edible and not). It reminded me that I'd been meaning to write up the lavender chocolate bars that Rhubarb made. It's another recipe from Ani's Raw Food Desserts; the ingredients include lavender, almonds, raisins, and cacao powder. I'd never noticed it before, but raisins plus chocolate creates a wonderful caramel-like flavor. Lavender plus chocolate is simply divine. The bars need to be kept in the freezer, which makes for a cool, chocolatey summer treat.

Spelt Chocolate Chip Cookies

I like to start my work day with cookies. Not for breakfast, of course. Instead, I eat a bowl of cereal or some peanut butter toast at home, then head to the office and, within five or 10 minutes of arriving at my desk, break out the cookies. It's basically my treat for going in to work.

Since I eat cookies on a regular basis, I like to think about ways to make them slightly less bad for me, while not sacrificing taste or texture. One of my tricks is to make peanut butter cookies using whole wheat flour instead of white flour -- while I'm not always a fan of whole wheat cookies, I think that the nuttiness of whole wheat blends really well with peanut butter.

After some experimentation, I've adapted my usual chocolate chip cookie recipe to include spelt flour in place of some of the all-purpose flour. (I tried making chocolate chip cookies using only spelt flour, but they turned out thinner and less chewy than I like.) The revised recipe also uses a little less sugar than the original.

Ingredients
2 sticks butter, at room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup white spelt flour
1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 12-ounce package of chocolate chips
1 cup nuts (right now, I'm on a macadamia kick)

Preheat oven to 375.
Cream the butter, sugar, molasses, and vanilla extract.
Beat in the eggs.
Stir in the salt and baking soda.
Slowly stir in the spelt and all purpose flour until the mixture is thoroughly combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.
Using a teaspoon, scoop up little bits of dough and drop them onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until golden brown.
Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack.

Makes approximately 4 dozen cookies.

Strawberry, Avocado, and Spinach Salad

Rhubarb says that avocado is the vegetarian bacon. But would bacon taste this good with strawberries and a balsamic vinaigrette? I think not.

Chocolate Cups With Almond Cream And Berries

I wanted to make a birthday dessert for someone who doesn't do wheat, rarely does dairy, and is cutting back on sugar. As someone whose dessert repertoire leans heavily on butter, sugar, and all-purpose flour, I was a little stumped. Then, wandering through the stacks at Powell's during a recent trip to Portland, I noticed Ani's Raw Food Desserts by Ani Phyo. The design was cute, the photos were pretty, and the recipes were not only simple, but also consistently wheat-, dairy-, and gluten-free. So, I decided to give it a shot.

The recipe I chose was "Almond Frangipane Kream," which I planned to serve as a pudding topped with fresh berries. How simple was it? Put some raw almonds in a blender along with agave nectar, vanilla, and water, and process for about 30 seconds (or until smooth). That's it.

The result was a pleasantly sweet, smooth blend that tasted of almond and vanilla. I really liked it, but I was worried that the dessert might need a contrasting flavor, and so I ran out at the last minute and bought some little chocolate bowls. (Yes, the bowls were a cheat, both in terms of being store-bought and in terms of containing some sugar and dairy...) In retrospect, my concerns were unfounded, as the berries themselves provided a good contrast to the cream.

This is the only recipe that I've tried from the book to date, but, so far, I'm pleased with my selection. The instructions are clear and easy to follow, and the book is accessible even to someone who isn't a raw foodie. Other recipes I'd like to try in the future include Pineapple With Ginger And Lime, Lavender Chocolate Bars, and Raspberry Ganache Fudge Cake (!!!).

Socca (Chickpea Pancakes)

I'm not very big on pancakes for breakfast, but I've discovered that I really like having pancakes for supper - or, at least, I like dining on socca (pancakes made with chickpea flour). The socca recipe is simple, requiring only chickpea flour, salt, pepper, olive oil, and water. After the batter rests briefly, the pancakes are poured into a skillet coated lightly with olive oil, then cooked for three minutes on one side and one minute on the other. One half-batch serves two people. Rhubarb and I ate them topped with zucchini and tomatoes, which were roasted with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary. Very simple, but also very satisfying.