So humbled and honored to be featured in the media over the years. And, really excited to start 2021 with two beautiful, very appreciated highlights in our Arizona publications. And, thrilled to shoot a farm-to-table cooking tv segment with the nationally syndicated tv show The List and with the City of Peoria in 2020.
Natural Awakenings, January 2021: “Create Food Art with Sprouted Spelt Arizona Winter Veggie Flatbread.”
I’ve been writing plant-based farm-to-table recipe articles for the Natural Awakenings Magazine for a few years, and am happy to share with you the January 2021 article: “Create Food Art with Sprouted Spelt Arizona Winter Veggie Flatbread.”
This article highlights the philosophy of the new Plant-Based Farm-to-Table Food Art Movement and features one of my favorite, fun-to-prepare, delicious meals: Farm-to-Table Veggie Flatbread. Thanks so much to editor Tracy Patterson for the opportunities to showcase beautiful food ideas on your publication.
I am so honored to intuitively create recipes for The Farm at South Mountain CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members, And, I’m happy to share this week’s Winter Arizona recipe with you.
As many of you are aware, I live in a wonderful area of Phoenix, Arizona with incredible urban farms right in my neighborhood, including The Farm at South Mountain. For four years I’ve been teaching hands-on plant-based farm-to-table cooking experiences at The Farm and have been intuitively creating recipes with the weekly CSA box. This week is actually Recipe #55!
Excited to meet the new farmers at The Farm…Olive, DJ, Nicole, Meredith, with Melanie Albert.
The Farm at South Mountain…Olive, DJ, Melanie, Nicole, Meredith
The Winter CSA for November 21, 2020 includes:
Detroit Red Beets
Purple Daikon Radishes
Rainbow Swiss Chard
Curly Leaf Lettuce
Lemon Basil
Eggs
The Farm at South Mountain CSA: 11.21.20
BEETS & DAIKON RADISH BOWL
This week’s recipe was inspired by the beautiful beets and purple daikon radishes. Create your Veggie Bowl with the beet roots and greens, daikon radishes, Lemon Basil Cashew Cream, quinoa and walnuts for a beautiful Winter dish.
Steps to Prepare the Dish
Roast the beets, daikon radishes, and green onions.
Prepare the Lemon Basil Cashew Cream
Sauté the Beet Greens.
Plate the roasted roots, sautéed greens, Lemon Basil Cashew Cream, and walnuts.
Enjoy the Beets Bowl video for step-by-step visuals of the cooking process. Scroll down for the recipes.
All Recipes Serve 2
ROASTED BEETS, DAIKON RADISHES & GREEN ONIONS
Roasted Beets & Daikon Radishes
Roast the Winter roots for your simple-to-prepare, tasty farm-to-table veggie bowl.
SIMPLE INGREDIENTS
2 beet roots
2 daikon radishes
3-4 green onions, sliced
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp dried herbs, such as Herbs de Provence
Pinch sea salt
SIMPLE STEPS
Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F.
Cut beet roots, daikon radishes into unique shapes and sizes.
Place roots (beets and radishes separately) and onions into a small bowl. Coat with olive oil, dried herbs, and sea salt.
Place roots, not touching, on parchment-lined sheet pan.
Layer onions on parchment-lined sheet pan.
Roast for 12 minutes.
Flip the veggies.
Roast another 12-15 minutes.
SIMPLE LEMON BASIL CASHEW CREAM
Create this simple plant-based cream with the lemon basil to enjoy with roasted roots.
SIMPLE INGREDIENTS
1 cup raw cashews, pre-soaked in water for 2-4 hours
¼ cup lemon basil leaves
2 green onions
2 tbsp lemon juice
¼ cup nutritional yeast
Pinch sea salt
2 tbsp olive oil
SIMPLE STEPS
Place all ingredients into food processor.
Process until chunky.
Stream in olive oil while processing.
Process to desired level of creaminess.
SAUTEED BEET GREENS
Create this quick sauteed beet green side to enjoy with the Roasted Beets and Radishes Bowl.
SIMPLE INGREDIENTS
Tops of 2 beets, sliced (greens and stems sliced separately)
2 green onions sliced
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Pinch sea salt
SIMPLE STEPS
Pre-heat sauté pan on medium.
Pour olive oil into pan.
Add onions.
Sauté for 3 minutes.
Add beets stems.
Sauté for 1 minute.
Add beet greens.
Add pinch sea salt.
Sauté for 3 minutes.
NEW Online Plant-Based Food Art Program
Interested in learning more about plant-based cooking and creating beautiful dishes, I invite you to register for our new 3-Day Food Art course. Learn how to prepare the recipes and create beautiful dishes: Avocado Tartare, Roasted Veggie Bowl, and Raw Carrot Cake. CLICK TO REGISTER.
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.
Within the Experience Nutrition Corporate Wellness Programs, we offer private online communities where we share healthy eating tips and recipes, and employees share their recipe creations and ask food and nutrition questions.
This week one of the participants wanted to know how to cook asparagus. While asparagus is not growing in season in Arizona right now, I shopped in a few different stores to find fresh organic asparagus.
Simple Asparagus
Happy to share with you two ways to enjoy cooking and eating asparagus, starting with steaming asparagus in a bamboo steamer to enjoy as a side or in a fresh salad. And, the next recipe is Roasted Asparagus. Corn-on-the Cob. Heirloom Tomatoes. Turmeric Hummus.
Bamboo Steamer Asparagus Recipe
Use this simple bamboo steamer culinary technique to steam asparagus, as well as other fresh vegetables.
SIMPLE INGREDIENTS
Bamboo Steamer Asparagus
8-10 asparagus stems
Pinch sea salt
Basil Finishing Oil
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp basil leaves
SIMPLE STEPS
Basil Oil
Since it only takes about 5 minutes to steam the asparagus in the bamboo steamer, first prepare this very simple Basil Oil as a finishing dressing for the asparagus.
Pour oil and basil into a small blender.
Blend for about 2 minutes.
Use the oil as a finishing oil for the asparagus.
Simple Basil Oil IngredientsPour olive oil and fresh basil into small blender.Blend olive oil and basil for 2-3 minutes.The Simple Basil Oil.
Bamboo Steamer Asparagus
Pour a few cups of water into a large pot.
Place pot on the stove top and bring to a boil.
Place asparagus stems onto bamboo steamer rack, spaced a part and not touching.
Sprinkle asparagus with sea salt.
Place asparagus onto bamboo steamer. Drizzle with sea salt.
Cover bamboo steamer.
Place steamer on top of the pot of boiling water.
Steam asparagus for about 5 minutes.
Allow the steam to cook the asparagus for about 5 minutes.
Test the asparagus for doneness.
When the asparagus easily falls off the fork, it is cooked.
Asparagus is ready when it falls off the fork.
Take the asparagus off the bamboo steamer.
Drizzle the Basil Oil on the asparagus.
Mise en Place: Asparagus. Basil Oil.Toss asparagus with Basil Oil.
Mindfully plate or enjoy the asparagus in a salad.
I am excited to share the incredible Feed Phoenix project with Local First Arizona as part of the City of Phoenix COVID-19 Emergency Food Assistance Funding. The project is designed to provide nutritious lunches incorporating locally grown produce to organizations in the City of Phoenix from August to October 2020.
It was an exciting program to participate in Feed Phoenix as the program created beautiful community collaboration with our local farmers, entrepreneur chefs, and organizations.
Serving: Native Health & Harvest Compassion Center
Experience Nutrition had the honor to create and deliver 200 grab-and-go meals in the Phoenix community. We created 50 delicious, healthy meals for Native Health, which serves the Phoenix Native American population with holistic patient-centered care, and 75 adult and 75 kids meals to the Harvest Compassion Center, a food and clothing bank for families in the Phoenix / Maryvale area. Huge thanks to Waste Not AZ for your commitment to feed the Valley’s hungry with food that would go to waste…and for delivering the meals in your refrigerated truck.
Plant-Based Farm-to-Table
As soon as Experience Nutrition was approved to serve our community, I reached out to plant-based Nadira Jenkins-El, to assist with the project. We brainstormed the lunch menu and decided to create a roasted veggie wrap, hummus, quinoa salad, and fruit.
Behind the Scenes with our Farmers
Since Experience Nutrition always focuses on plant-based farm-to-table and creates beautiful food with what our local farmers are growing, we determined the ingredients for the recipes based on what our local farmers were growing.
For the Roasted Veggie Wrap, I reached out to Cindy Gentry, who Sun Produce Cooperative. We purchased ten pounds each of sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, and red onions from Crooked Sky Farms, ten pounds of butternut squash grown by Mark Rhine at Rhiba Farms, and a beautiful Long Island Cheese (Cinderella) Pumpkin from the Orchard Community Learning Service.
For the Quinoa Salad, we received 25 pounds of incredible, just harvested (while I waited) Persian cucumbers from Abby Lee Farms, 15 pounds of green beans, 10 pounds of summer squash, and 15 bunches of cilantro from Green on Purpose.
For our fruit dessert, since watermelons are in-season, we ordered 80 pounds from Crooked Sky Farms.
Now let’s take a look at the beautiful food as the foundation for our intuitive culinary creations for the lunches.
Thanks so much to our local Arizona farmers. Pause and enjoy the beauty.Fresh last summer Arizona bounty.
Subscribe to our Experience Nutrition Blog.
The next Experience Nutrition Blogs will feature the recipes and behind-the-scenes fun cooking for the Feed Phoenix Program.Look forward to sharing with you.
Roasted Veggie & Hummus Wrap
Cold Quinoa Cucumber Salad
Kids Red Wrap
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Massaging the Quinoa Salad
Creating the huge batch of hummus.
Quinoa Salad & Classic Hummus. So much fun!
Amazing Roasted Potatoes, Squash and Red Onions
Creating the tasty Roasted Veggie Hummus Wraps
Oh my Yumm…Roasted Veggie Wraps on the way!
Kids Red Wraps
Grab-and-Go Plant-Based Lunches
Kids Red Wrap and Adult Grab-and-Go Lunches
By Melanie Albert, plant-based farm-to-table culinary leader. Founder & CEO of Experience Nutrition in Phoenix, Arizona, Award-winning cookbook author, cooking event and retreat host, plant-based artisan caterer. Creator of the new Plant-Based Food Art Movement.
