You gotta eat so you may as well eat good food!
Hello!
We love food. Sometimes we feel like life is just killing time til the next meal!
Normally we are pescitarian (vegetarian + seafood) but are working towards veganism. We believe the food we eat should be delicious, nourishing for your body and good for the environment!
We are currently doing The Eczema Diet.
Hope you enjoy sharing this journey with us!
It’s been a busy few weeks of packing and moving house which has left little time for blogging! But, I have a few recipes that have been waiting to be recorded. Here is one that I have been using quite a bit! Super easy cashew cheese spread and cashew cheese sauce! So quick to whip up if you have a high-powered blender like a Vitamix or Blendtec (we use the latter). If you have a food processor, you will just need to soak the cashews for a few hours to get a smooth consistency. If you don’t mind it a bit grainer, then no need to soak!
Cashew Cheese Garlic Spread / Cashew Cheese Garlic Sauce
Yields: ~1 1/2 cups
Ingredients
1 cup raw cashews (No need to soak if you have a high powered blender like a Vitamix or Blendtec. To achieve the smooth consistency in a food processor, soak for 2 hours first)
2 cloves of garlic or 2 tsp garlic powder (less if you don’t like a strong garlic taste)
1/4 tsp citric acid
1/2 tsp salt
Up to 1/4 cup water for Spread consistency, 1/2 cup for Sauce consistency
Method
Yes, another pasta recipe! Pre-Eczema Diet, one of our regular pasta dishes was a creamy basil pesto with roasted veggies. But we have said goodbye (hopefully only temporarily) to our beloved basil as the only herb allowed in the first stage of the Eczema Diet is parsley. Now, parsley and I have never been the best of friends. I would tolerate it in tabouli and falafel, but never ever bought it to cook with. Surprisingly (or not so), when you are only given one option, you do grow to like it! The first time I made the parsley pesto, we had it on homemade spelt wraps with a sauted beans and cabbage – yum! After that I knew I had to try pesto pasta! Usually I make a ‘creamy’ pesto sauce by blending silken tofu with pesto ingredients, but this time I gave white beans a go and it worked!
Pesto Spaghetti with Roasted Vegetables
Yield: 3-4 Servings
Ingredients
1/2 quantity of Parsley Pesto
1 can of white beans (cannelini, butter)
1/4 red cabbage, cut into 1cm wedges
6-8 brussel sprouts, quartered
1 tbs rice bran oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
250g spelt spaghetti (or other pasta)
Method
Brown rice salad often appears at our family gatherings courtesy of my mother. I love it because its a nice change from the usual salad suspects, has lots of textures and is filing!
Here is a Eczema Diet friendly version I put together for lunch today. It uses the Maple Dressing recipe from the new The Eczema Detox book by Karen Fischer that arrived last week!
Tofu Rice Salad
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 30 mins – 2hrs
Total Time: 35mins – 2hrs 5mins
Yield: 4 Servings
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups uncooked rice (Brown, white or whichever)
1/2 cup raw cashews
2-3 spring onions, sliced/chopped into circles
Handful of green beans, chopped to your liking (I chop them small1 tsp rice bran oil (or whichever you use)
300g Medium or firm tofu, cut into 3cm squares
1/2 quantity Maple Dressing (from The Eczema Detox book – include the garlic!)
Directions
1. Cook rice in rice cooker or stovetop method. When cooked, transfer to a large serving bowl.
2. While the rice is cooking, prepare the other ingredients.
3. Heat the oil in a medium frypan. Gently press the tofu between to piece of paper towel or cloth to remove excess water. Slice the tofu into 3cm squares. Fry the tofu on two sides until light golden brown (still silly in the middle). Remove from heat and set aside.
4. (Optional) In the same frypan with residual oil, fry the chopped green beans for a few minutes so they remain crunchy.
5. Make 1/2 quantity Maple Dressing (or 1 quantity if you want leftover to use for something else!)
6. Chop the spring onions.
7. Add the spring onions, cashews and green beans and maple dressing to the rice and mix through.
8. Gently lay tofu on top to serve.
What’s for lunch? Arrghhh the dreaded question I ask myself every single day. Sandwiches and wraps are usually our go to lunches during the week – easy to throw together and filling…win win! But they can get boring…so when I discovered this vegan breakfast sauce recipe, we knew we’d struck gold! We usually make a double batch of these every 2-3 weeks and keep them in the freezer to zap/fry when needed. Yum! Such a versatile recipe. We have them for breakfast with sauted mushrooms, in sandwiches and wraps, even sliced up on pizza! The boys love them as ‘nuggets’ with hommus to dip in.
When we started The Eczema Diet I freaked out a little when I realised we couldn’t have our beloved vegan breakfast sausage 😦 But then I challenged myself to try and make a version that we could eat while on the diet! Ta da! A milder flavour than the original but satisfying all the same.
Sandwich Patty (for want of a better name!)
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 55 mintues
Yield: 8-12 patties depending on how big you want them!
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups broth/stock
1 Tbsp. Maple syrup
1 tbs Garlic powder
1/2 TSP salt
1/2 TSP garlic powder
3 cups coarsely chopped rolled oats (see note)
½ Cup of Cooked Rice (optional if you don’t use rice add ½ cup of coarsely chopped oats)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Line cooking trays with parchment paper
3. Combine all ingredients, except oats and rice, in a medium saucepan; bring to a boil over high heat.
4. Remove from heat; add oats and rice, stir well. Allow mixture to sit 5 minutes.
5. Scoop mixture into 2-inch round balls; place on prepared baking sheet and flatten gently with the back of a wet spoon. Bake 15 minutes; flip sausages and bake an additional 5 minutes.
6. Optional but HIGHLY RECOMMEND Heat non-stick skillet add a little oil and sausage, toss to coat and brown/warm. This gives the outer saltiness that sausage has.
These store well in the fridge and freezer. When storing let them cool after baking and store in fridge or freezer. When ready to eat proceed with step 6.
Note: To coarsely chop the oats, pulse rolled oats in the food processor or blender for a few seconds…be careful not to process for too long and make oat flour!
Pasta is one of our staple, go to meals. Before The Eczema Diet, we would make a tomato-based pasta or pesto pasta at least once a week. Our two boys love pasta too! Especially our newest muncher who, at 8 months old and no teeth, handles pasta surprisingly well.
Cabbage in pasta? I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking it too! But we had some cabbage in the fridge that needed to be eaten soon so we thought, why not! Throw it in! And wow! It worked really well. Who knew!
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Method
1. In a saucepan, boil water for pasta.
2. Heat oil in frypan and saute cabbage until soft.
3. Add the creamy cashew sauce to the pan. Stir through
4. Add the lentils and pasta and stir to combine.
Who needs dairy cream when you have cashews!!! We were stoked when this cashew sauce turned out just as we imagined…smooth, creamy, garlicky goodness. Tweaked from this Cashew Cream Sauce to suit The Eczema Diet we used it to make Creamy Cabbage and Lentil Pasta! Soooo good.
Prep time: 2 hours (soaking cashews)
Cook time: 10 minutes
Total time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings (for 250g uncooked pasta)
Ingredients
Method
1. In a frypan, heat oil and fry leeks until soft.
2. Add leeks and all other ingredients into blender.
3. Blend on high until very smooth and creamy.
4. Stir through cooked pasta (see Creamy Cabbage and Lentil Pasta) or potatoes/vegetables.
Here is the first of a series of recipes we have modified for Stage 1 of The Eczema Diet!
I love risotto but do not have the patience to sit by the stove and stir stir stir. Two little humans at our ankles also makes this difficult. Consequently risotto has long been something I only enjoy when we go out to eat. So when I discovered oven baked risotto I was cheering! Risotto at home but not stirring at the stove! Woohoo!
This basic risotto recipe was easy to adapt using our restricted ingredients list…and it’s super yummy! Definitely one we will keep on making after we are no longer doing The Eczema Diet. Hope you enjoy it too.
Zoe
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 tablespoon rice bran oil (or whatever oil you can use)
2 leeks, halved lengthways and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
250g aborio rice
700ml hot broth/stock
handful green beans (or brusell sprouts), halved
1 can chickpeas (or other beans), drained and rinsed
1 can red kidney beans (or other beans), drained and rinsed
1/2 teaspoon citric acid
1 teaspoon garlic powder
salt
Method
On Monday Jan 15th, we started The Eczema Diet. It’s an elimination diet designed specifically for people with eczema, dermatitis etc. I (Zoe) have had eczema since I was born, and so have our two boys. Topical steroid cream has been the way we’ve treated our eczema, but I really didn’t want the boys to have to use it for the rest of their lives so I researched more natural solutions and came across The Eczema Diet. So we’re giving The Eczema Diet a go to see if we can kick our eczema!
Zest in the Kitchen 