Experience Nutrition

Category: Create Soups, Sauces, & Pesstos with Everyday Veggies

  • Experience Nutrition: 7 Minute Heirloom Tomato Pasta Sauce

    Experience Nutrition: 7 Minute Heirloom Tomato Pasta Sauce

    This week I was excited to purchase a great Chickpea Pasta from Sonoran Pasta at the Downtown Phoenix Market and wanted to enjoy it with a quick tomato sauce.

    From start-to-finish with photos and videos this took less than 30 minutes to prepare and the sauce itself cooked in 7 minutes.

    Hope you enjoy this delicious simple tomato sauce! Please tag us on Social Media: #plantbasedfoodart

    7 Minute Tomato Sauce Recipe

    Serves 1

    • 1 heirloom tomato, sliced
    • 1 elephant garlic, minced
    • ¼ cup Kalamata olives
    • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
    • Pinch sea salt
    • Garnish: Green onion, sliced

    SIMPLE STEPS

    • Pre-heat sauté pan on medium.
    • Add olive oil to bottom of pan.
    • Add tomatoes and sauté for 4-5 minutes.
    • Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
    • Add olives and sauté for 4-5 minutes.

    The Chickpea Pasta

    Use this recipe as a guide to cook refrigerated (not boxed) chickpea pasta. Cook the pasta while the tomato sauce is cooking.

    SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

    • 3 ounces pasta
    • ½ tsp sea salt

    SIMPLE STEPS

    • Pour about 4 cups of water and sea salt into a medium size pot.
    • Bring water to boil.
    • Add pasta to the boiling water.
    • Lower to simmer.
    • Simmer for 3-4 minutes.
    • Drain the pasta.

    PLATING

    • Toss some of the pasta with the sauce.
    • Plate with the tossed pasta, extra sauce, and green onion.
    • Enjoy!

    Enjoy!

    Click to register for our new Plant-Based Food Art Mastermind! Learn 3 healthy, plant-based recipes and how to plate them beautifully.

  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Quick Organic Tomato-Lemon Sauce Step-by-Step Videos

    A New View of Healthy Eating: Quick Organic Tomato-Lemon Sauce Step-by-Step Videos

    By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    This week I purchased 20 pounds of organic tomatoes for only $20 from McClendon’s Select at the Uptown Farmer’s Market in Phoenix. Every time I have the opportunity to purchase these goodies I get so excited and then I immediately realize that I’ve just given myself a cooking project to squeeze into the week.

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    Last night I made four different batches of tomato sauce, 3 on the stove-top and one roasted in the oven. The lemon tomato sauce was so incredible that I decided to cook another batch today and took some videos to show you the process. The sauce is still on my stove and my home is full of the lemon aromatherapy.

    A quick look at the fresh ingredients in the 4 different tomato sauces.

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    The cooked tomato sauces.

    The first batch of tomato lemon sauce with capers, marjoram, and brown rice. This delicious and fresh dish inspired the big batch of tomato sauce that you’ll see in the step-by-step videos in today’s blog.

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    With these videos, learn the simple steps to make your own tomato sauce. Go out to a farmers’ market in your area, buy some fresh organic tomatoes and have fun creating your own tomato sauces.

    Step 1: Mise en place. All set with the ingredients for the tomato lemon sauce.

    Step 2: Getting started with the tomatoes, lemons, organic extra virgin olive oil, and Himalayan sea salt into the saute pan.

    Step 3: Tomatoes are beginning to break-down in the saute pan and the lemon aromatherapy is already infusing my kitchen.

    Step 4: Breakdown tomatoes with your bamboo spoon.

    Step 5: Simmer the sauce for about 20-25 minutes.

    Step 6: Tomatoes and lemons are simmering. So simple.

    Step 7: The simple beauty of food. Today’s organic tomato lemon sauce.

    Have fun shopping at your local farmers’ markets. Buy some organic tomatoes. Create your own sauces. And, share your culinary dishes with us on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/NewViewHealthyEating

    Interested in additional simple culinary skills and recipes? “A New View of Healthy Eating” book is available right here.

    The beauty of simple food.

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  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Intuitive Cooking: Spiral Veggie Saute with Vegan Cashew Basil Pesto

    By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    The last few days I have been honored to shoot a series of videos with Tom Shanahan of Spiritual Adrenaline. We prepared 13 cooking videos, so I’m the lucky one with lots of incredible whole food delicious left-overs. One of cooking videos featured Raw Spiral Veggies with Cashew Basil Pesto. For that dish, I spiralized organic zucchini, sweet potato, butternut squash, and golden beets, and created a vegan, dairy-free pesto with raw cashews, basil, lemon, olive oil, and sea salt.

    Today, with the left-over already spiralized veggies and the cashew basil pesto, and the addition of a beautiful organic heirloom tomato, I created one of my very favorite dishes ever. (I’m so glad I can cook another batch tomorrow!)

    Enjoy a few of the photos and have fun creating your own veggie saute with left-overs!

    • Simple Ingredients: Spiralized raw veggies, cashew basil pesto, heirloom tomato, organic extra virgin olive oil, and garlic and sea salt (not in photo)
    •  Beautiful heirloom tomato: Lightly saute in organic extra virgin olive oil, with fresh garlic, and sea salt.
    • Saute: Add the spiralized veggies to the saute pan and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
    • Plate and enjoy!

    EXCERPT: A New View of Healthy Eating: Spiral Veggies with Nut-Based Creamy Dressing

    Learn how to spiral colorful veggies and create a simple dressing with raw cashews and basil.

    Basic Salad Dressing: Raw Cashews & Basil Pesto

    A vegan, dairy-free, creamy dressing is the base for this colorful raw spiral veggie salad. With fresh basil and lots of garlic, this refreshing dressing is a perfect alternative to a cheese-based pesto.

    SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

    • ½ cup raw cashews, soaked 3-4 hours in water
    • ½ cup fresh basil leaves
    • 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
    • 2 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
    • 1 tsp sea salt
    • ¼ cup organic extra virgin olive oil

    SIMPLE STEPS

    • Place all ingredients except organic extra virgin olive oil into food processor.
    • Add olive oil little by little until smooth.
    • Taste and add extra garlic, lemon juice, or basil leaves to create a taste that’s right for you.

    For this recipe and  more, my book, A New View of Healthy Eating is available now, and I can ship to you. (Or come to one of my events: Oct 9, 11am-1pm, The Farm at South Mountain; Oct 15, 9-11am)

    Join our e-mail list for recipes, culinary techniques, and upcoming events.

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  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Vegan Dairy-free Butternut Squash Soup

    By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    This week I was doing some recipe flow testing in preparation for some videos, and I had the pleasure to cook the vegan dairy-free butternut squash in my book. It had been awhile since cooking this soup and I’m so glad I did. It’s a beautiful bright orange sweet soup perfect for the Fall season, even here in Phoenix!  Cooking this soup brought back memories of playing in the crisp fall leaves in our yard in Pennsylvania where I grew up and all the fun times carving pumpkins.

    A few photos from the delicious soup I cooked this week, with Arizona honey as my sweetener.

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    Excerpt from A New View of Healthy Eating: Vegan Dairy-Free Butternut Squash Soup

    Create your own easy-to-prepare sweet, creamy butternut squash soup. Garnish with pan-fried herbs and a drizzle of oil (walnut, pumpkin seed, or olive oil) for a beautiful presentation. When served warm in the fall, butternut squash soup is ideal for a chilly Thanksgiving. Served cold in the summer, it’s perfect for a picnic.

    SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

    • 1 ½ tbsp organic extra virgin olive oil
    • 3 shallots, minced
    • 2 ½ cups butternut squash, peeled and steamed until fork tender
    • 3 ½ cups veggie stock
    • 2 tbsp sweetener: maple syrup, molasses, or brown rice syrup
    • ¾ tsp sea salt
    • 1 tbsp olive, walnut, or pumpkin seed oil
    • Pan-fried basil for garnish

    SIMPLE STEPS

    1. Gather your mise en place.
    2. To prepare the soup, preheat a (6- to 8-quart) soup pot to medium.
    3. Add olive oil to the pot.
    4. Add shallots and sauté until golden and translucent.
    5. Pour steamed butternut squash, veggie stock, sweetener, and sea salt into the pot.
    6. Simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes.
    7. Using a blender or hand-stick blender, blend until smooth.
    8. Garnish with pan-fried basil and a drizzle of olive, walnut, or pumpkin seed oil.

    After you’ve learned the simple soup cooking process with butternut squash, intuitively create your own soups with different winter squash, such as acorn or pumpkin, or even sweet potatoes. Experiment with various herbs and oils as a garnish.

    If you’re looking for some simple, healthy recipes and the culinary methods to create the recipes, I invite you to take a look at my new book, A New View of Healthy Eating.

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  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Simple Way to Roast Tomatoes in the Oven

    By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    Yesterday, when roasting roots, I also decided to cook some tomatoes and beautiful peppers, with a shallot.  The tomatoes and peppers were both grown by farmers within a few miles of my home. The tomatoes were from Abby Lee Farms and the beautiful peppers from Maya’s Farm at The Farm at South Mountain.

    To roast the veggies, I simply tossed the tomatoes and peppers with the same dressing as the roasted roots – organic extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, dried oregano and basil. The aromatherapy was so sweet and I loved the sweetness of the tomatoes.

    Excerpt from A New View of Healthy Eating

    Simple Roasted Tomatoes Sauce

    Oven-roasted tomato sauce is very easy to cook. The main ingredient is time. Be creative with the quantity and combination of tomatoes, onions, carrot, and garlic when you roast this beautiful, delicious sauce. Use the sauce with veggies or, to make soup, strain the cooked tomatoes through cheesecloth, then blend into a creamy soup.

    SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

    • Tomatoes
    • Red onion, sliced
    • Few carrots, chopped
    • Few garlic cloves, sliced
    • Sea salt

    SIMPLE STEPS

    1. Place whole tomatoes in a large roasting pan.
    2. Add the onions, carrots, garlic, and sea salt and lightly toss.
    3. Roast for about 3 hours, stirring every 45-60 minutes.
    4. Enjoy the aroma of the roasting tomatoes.

    In many parts of our country, tomatoes are in season, so I invite you to visit your local farmers’ market, buy some tomatoes, and create your own simple roasted tomatoes. 

    Post your tomato creations with us on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/NewViewHealthyEating