Table of Contents Title Page Dedication Introduction Recipes Leafy Greens Salads, Nori Rolls, and Pastas Dressings, Dips, and Spreads Veggies Entrées Pizza, Crackers, and Chips Soups and Stews Pancakes, Granola, Muffins, Scones, and Waffles Desserts and Sweets Drinks and Smoothies Nut and Seed Milks and Nut Butters Appendix Index Other Ulysses Press Books Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Page This cookbook is dedicated to all my amazing, inspiring, question-asking, solution-seeking students in Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston. Introduction Cooking vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free is an optimal approach to healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle; it can be an entire way of life or a simple recipe you make because you’re curious and want to see what it tastes like. Either way, food—the kind we eat and how we prepare it—is a daily practice that can support our foundation for personal potential and happiness. Eating what you love to eat is crucial to enjoying life. And that opportunity to receive joy is in your hands up to five times a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks. It could be more or it could be less, but five feedings set the standard of balance for this cookbook. The health benefits—be they physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual—of those five joyful dietary doses follow us around the clock and into our sleeping hours. My Story: It Started with the Hair I’m forty-six, originally from Boston, and now living in Los Angeles. From age thirtyfive to thirty-nine, I lost over a third of my hair. Practically balding, at the time I thought, “This is my only good asset, I can’t lose it!” But I was a sugar addict and compulsive overeater, and I was desperate to heal myself. After consulting with a healer, I committed to going sugar-free and gluten-free and transformed myself from head to toe. I kept true to my healthy lifestyle and created a book where I walk the talk. Every day. My first cookbook, Sugar-free Gluten-free Baking and Desserts, is a nostalgic compilation of my entire life: everything I’ve ever loved and craved. Growing up in a Sicilian family with a catering business in western New York, I had every meal made for me with love, cultural history, and lots of white flour, sugar, and animal products. Yet those meals are what I admire about my family and keep my connection with them. So I transformed those recipes from my great- grandmother, grandmother, and mom and made them the “Kelly” way. With those recipes, I ate what I loved, gave myself permission to be satisfied, and taught myself self-nurturing and self-healing by focusing on feeling the joy and complete and utter satisfaction my family taught me. It is my hope that you can do the same for yourself and your family now. It is important to tell you that what I ate six years ago is not what I eat or crave today, as my body and taste buds keep transforming, becoming more aligned with a healthy lifestyle and ingredients for my recipes. Six years ago, I did eat all of the recipes in my previous book, and I enjoyed eating two or three sugar-free, gluten-free desserts a day! But slowly my tastes changed. It became two or three times a week, then several times month, and then I started adding superfoods to my morning smoothie and my raw chocolate recipes. Now, I still crave my chocolates a few times a month, but what has changed is my craving for animal protein on a daily basis. As my healthy lifestyle and cooking continue to grow and evolve, I find myself having less animal and more vegetables. Luckily for me, I found a term at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City that describes my current food practice: flexitarian (more about that later). This means that I now eat mostly vegan and allow myself the occasional fish and eggs for protein when my body calls for it. The vegan, gluten-free, sugar-friendly recipes in this book are a compilation of the vegan dishes and desserts I have loved, craved, and created for over six years. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! So much has changed and expanded in the vegan, gluten-free world. And it’s exciting. When you know how to dress up vegan staples with healthy oils, spices, and veggies, you will elevate your taste buds to the top of the food chain, which is the main reason I wanted to write this book. My cooking style takes the best food-preparation and cooking techniques from many different disciplines— French, Japanese, Italian, Indian, Mediterranean, Mexican, macrobiotic, and raw live vegan—and re-creates them in a new gourmet style and taste by using alternative ingredients that are vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free. I have even created new techniques for making chocolates that score high points in the healthy-ingredients and taste-satisfaction departments. Deep down everyone wants to be told, “It’s okay to love food, especially the food you eat! And food should taste great and make you feel great!” So, imagine eating your favorite food, chocolate, works for your body, not against it, and instead makes you radiant, glowing, and sexy. That is this cookbook! So often, food is the enemy, so in this cookbook, you will discover how food is the foundation for your personal potential. Once you have found this alignment with your health, balance, and well-being, you will undoubtedly want to share it with your family and friends like I am sharing it with you! Eating What You Love and Crave Loving what you eat is the first step in fulfilling our natural desires for well- being. It also gives comfort and joy when the taste buds are completely satisfied. Making healthy food with the nutrient-dense benefits of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber is what this cookbook is all about. If it tastes good, you’ll eat it! Now when you add to this “love food” the significant culinary fact that it is made without processed high-glycemic white sugar, flour, trans fat, and too much salt, and instead is focused on vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar- friendly recipes with extra superfood ingredients that enhance your health, you have a recipe for self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction, and personal success. Find recipes that appeal to you, make a shopping list, and plan a two-hour session in the kitchen. You will fall in love with yourself, and even a grumpy onion or two. THREE PILLARS OF EATING VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, SUGAR-FREE FOR AN OPTIMUM HEALTHY LIFESTYLE 1. EAT WHAT YOU LOVE. This is crucial to enjoying life, but how do you figure out what your “love foods” are? Ask yourself what you’re craving. For example, is the weather, season, or holiday making you feel nostalgic and begging you to relive your childhood favorite foods? If so, find a recipe in this book that matches your mood, like pizza, brownies, or pasta with Alfredo sauce. 2. EAT FOR YOUR HEALTH. Eating vegan, gluten-free, and sugar-free allows us to avoid the negative effects of processed food and animal products that can lead to food allergies, some of which show up as symptoms in the body because of a food intolerance. If you add toxic ingredients, such as prescription drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar, to a diet low in plant-based foods, you will have a recipe for unbalanced health. Symptoms of such an unbalanced diet can be: POOR DIGESTION INFLAMMATION OR PAIN MOOD SWINGS BRAIN FOG INABILITY TO FOCUS AND MAKE DECISIONS LOW ENERGY A vegan, allergy-free diet can reverse the above symptoms with: BETTER DIGESTION INCREASED ASSIMILATION OF NUTRIENTS INCREASED METABOLISM EVEN MOODS AND EMOTIONS ABILITY TO HANDLE STRESS CLARITY OF FOCUS INCREASED ENERGY BETTER SLEEP 3. EAT PORTIONS THAT KEEP YOU RUNNING AND DON’T SLOW YOU DOWN. This is an art form and, if you tend to overeat even good food, takes practice and patience. Eating what you love and crave is a key component to eating less and acknowledging portion control; this happens naturally when you consistently add vegan, gluten-free, sugar-friendly, nutrient-dense foods to your food plan. Sugar and fat cravings will diminish, like the need to eat chocolate after every meal. Recipes in this book like Goji Berry and Pistachio Raw Chocolate (page 120) will satisfy your sweet tooth without eating extra sugar. FOOD FOR THOUGHT AND LOVE The only things we can control are our food and our thoughts about the food we eat. If you take care of yourself by giving yourself food you truly desire, something that touches your heart and your stomach, you’ll train yourself to pay attention to the things you love, thereby increasing your ability to give them to yourself. When you get the love you want and deserve, you stop chasing the bad boy down the street for miles, leaking energy, leaving you feeling like you’re missing out, big time. In other words, looking for what you want in the bad boy and never getting it is quite like eating an iceberg lettuce salad with lemon juice and some scattered chickpeas, and feeling oh-so-unsatisfied, ripped off. What we really want is the permission to love food and love what we eat. This is possible to achieve when you have a balanced, healthy lifestyle that incorporates great vegan, gluten-free, sugar-friendly recipes, shopping for the best local, whole foods, and setting aside time to cook. Cookbooks and cooking are love. It all begins in the kitchen, the hearth, the center of the home, where the self-nurturing and inspiration to align with your passions begin. Why Vegan? HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND HEALTHY EATING PRINCIPLES A vegan lifestyle or vegan-ish approach to healthy eating is an amazing journey in and out of the kitchen. Vegan means free of animal products like meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy. Vegan also can mean that you are more confident that the body can digest and assimilate nutrients found in vegan ingredients like fruits, vegetables, most nuts, seeds, and beans without experiencing allergic reactions to food, which slows down your metabolism and suppresses your immune system. The fun of cooking and eating vegan is in discovering the personal value it has for you when you enjoy natural, fresh, local, and organic