Experience Nutrition

Tag: Eat Seasonal

  • Experience Nutrition: The Farm at South Mountain CSA Recipe: Summer Peach Apricot Salsa

    Experience Nutrition: The Farm at South Mountain CSA Recipe: Summer Peach Apricot Salsa

    What an honor to intuitively create recipes with the beautiful produce grown by hard-working, passionate farmer Billy Anthony at the Soil & Seed Garden at The Farm at South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona.

    This is the final CSA recipe of the season, Recipe #54, and I’m so happy to share a Summer recipe with you, inspired by the peaches and apricots growing at The Farm.  At this point, the farmers are focusing on summer crops, including tomatoes, which I’m really looking forward to.

    Self care at The Farm. While picking up the CSA to create this week’s recipe, I was mesmerized by the breath-talking Autumn Beauty Sunflowers.

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    For the CSA Members, the May 16, 2020 Share includes:

    • Roots: Beets, Carrots
    • Greens: Salad Greens, Swiss Chard
    • Veggies: Zucchini
    • Fruit: Grapefruit, Peaches, Apricot
    • Herbs: Lemon Basil, Mint, Lemon Thyme, Rosemary
    • Eggs
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    The Farm at South Mountain CSA: May 16, 2020

    Recipe: Simple Peach Apricot Salsa

    This week’s recipe was inspired by the peaches and apricots. It’s a simple, fresh recipe to enjoy with hummus, or as a topping for fish or chicken.

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    The Farm at South Mountain: Arizona Peaches

    Serves 2

    SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

    • 5-6 peaches
    • 5-6 apricots
    • ¼ cup grapefruit juice
    • 1 tbsp grapefruit zest
    • 4-5 mint leaves, minced
    • Not from The Farm CSA
      • ¼ cup white onion
      • 2 mini red peppers
    • Pinch sea salt
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    Ingredients: Peach Apricot Salsa
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    Mise En Place: Peach Apricot Salsa

    SIMPLE STEPS

    • Mince all fruit and veggies into small pieces.
    • Gently toss all ingredients.
    • Taste and adjust with additional grapefruit juice and sea salt to suit your taste preferences.
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    Peach Apricot Salsa: Mix Ingredients

     SIMPLE PLATING

    • Enjoy with hummus, or as a side salad.
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    Peach Apricot Salsa. Classic Hummus.

    Stay in touch with us on www.facebook.com/ExperienceNutritionAZ and Instagram @experiencenutritionaz and tag us #experiencenutrition on your plant-based culinary creations.

    Sedona Plant-Based Cooking Retreats. At this point, we are planning on hosting the Plant-Based Farm-to-Table Cooking Retreat in Sedona, September 18-21, 2020 and also customizing for small groups “when the time is right” in the next few months. Please let me know if you’re interested in learning more about the retreats. Click for information about the retreats and beautiful photos from our September 2019 retreat.

    By Melanie Albert, Plant-Based Culinary Leader, Founder & CEO, Experience Nutrition in Phoenix, Arizona. Award-winning cookbook author, speaker, corporate wellness, team building, retreat leader, and caterer.

  • A New View of Healthy Eating 12-Week Arizona Winter CSA: Part 3: Week 2: Edible Flowers

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

    During Week 2 of 12 weeks with my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) from Maya’s Farm at The Farm at South Mountain, I was so excited about the beautiful, colorful edible flowers in the salad. All my life I wanted to enjoy edible flowers in my home, and this was the week! Just like fresh farmers’ market produce the edible flowers create a rainbow of beauty and color in our salads.

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    When I stopped by The Farm at South Mountain on my way to teach a cooking class at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, Maya Daily, the farmer, who has been urban farming for 10 years was getting her market ready for the morning customers.

    Week 2 CSA. Full of greens, roots and citrus: green curly kale, red Swiss chard, baby bok choy, salad mix with edible flowers, mini golden beets, red radishes, Arizona oranges, green garlic, and a fresh flowers.

    Veggie Stir-fry. This week I prepared another veggie stir-fry, which is a simple way to cook all kinds of roots and greens. This time it was inspired by the mini golden beets (about the size of my thumb) and mini bok choy, with fresh garlic and Arizona oranges. Click on CSA Week 1 to learn the steps to create your own intuitive stir-fry.

     

     

    Hand-toss Salad Greens. I was so excited about the salad greens with edible flowers and created a very quick and simple salad dressing with freshly squeezed orange, organic extra virgin olive oil, fresh garlic and sea salt. Unlike kale salads, where we massage the kale to marinate and soften its fiber, the key to dressing light salad greens is to gently hand-toss the greens, coating every leaf, right before serving. I enjoyed this very simple salad with farmers’ market tomatoes and cucumber.

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    Salad mix with edible flowers and orange garlic dressing.

    Hummus with Edible Flowers. This week in a whole food cooking class that I teach at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, Arizona, we held a hummus cooking off, which motivated me to make a hummus. Of course, the hummus I created featured the edible flowers and simple green salad. This hummus was so beautiful. It was actually a little hard to stop looking at its beauty and eat it. I totally enjoyed it, along with a second serving and left-overs.

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    Click for simple hummus recipe, which is the same recipe we used for catering at the VIP Tailgate Party at Super Bowl XLIV in Miami.

    ORDER NOW! Our “A New View of Healthy Eating, A 55-Card Deck” with motivational food, eating, culinary, and self care tips is available.

    Come on over to Facebook www.facebook.com/NewViewHealthyEating and share your food creations with local farmers produce.

    To read all of the blogs for my 12 Week Commitment to the Arizona Winter CSA.

    Week 1:Part 1: Learn about CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture

    Week 1: Part 2: Veggie Stir-fry

  • Experience Nutrition: Inspired by Alice Waters & The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California

    By Melanie Albert, Founder & CEO, Experience Nutrition. Nutrition and food expert, author and speaker. Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Holistic Nutrition and Whole Food Cooking Instructor at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.

    This week during our Whole Food S.O.U.L. (Seasonal Organic Unprocessed Local) Cooking Class at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts in Tempe, Arizona, I shared one of my favorite quotes which is totally in-sync with way I cook and teach intuitive cooking with real whole foods.

    Enjoy the quote from Alice Waters, organic food activist and writer and founder of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California, which is the model of edible education for youth gardening and cooking programs across the USA. Click here to learn more about The Edible Schoolyard Project.

    Inspired by Alice Waters
    Inspired by Alice Waters

    I am also very inspired by Alice Waters overall philosophy, which is showcased at The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley.

    Alice Waters Philosophies
    Alice Waters Philosophies

    Last year I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a few months in Berkeley and enjoyed peaceful quiet time at the Edible Schoolyard at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.

    If you have ever visited the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, or in other cities across the country, we invite you to post photos on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/experience.nutrition.now

    Edible Schoolyard Berkeley
    Edible Schoolyard Berkeley

    Enjoy Food & Life!