Holiday eats include decadent ingredients and mineral-rich add-ons

December 15, 2021 – Since I’ve already written three articles about winter celebrations or holiday cooking and I’ve listed almost 30 resources for recipes, this month I’ll focus on two food item groups that rear their heads during the holidays – nut butters and sea vegetables.

Ordinarily, I stick to unsalted nuts and occasionally, peanut butter, preferably the crunchy kind, but the holidays were coming and I wanted more. I’d made cheeze cakes before, but I didn’t really feel like cooking. In fact, I’d passed it up for Thanksgiving; I let my daughter in central Illinois do the honors while I enjoyed the company of her immediate and extended family.

I came home, ready and revived, to tackle what I would prepare for the Plant Based Southsiders potluck this month. I shuffled through my printed recipes and stopped at a decadent dessert, raspberry almond mousse cake, by Jerrelle Guy. Although the recipe contains coconut cream, cashew and almond butters are added for the decadence; half the fresh berries are in the middle of the filling while the rest are on top; then chocolate syrup is drizzled on top. The crust consists of several nuts and a few dates, all of which I soaked before processing. I substituted agave for maple syrup so that the sweetness wasn’t cloying. The best part was that I only had to put it in the freezer, not the oven.

Cutting the first piece was troublesome, landing on its side, but the tasty gluten-free cake was a hit. My only suggestion is to purchase the hazelnuts already shelled: a small piece of shell I missed landed in the crust for each tester and me. Or substitute a different shelled nut. Jerrelle’s recipe is at www.chocolateforbasil.com/blog/raspberry-almond-mousse-cake?rq=frozen .

Nut/seed butters provide lots of fiber, minerals, plant-based protein and less saturated fat than most dairy products, according to Ocean Robbins of the Food Revolution Network.

For more information and some recipes, go to www.foodrevolution.org/blog/how-to-make-nut-butter-seed-butter/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blo-2021&utm_content=nut-butters . For a simpler and quicker recipe, go to www.minimalistbaker.com/how-to-make-nut-butter/ . Both resources cook the nuts first. I prefer soaking them.

Sea vegetables, mostly seaweed, used to be considered fish food by most Americans. Now they’re looked upon as good sources of everything nut butters generally provide except the fat; they also provide Vitamin B12, which other plants don’t. Today, more people are bypassing the fish and getting the nutrients straight from the source – sea vegetables.

The most popular ones are nori, kombu, wakame, dulse and arame. Nori is used for sushi rolls; kombu for soup stock, providing the most iodine; wakame for seasoning. Wakame and the rest are added to different dishes. Less popular sea vegetables include sea moss(formerly sold by B’Gabs Scratch Kichen), sea grapes and sea beans.

The key is to eat them in moderation, according to Robbins. Otherwise, their downsides are possibly containing arsenic, heavy metals, too much iodine or sodium, and bad interactions with thyroid or anticoagulant medicine. For more information, go to www.foodrevolution.org/blog/are-sea-vegetables-good-for-you/ .

Like most holiday food, nut butters and sea vegetables are tasty additions to the menu: they just need to be eaten in moderation.

Which nut butters have you eaten? Have you ever added them to desserts? Have you ever tried sea vegetables? If so, which ones?