Roasted Beet Hummus

From Integral Living & Eating by Esperanza Rossi

March 8, 2010

This past week, Elise Bauer, who publishes Simply Recipes, a wonderful food blog full of her family’s quick and simple whole food recipes, posted a recipe for Beet Hummus. I immediately decided to try it with a couple of roasted beets I had sitting in the fridge, only I failed to notice that the recipe did not call for chickpeas. Elise uses the roasted beets as a replacement for the chickpeas in her recipe, and I ended up adding the beets in addition to the chickpeas. The result was a beautiful fuchsia-colored and delicately sweet hummus that is perhaps a lot more filling than Elise’s original recipe, but with a milder roasted beets flavor. I share it with you, so that you may try both recipes or take your pick between the two. I will definitely give the original version a try in the future.

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Celery, Cashew & Sherry Soup

From Integral Living & Eating by Esperanza Rossi

March 2, 2010

I never quite know what to do with celery. I usually buy a bunch when I need to use a couple of stalks for a recipe, and then I am stuck with the rest of the bunch. Too often those lonely forgotten stalks have languished in my fridge, turning paler and more rubbery by the day. And too frequently have I discovered them, in the midst of a fridge cleaning frenzy, at the bottom of our produce drawer, withered to the point of inedible. A couple of weeks ago when we got a beautiful bunch of young celery in our CSA box, I was actually prepared with a recipe for Cream of Celery Soup with Sherry by Dana Jacobi. I was a bit skeptical that celery as the main ingredient could produce a flavorful soup, but the sherry really complements the celery and gives this simple soup a delicate richness...Read More

Lemon & Sour Cream Pound Cake

From Integral Living & Eating by Esperanza Rossi

February 12, 2010

I needed to use the sour cream leftover from my husband’s annual Super Bowl nachos and fried pickles feast, and decided to modify this Lemon-Sour Cream Pound Cake recipe from Art Smith. The main challenges in this recipe are the refined flour and sugar. I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for 2/3 of the flour called for by the original recipe, and used an organic sugar from cane juice. I though about using sucanat, but was afraid the molasses flavor from the sucanat would overwhelm the delicate lemon flavor of this cake. Maybe next time I’ll use the sucanat and try a chocolate & sour cream pound cake. I’m sure the molases flavor would nicely complement the chocolate. Read more...

Ravioli with Arugula, Pine Nuts, Raisins & Cream

From Integral Living & Eating by Esperanza Rossi

February 7, 2010

It feels like a wonderful morning here today. It isn’t one of those sunny blue skies with birds chirping outside of my windows making me want to bread out into a 1950s musical song and dance montage kind of mornings. Rather, it is one of those mornings in which you are I feel comfortable with the realities of my life. Read more...