Eating at Ann Gentry’s LA restaurant Real Food Daily (RFD) is a little slice of organic vegan heaven. It’s the perfect place to take someone who thinks vegan eating is all about lentils, tofu and a carrot on the side. The fare served up at RFD is anything but bland, rather, it shows how adventurous and downright tasty vegan cuisine really is.

If you can’t get to the City of Angels, you don’t have to miss out on Ann’s delicious veggie masterpieces. The successful restaurant-preneur has just launched a recipe book, Vegan Family Meals, that boasts some of her favourite dishes.

I caught up with Ann to find out more and she kindly offered to share her Super Hippie Granola recipe (see below)…

How did your vegan journey begin?

My food journey began in my 20’s and is still continuing. I’ve been experimenting with various vegetarian and vegan cuisines for three decades, starting as a young actress struggling with my weight and appearance, and today as a working mother and the proprietress of America’s leading organic vegan restaurants, Real Food Daily.  Over the years, I’ve explored the many permutations of a plant-based diet. I spent years as a strict vegan and a macrobiotic, and I experimented with raw foods, food combining, wheat- and gluten-free eating, and other dietary regimes. Today, I know what makes me feel best—a mostly vegan diet.

Congratulations on the book. How much work and preparation went into it?

Over the last few years, I found myself cooking more at home and enjoying re-visiting recipes I hadn’t made in years as well as whipping up new ones. I thought I had something to say as a busy working mother because I struggle with the same day-to-day challenges everyone else has: juggling work, kids, grocery shopping, exercise and trying to squeeze in time for myself.  Food wise, I’ve learned to stick with a plant-based diet, especially when cooking at home. Whole grains and vegetables are relatively simple to prepare, always accessible and very economical.

As I pondered what to say in a second book, I started looking at other cookbooks to see what attracted me and what didn’t.  I also talked to many home cooks about what kind of vegan cookbook they might want to have in their collection.  In looking at books, I got turned off by the ones that pushed and sold the tenet: ‘fast, quick and easy should be the goal in a preparing meals.’  Just as equally, I felt frustrated hearing the misconception that healthy cooking means you spend all day long in the kitchen. I don’t know who started that rumor, as that has never been my experience. Time is precious but even more importantly; your good health is priceless. Spending time in the kitchen preparing good food for yourself is well worth it.

These were the motivators that encouraged me to write a second cookbook.  I spent six intense months about five days a week moving back and forth from my kitchen to my computer. The result is a book that contains simple vegan recipes with approachable ingredients and techniques accessible for all kinds of eaters.

Are any recipes from your restaurant menu included? What are some of your favourites that you think everyone should try at least once?

My first cookbook, The Real Food Daily Cookbook is filled with my restaurant recipes. It is a great book sharing relatively elaborate vegan recipes downsized for home use. Vegan Family Meals has a few recipes you might find at my restaurants as a daily special such as the lentil loaf or pecan and cornmeal crusted tempeh.  I also included a few desserts such as the cupcakes and brownies.

Have you met anyone who transitioned to vegan after discovering your delicious food?

After 18 years with two well-loved organic vegan restaurants, I have heard from many people that yes, indeed, after eating my food and experiencing how delicious and satisfying it was, they became motivated to change their diet to a plant-based one.

Your children are also featured in the book. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like to bring up vegan children?

At my house, my kids are vegan.  At birthday parties, or other social occasions at their friend’s houses, they eat vegetarian.  We allow them to eat these “non-vegan” foods from time to time, NOT to supplement their vegan diet as there are no supplements to an already ideal diet, but rather allow them joy, comfort and participation in their childhood social settings. My kids get plenty of protein from beans, legumes, nuts and seeds and soy foods. I love it that they prefer Soy Cheese to cow’s cheese any day.

What are some of your favourite vegan foods and why?

I love every kind of vegetable and I am always satisfied eating them.  I especially like any king of squash roasted as this brings out the true sweet flavor of each type of squash.  I love soba noodles (hot or cold) with a spicy peanut sauce.

Time is precious but even more importantly; your good health is priceless. Spending time in the kitchen preparing good food for yourself is well worth it.

What does your typical daily diet look like?

Right now as the weather is warming up, I start my day with a smoothie and my Super Hippie Granola, which is one of my favorite recipes in my new book.  You might say I am obsessed with it.  Most days, I keep it pretty simple by rotating for either lunch or dinner with a freshly squeezed vegetable juice or a soup with a  big salad or I’ll go for a combo of whole grains, beans or tempeh, vegetables and leafy greens.  Every few nights, I’ll make something more exotic like my lasagna rolls or something Tex-Mex such as my Pinto Bean Enchiladas. Every few days, I indulge in a great fabulous vegan dessert. I’m a cake or a cookie girl.

If someone was thinking about becoming vegan, what advice would you give them?

To be patient and kind to themselves. Changing the way you eat is a process. It takes time to really change your diet, because to change your diet, you ultimately have to change your mindset and lifestyle. A plant-based diet encourages creativity in the kitchen. Prepare the best local and seasonal ingredients with a variety of cooking methods, and you’ll come up with more interesting and diverse flavors, textures, and colors on your plate.  Think about balancing your nutrition intake across the week, and don’t get hung up on making every meal a feast. Instead, focus on preparing a few recipes that will keep your cooking simple and your time in the kitchen enjoyable.

Super Hippie Granola

Granola has long been thought of as hippie food. I call my granola “Super Hippie” because it contains superfoods like goji berries and Hunza mulberries, which make it even more nutrition-packed than the original (for more on superfoods, see page 8).

The best granola has just the right amount of sweetness and crunchiness and has been baked to a golden brown. For perfectly balanced sweetness, cut the maple syrup with rice syrup. Rice syrup is also essential to the texture, as it helps create clusters, which granola-lovers know are key to exceptional results (ideally, granolas are equal parts loose ingredients and small clusters).

If you don’t have coconut oil on hand, using an unflavored neutral cooking oil is fine. Granola makes a great snack on its own and is delicious served with any nondairy milk, including homemade nut milk.

Makes 6 cups
1½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats
½ cup raw Brazil nuts, coarsely chopped
½ cup raw shelled sunflower seeds
½ cup raw whole almonds, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons melted unrefined coconut oil (see Cooking Tip)
½ cup pure maple syrup
¼ cup brown rice syrup
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup dried apricots, diced
¼ cup dried goji berries
¼ cup dried Hunza mulberries
¼ cup golden raisins

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a large, heavy baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix the oats, Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl.

Heat the coconut oil in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat. Add the maple syrup, rice syrup, water, and vanilla, and whisk just until blended and heated through.

Drizzle the syrup mixture over the oat mixture, and stir with a whisk to coat. Spoon the granola mixture evenly over the prepared baking sheet.

Bake the granola for about 40 minutes, or until it is golden brown and clusters form. As the granola bakes, gently stir it about every 15 minutes with a fork to ensure it cooks evenly but being careful not to break up the clusters. Add the dried apricots, goji berries, mulberries, and raisins and continue baking for 10 minutes longer.

Set the granola aside to cool (it will become crunchy when cool). The granola can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Cooking Tip: You’ll need to melt the coconut oil before measuring it. In a small saucepan, place 2 generous tablespoons of solid coconut oil over the lowest heat and melt. Once it’s liquid, measure to 2 tablespoons of oil.

Variations: It’s fun to experiment with some of the superfoods, but don’t let these unusual ingredients or their unavailability turn you away from making granola: While they are easily found in many areas in natural foods stores, you may choose to substitute dried coconut, cranberries, cherries, dates, or figs. Golden raisins add a beautiful color, but any black raisin or currant will do. Feel free to use your favorite nuts and seeds; I often use walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts.

—From Vegan Family Meals by Ann Gentry/Andrews McMeel Publishing

I’ve found when you’re on the road and find a good thing, be sure to stick to it (thighs, be warned). As I type this, I’m on the verge of getting ready for a seven day juice cleanse. As such, my outright confession about scoffing back meals of vegan junk food becomes null and void (at least in my head). But what happens when the junk food of choice actually tastes GREAT and, when you break it down, isn’t that junky at all? Enter New Zealand’s Burger Fuel — an eco-fabulous burger chain that was green at inception back in the mid-90s when “green” was simply a shade of colour to the rest of the world.

The order of choice at this hip chain is the V8 Vegan for $NZD8.90 packed with flavour thanks to its pumpkin, cashew nut and ginger pattie, mushroom, olive and sage pate, salad and relish, sandwiched between the freshest burger bun you’re ever likely to encounter. Then there’s the lashings of red onion and avocado that you can add or take away, depending on what floats your vegan boat.

Kudos, Burger Fuel. Thanks for the memories.

Tastes better than it looks: the V8 Vegan burger from Burger Fuel.

While I enthusiastically protest these interpretations are in themselves bizarre, it got me to thinking: do people really know what I’m asking for when perusing a menu, and ordering bits of ingredients from various dishes to make one that passes the vegan test?

Living out of a suitcase, as I’ve travelled New Zealand’s south island this past week, has meant eating out at restaurants and explaining my dietary needs to a befuddled, and often dazed wait staff. “It has egg, but you can eat that right?” asked one. “No dairy, but meat’s okay?” queried another.

Getting frustrated with my “everyone in the world should know what vegan means” attitude, I turned to my close friend’s preferred method: order with a specific request for no animal products. Full stop. End of story. And of course, it worked like a charm. No confusion, no odd looks, just straight to the point.

So rather than toss the word “vegan” out the window when ordering, I simply combined the two. Example? “Hi, I’m vegan, which means I don’t eat any animal products. Can you suggest anything on your menu?”

While the explanation stopped confusion, what it didn’t do was manifest vegan options which were, more often than not, non-existent, by name or by ingredients. Of course this meant (besides going hungry) I’d leave written feedback suggesting vegan options — that is, no animal products whatsoever — be added to otherwise meat-packed menus.

Come on NZ, time to get your vegan on!

While my new city is quite green conscious, its eco-ness hasn’t yet extended into the vegan realm. This of course means rather than eating out at some of my fave vegan restaurants (as I did often in LA), I’ll be at home keeping my food dehydrator company.

To pay homage to the city that supported my vegan lifestyle so well over the past few years, I’ve compiled a top 10 list of things I miss about LA (mostly food, as you’ll see!) in no particular order:

Leaf Organics

From the can’t-get-enough live food wraps to the most incredible smoothies you’ll ever slurp, Leaf Organics is a raw food vegan’s heaven. Besides their cafe-style eateries in Sherman Oaks and Culver City, Leaf Oranics provides their scrumptious raw goodies (including burgers – see below) to many Wholefoods stores. Owner and vegan extraordinaire Rod Rotondi also recently joined forces with Agape’s Dr Michael Beckwith to produce a book: Raw Food for Real People, a guide I’ll be reviewing in the coming weeks.

Wholefoods

Wholefoods‘ aisles are peppered with vegan friendly edibles. From nature’s energy drink of choice — young coconuts — to specialised products such as sausages from the Field Roast Grain Meat Co (go for the smoked apple sage variety, the rest pale in comparison) this market is the place to shop if health is at the top of your agenda. Wholefoods, it’s time you swung open your doors down under.

Erewhon

You could sit for hours at the Eerewhon (pronounced air-ee-won) juice bar, sipping on liquid potions guaranteed to put an enzyme-infused spring in your step. This market is known by health gurus, such as David “Avocado” Wolfe, (who I heard speak there recently … if you ever get the chance to do the same, jump at it) to be at the forefront of real good real food. Really. Sure, it’s a tad pricey, but well worth spending a few extra bucks to get great vegan food and optimal health. Long live Erewhon!

Hugos

Oh Hugos, how I miss you so. Whether you’re in the Valley or on Santa Monica Boulevard, be sure to stop off at this ever-popular brunch, lunch and dinner hotspot. The new American veggie burger (made vegan) is out of this world. Be sure to order it in a spinach wrap with all the extras. If you don’t mind a bit of that evil soy every now and again, add the vege bacon to your order. Having just checked out the menu online, I also see they’ve added new vegan delights to their already jam-packed menu: vegan orange pancakes for brekky and the “best vegan New York style blueberry cheesecake”. Hugo’s how could you? Worth a trip back Stateside just to test these newbies out!

Bodhi Tree Book Store

A treasure trove of all things holistic and spiritual, Bodhi Tree Book Store on Melrose has a special section dedicated to vegans and vegetarians — including must-have cookbooks. Worth a wander, no matter your belief or diet. You might even spot a celeb or three in this local fave.

Vegan Plate

There’s a lot of soy on the menu at Vegan Plate, but there are also other options (including veges and wheat meat) at this Studio City restaurant, tucked away in a strip mall on Ventura Boulevard. It’s clean, the service is friendly and it’s frequented by vegan types and those who simply appreciate good Thai food.

Planet Raw

This Santa Monica restaurant is the playground of raw food god, Juliano. That is, this is his restaurant, where every raw vegan foodie dreams of visiting at least once. While prices are, well, pricey, the raw vegan food served up here is nothing short of sensational. You can also pick up kitchen goodies such as a Vitamix blender or Excalibur food dehydrator — must haves according to any good raw food vegan chef in the know.

Kombucha

Available at select cafes and eateries, I’d usually get my daily kombucha fix from Wholefoods. The multi-green variety from Synergy is my absolute fave, packed with live enzymes, probiotics and everything a body loves. Its founder Dave developed his brand of the cold tea after his mother was  diagnosed with breast cancer and found it hadn’t spread because of the kombucha tea she had been drinking.

Nutritional Yeast

This stuff is kind of addictive, simply because it tastes so good. Be warned, however, too much vitamin B can be bad, and cause you to break out in an unsightly red rash (speaking from experience). Nutritional yeast (and my fave from Kal’s) has various B vitamins including 1, 3, 6 and 12, which are much needed when you’re living vegan. It’s also packed with other nutrients including phosphorus, biotin, magnesium, zinc, copper and more. With Kal’s nowhere to be found at my local supermarket, I’m now sourcing a local equivalent.

Sunshine

LA is known for pretty well much constant sunshine — and after almost two weeks of rain now — I dearly miss it and have upped mushrooms in my diet, as they boast Vitamin D2. Besides being an instant mood-lifter, sunshine plays a huge role in our lives and isn’t the demon it’s made out to be (no, the sun doesn’t cause cancer, but sunblocks do!). Check out this great article from Health Ranger, Mike Adams.