This dish makes the transition from winter to spring a little more delicious.  It has infinite variations.  Here it is vegan and still sooooo good!

Vegan pesto — pesto without cheese — is arguably a more versatile sauce. On pasta, spooned over protein, as the base of a risotto… And of course you can always add cheese later!

“I love pies but don’t have the patience to deal with making crust. Around holidays, this is my go-to kind of fruit dessert.”

A complex and inviting flavor profile from the fennel, lemon, olive oil & cumin. Vegetarian protein from the quinoa. Easy to make, too. It doesn’t hurt that fennel aids digestion.

Cassoulet, the classic French white bean and meats stew, typically cooks long and slow. This is a speedier version of the traditional recipe with chicken, sausage and beans.

The gooey lusciousness of lasagna, without the pasta. Instead, we layer eggplant, kale… and a generous helping of four different cheeses!

Your favorite seasonal vegetables, marinated in olive oil, wine vinegar, and thyme. And then the incomparable flavor of black garlic.

A splash of rosewater elevates this parfait from simple to sublime.

With healthy nuts, fresh herbs, garlic, and virgin oils, pesto is a veritable health food. This one is dairy-free.

100% natural, bright pink refreshment, only 10 calories per glass. Plus, hibiscus helps manage blood pressure. So, let the summertime relaxation commence!

Chard: it’s like kale, only softer, more colorful, and not nearly as cliched. Avocados add richness.

Four wholesome ingredients: cacao powder, honey, coconut oil, and vanilla extract. (Or almond extract).

“This is an easy way to use all the wonderful greens growing at local farms and in our garden this month. No muss, no fuss. As usual, like 99% of my recipes, it’s fast to make.”

One of the most BEAUTIFUL dishes you can serve. Chilled yogurt, cucumbers, and Persian flavors.

a South Indian sauce & a Tunisian sauce, blended with chick peas, and it’s PHENOMENAL!

I’m always looking for light desserts that just about anyone can eat. This recipe has simple ingredients and takes about 10 minutes. I serve it in pretty wine glasses with fresh berries on top.

Miso is an incredibly versatile soup base. Here, we add vegetables, tofu, shiitake mushrooms, and optional shellfish for a hearty, warming, complete meal.

The classic flavor profile of tomato-caper-olive-garlic-chili as a stew base, with an almost excessive amount of thyme. You choose beans and vegetables, saffron and shellfish, or chicken and sausage.

Pure, deep, dark richness. One of our kitchen’s all-time best. The torte has four ingredients. The ganache topping has two.

the bright punch of lemon zest — not just lemon juice — adds zing to this classic recipe. Extra virgin olive oil builds on the Mediterranean undertones. The optional frosting is made from cashews and coconut: no cream cheese or eggs, for our vegan friends.

Veggies for breakfast in a split second, in the blender. Healthy fats from avocados. Sweetness from pears. YUM!

Dates add rich caramel-y sweetness, and cardomom adds a hint of the Middle East and India to the classic dark chocolate, nuts, and banana. No refined sugars mean this one is a power breakfast to boot.

We *LOVE* vegetarian food. But sometimes we want, not just a stew or a pilaf, but an actual centerpiece. Enter, the cauliflower steak…

Another of those super-easy fruit dishes, equally suited to the dessert table with ice cream, or the breakfast table with yogurt.

Roasting the cauliflower on its own before the big bake with the beans, tomato sauce, and vegan cheese deepens and enriches the flavors.

Eggplant Caviar is a kind of chopped salad native to Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, etc. We’ve added green peas for a shock of green, and an apple for sweetness.

You can make your own diet icy beverage using only natural ingredients. If you use mineral water, you get not just a natural diet soda, you get a natural diet *mineral* soda!

Take about 3 pounds wonderful, heirloom tomatoes of all sizes, colors and flavors…

Another recipe from our cooking show, Eat Well Be Happy, streaming from this website and natural food stores around the country. Asian flavors + garden vegetables.

Another easy-to-make, easy to travel salad. It also keeps for 3-4 days. And this one gets you to eat more beans, which Dr. Furhman says is a good thing. Beans fill you up, not out!

Farro is an heirloom wheat, earthy and rich. Kale adds green. Pecorino romano cheese adds salt and bite. Simple, comfort food. On a higher plane.

You don’t need a traditional dressing when you have high-quality olive oil, and a few forkfuls of cultured veggies.

Bi Bim Bap is the national dish of Korea. It looks like a lot of work, but it’s actually not complicated. Just a lot of different vegetables, arranged on top of rice, with eggs + special sauce. And DELICIOUS!

Since we first published this recipe (adapted from a blog post by Sarah Briton), we began making the bread in our kitchen. It has become one of our customer’s all-time favorites. All fiber, healthy fats, and proteins. No grains, almost no carbs.

Use butternut, or any firm-flesh winter squash. Black beans add protein and a little something to chew on.

Remarkably simple. Simply remarkable. Just two lovely ingredients, roast with lemon, olive oil, and garlic.

It doesn’t get easier than this. 100% raw. 100% unrefined sweeteners. 100% healthy oils.

Two recipes in one. You get the orange+green Squash & Pesto. And then you get the leftover pesto, for… whatever. Fresh green herbs and hempseeds are both veritable superfoods. This is a powerhouse dish!

As much vegetable as grain. A fusion of flavors. Wild rice from the Minnesota lake region. Olive oil from the Mediterranean. Sushi ginger & soy sauce from Japan. Subtle sweetness from the carrots…

Chewy + crunchy + fresh. Egyptian grains + English vegetables + mild Thai flavors. Another fusion dish from the Debra’s kitchen.

“With the flavor intensity of sun-dried tomatoes, reinforced with rich sesame oil and the bright pungency of Tamil spices, this is currently my favorite thing on Earth!” -Adam

“We all have fond memories of special food. When my family made the trek each summer to NYC, we always ate in Ratner’s, a famous Jewish deli founded in 1905 …”

Another appetizer that’s easy to make, using quality ingredients, that will have your guests going “what a clever idea! — and DE-licious!”

When you’ve got a turbo blender, all you need to make this is fruit (and a little cinnamon) (and a little stevia).

Asparagus is a harbinger of Springtime. Eggs symbolize rebirth.

Two ancient grains, with salty oil-cured olives, and sweet-tart dried cherries.

This is a snap to make, and a colorful, cleansing salad (it’s the beets and ginger). Lemon *and* lime juices add complexity of flavor.

Our kitchen makes this lovely soup, and you’re right that it doesn’t appear in our cookbooks, so we’re sharing it with you here even though it’s proprietary. We’re trusting you with a “secret” recipe because we love you.

Another soup for winter. This one has ginger, to aid digestion, and sweet carrots. Red lentils are unlike the brown lentil you might know. They dissolve when you cook them.

When did we start expecting cornbread to taste sweet like cake? When did we start adding other flours in addition to corn meal? This recipe makes a rustic, real-deal cornbread that is not sweet.

Made here with full-fat coconut milk so it’s dairy free. I also love this recipe with cow or goat milk.

A shortcut to Indian food. We used canned chickpeas, and a spice packet. You add oil, and your own optional vegetables. Just heat and eat!

The traditional Ethiopian pancake bread uses a sourdough fermented batter, and the gluten-free grain, T’eff. It’s easier than you think!

A bit of fresh pear or mango adds natural sweetness to this cooling summer soup. Avocado adds richness. This is really a salad — masquerading as a soup.

“Combining tomatoes and watermelon seems to be all the rage today.  Typically such recipes call for adding feta cheese too, but I skip that because I think the feta makes the salad look messy.”

This is an easy one — but your guests won’t know. Just soak the chia, chop the fruit, and layer in a nice glass.

Also known as Sabich in throughout the middle east, this combo of baked (or fried) eggplant, eggs, vegetables, and hummous is a winner every time.

all the colors of redness: ruby, crimson, scarlet, and coral.

Dushenka Ani Silverfarb is cookbook author The Model Vegan, and a favorite customer. This is her creamy almond milk recipe.

Cultured veggies are sort of like pickled veggies, except better and more delicious. Instead of preserving vegetables by pickling them in vinegar, culturing involves live healthy bacteria – sort of like the bacteria that turn milk into yogurt.

Dukkah comes from the Arabic word for “to pound.” Traditionally made from pounded sesame seeds, salt, and savory spices, we make ours in the food processor.

Sweet potatoes, black beans, kale, warming spices, and sausage add up to a deeply comforting (but not too caloric) winter meal. Avocado and lime round it out.

As we explore the cuisines of the world, we sometimes forget the Native American traditions. Succotash’s colors look like autumn. But its warming, hearty sweetness is perfect for deepest winter.

If you’ve never dipped fruit in chocolate, you should! And if you use dried fruit, it will keep days and days.

If you’ve never used buckwheat, you really should. This gluten-free grain is earthy and hearty, and pairs remarkably well with earthy, hearty vegetables like mushrooms and Brussels sprouts.

This makes a wonderful pie or tart filling. It’s also a wonderful chutney-like “compote” served with a dollop of whipped cream, ice cream, etc.

Ceviche typically means raw seafood marinated in citrus juice and hot peppers. Here, we’re marinating veggies and stealing the word because we like the concept, the way it sounds!

Kelp noodles are made from the fiber in seaweed. They are a chewy “blank canvas” with almost no calories. Here, we paint that canvas with roast cashews, olives and garlic, brocolli florets, and brewer’s yeast.

Pumpkinseed oil is one of the deepest, darkest, earthiest flavors you can add to your cooking. Make sure you get the real Austrian (Styrian) stuff.

Thanks to Adam, we’ve been enjoying this recipe for some years now. I run the recipe each summer. It can also be found in our third cookbook, Blue Ribbon Edition.

A perfect Mediterranean salad! It’s gorgeous to look at and delicious to eat.

This is a variation of Amanda’s Green Potato Salad with Cilantro and Spinach featured in our Blue Ribbon Edition cookbook.

This soup is light, light, light, but the parsnip gives body, and together with the asparagus and celery yields a lovely, complex flavor.

This recipe is equally delicious with chicken, seafood, and tofu.  Preserved lemons and olives are a classic flavor combination in both Persian and Moroccan cuisine.

Sumac is a fruit with a lemony taste. Used as a spice in the Middle East, the berries are ground into a purple powder that not only adds flavor, but eye appeal.

Curries are wonderful ways to empty your fridge of leftovers. A can of this, some chopped-up that… the curry spices and coconut milk are very forgiving!

“I’m in the mood for ice cream, and this is like a big bowl of soft, melty blueberry ice cream without the guilt or calories. I’ve been eating this every morning lately…”

We use winter squash flesh, toasted squash seeds, and toasted squash seed oil as a drizzle. Sweet, creamy, savory, earthy, and crunchy — all from the same vegetable.

Greek-style sauteed mushrooms are a wonderful weeknight side dish alongside almost anything. Put those mushrooms on toast, and it suddenly transforms into a very-classy-indeed appetizer.

Paleo means no grains, no beans, no refined anything — just fruit, nuts, chocolate, etc… anything a caveman or woman could pluck and eat. Believe it or not, these brownies qualify!

This salad makes a sage addition to the holiday table. Not only is it easy to make, pretty to look at, but it will help everyone’s tummy feel better too. I’ve used Real Pickle’s cultured beets and red cabbage both.

If you’re like us, you’re not an expert Spring Roll Assembler, and you’ll have a few tears in the delicate spring roll paper. That’s okay! And may we say, the (optional) curry powder in this recipe is a stroke of genius.

Jambalaya is a New Orleans take on paella: rice, vegetables, seafood and sausage, with French, Native American, and Carribean influence. You could serve it as a side, but its heart and soul is as a one-pot meal.  

Gazpacho with tomatoes is relatively new, believe it or not.  Here I’ve used lemon and/or lime instead of vinegar, and saved tomatoes to slice and plate with fresh mozzarella.

An ode to the humble lentil, from our resident Poet Laureate of All Things Culinary, Debra Stark.

Elena Volkova made this in our store, and everyone loved it. There’s perfect balance between sweet and salty, and Elena says if you’re taking the Chinese approach, this is wonderful over bitter, dark greens.

This salad keeps everyone happily chewing, which means you get the pleasure of each other’s company around the table for longer than it takes to wolf down a burger and fries.

Bi Bim Bap is a Korean dish like a stir-fry, except you don’t stir-fry things together. And then you put an egg on top. Plenty of veggies, whole grain rice, kimchee… and an egg on top.

Rich, dense chestnut flour is a good source of fiber and protein — and 100% gluten-free. Olive oil and rosemary add flavor. Pine nuts are optional, but highly recommended.

Keofta (or Kofta) are meatballs. Here, we replace with meat with split peas and cracked wheat and carrots and onions and celery. Golden raisins and paprika add a hint of smoky sweetness.

Potato salad does not need to be a starchy, gloppy, mayonnaise-infested stew. Here, we use fingerling potatoes, young arugula, goat cheese, oil-cured black olives — and ZERO mayonnaise.

I made this on New Year’s Day, and it was a hit. People asked for the recipe, though one person said she couldn’t believe “those ugly mushrooms could taste that good!”

Different kinds of lentils dissolve (or don’t dissolve) at different rates. Combine them all in a soup, you get something to intact, something soft… a variety of textures, and plenty of leguminous nutrition!

The quintessential English Christmas dish. The traditional recipe has been updated with coconut oil instead of lard.

Why was I struggling to find something that uses whole sesame tahini?  Whole sesame tahini is a nut butter made from the entire brown seed.  This is important. 

“When I was a child and had an upset stomach, my mother used to make me a hot drink that helped tremendously.”

A mildly sweet, somewhat savory hash, using crisp tart apples instead of potatoes. Use a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

“Yams (or sweet potatoes) are one of my favorite foods.  And they’re #2 on the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s list of veggies in terms of overall nutrient content.”

It’s all about simple.  This is tres simple and tres delish.  If you haven’t discovered kelp noodles or Austrian pumpkinseed oil, well, now’s your chance. 

This recipe appears in our last cookbook, The Blue Ribbon Edition. Grated root veggies + more veggies + home-made dressing. Yogurt in the dressing adds live probiotics + protein.

From 1989. It fell by the wayside, until we served it this year at Tastes of Concord. Not only was this dish a hit, but meat eaters couldn’t believe it was vegetarian!

Crimson, crimson, orange, and yellow… with nuggets of green… and soy sauce… make this salad interesting, delicious, hard to pin down, and utterly unique.

Sweet potatoes add a natural sweetness and complexity of flavor to this lean, hearty, warmly spiced dish.

Edamame, fresh soybeans, are a delicious and low-fat source of protein. Here, we soften the edamame with brown rice, and elevate them with truffle oil, for a dish that is at once coarse and refined.

Amaranth is a tiny, tiny, tiny grain (a millet technically: the seed of a grass), native to South America. Scallops, of course, are delicious. Here, we marry the two, with Italian spices.

Indigenous to South America, goldenberries were brought to South Africa in the 1800’s and are grown today in countries far and wide such as China, England, Scotland, Norway and India.

Grain-free, almost pure vegetable, with bright citrus and crunch and snap!

Who doesn’t love potatoes + corn + fresh garden herbs? This soup can use any and all summer herbs, so just throw them in!

One raw, one cooked.  Two beet recipes where beets are scrubbed and grated (no need to peel).  One Chilean lime-flavored. The other dressed with Austrian pumpkinseed oil.

Editor’s Note: this was written a while ago.  Since that time, we’ve lost access to the Ifugao violet rice we write about.  Don’t worry — you can use any sticky or semi-sticky rice you want! 

Warming ginger, nutmeg, and gently curry spices cut through the rainy gloom of late winter / early spring. The gentle sweetness of butternut squash. The richness of coconut milk…

  This new recipe is a result of a group effort back in our kitchen.  Thanks to Piera, Alex (Alex Mong who never liked cabbage until this!) and Amanda, the

When your garden is really “hitting on all cylinders” you need to do something with all those vegetables! This simple dish uses them by the bushel.

A generous splash of pomegranate juice punches up the intensity of this traditional sweet-tart sauce. For ice cream, or Thanksgiving. Voted #1 Recipe Most Likely to Stain Your Clothing.

Tempeh is the “other” soy food, native to Indonesia. Fermented soy is more digestible, and you’ll find tempeh has an interesting sort of “ground beef” texture.

Butterbeans are a tender, smaller variety of lima beans. Here, they marry well with tender green beans (yes, even frozen), herbs and spices, and little romano cheese.

“I love to feed people, but like you, don’t have time to fuss in the kitchen. I got so many rave reviews about Dinner with a Friend (my March 2009 newsletter recipe) and pleas for more easy dinners to make in a flash…”

A vegetarian health food take on the classic Salvadoran stuffed pastry, Jim’s recipe uses whole wheat flour, tons of vegetables, and tahini — and some cheddar, if you want it.

A mayo-less potato salad that is light (yet substantial), fresh, bright, and delicious, with the baby spinach, cilantro, and the bite of apple cider vinegar.

An easy, easy, easy summer dish around which to build an even easier summer meal. What is Za’atar? It’s a Middle Eastern seasoning mix made from hyssop, Israeli sumac, sesame seeds, etc.

Did you know that the USDA ranks dandelion in the top four green vegetables in overall nutritional value? Or that DEBRA ranks avocados among the most wonderful things on Earth?

o early for tomatoes, zucchini are still expensive, and we aren’t ready for cold salads…. it’s still cool enough to turn on the oven, roast vegetables, and dream of summer!

Buckwheat! You either love it… or you haven’t tried it yet. This Japanese/Russian supergrain cooks quickly, and is packed with flavor. And it marries especially well with chicken.

About five minutes to get into the oven. Gluten-free, grain-free, with the richness of nuts and eggs; and loved by everyone.

Dried apricots and dates are the key to these macaroons. They provide sweetness, and also bind the other ingredients. So no need for flour, eggs, or sugar.

Blini are yeasted savory pancakes, traditionally served with caviar and crème fraiche. This version is vegetarian, and gluten-free.”

The Walnut Surprise Cookies in my first cookbook are, surprise! brownies. And the best cookie ever. Now I’ve subbed out the flour for nut meal, for a richer, denser, gluten-free treat.

Warming, with the natural, vegetal sweetness of the root veggies and squash. This is autumnal comfort food.

Pineapple and macadamia nuts enliven the traditional dour cabbage. Umeboshi (Japanese plum) vinegar adds pizzazz.

hanks to Adam, we’ve been enjoying this recipe for some years now. We love this recipe so much that we put in our third cookbook, The Blue Ribbon Edition: From our kitchen to yours.

Teff grain is a nutritional powerhouse smaller than a poppy seed. If you’ve ever had injere, Ethiopian pancake-bread, you’ve had teff.

  Mushrooms lack chlorophyll, which means they don’t produce food for themselves through photosynthesis.  Instead they absorb nutrients from compost, leaves, decaying wood, and soil. Wild mushrooms, like those Asiago

Lots of glorious greens, lentils and hard-boiled egg for heft, and a little salt punch from the feta and olives.