The October Unprocessed Vault: Day 18

Kristin Smith is the owner of SweetChip, a custom-crafted cookie company based in Lawrence, Kansas. She offered to send me a complimentary batch of her 100% Whole Grain, Unprocessed Oatmeal Maple Spice Cookies. I happily accepted, once we confirmed that they passed the Kitchen Test.

Daniel Koontz is the author of Casual Kitchen, a blog helping readers cook more, think more, and spend less. Today he shares some thoughts on the “80/20 Rule,” and how you can apply it in your life to powerful effect.

As a society, it seems that in our rush towards modernization, we traded the principles of cooking with flavor for a cheap substitute called salt.

Stevia is a perennial shrub with sweet-tasting leaves that has been consumed by native populations in Paraguay for centuries. In that sense, true Stevia has a lot in common with honey or maple syrup – it is a minimally processed sweetener.

There is something super-comforting about adding a creamy dressing on top of any salad, and avocado is basically the perfect thing to make a creamy dressing without using any weird processed ingredients!

While fermentation is technically a form of "processing," it’s nothing like the modern techniques that are used to extrude, pasteurize, deconstruct, re-construct, strip down or otherwise adulterate natural ingredients. Instead, it enriches food, using age-old techniques, and nothing more than salt and a little help from our (trillions of) microbial friends.

Masked by many names, sugar quietly and dangerously hides in our diets.

A lot of people believe that creating macaroni and cheese from scratch is difficult, when in reality it takes very little effort and yields results that are a thousand times tastier than anything you’ll get out of a box.

To the average American, dandelions are simply weeds, but to my mother they were a nutritious meal. Bitter greens are consumed regularly in Greek households — they’re a staple. “Radiki,” as we call them in Greek, are mostly a combination of mustard greens, herbs, and dandelions.

I’d like to challenge all October Unprocessed pledgers to use this time to break old food habits and to freely discover new ones. Let this month be the catalyst that brings you your new perfect meal or a cleaner, healthier way to prepare an old favorite. To help you on your journey and to introduce Persian cooking, I’ve got here for you an exquisite (and super-simple!) recipe for Kuku Kadoo, an Iranian-style frittata with zucchini.

One key thing we’ve learned from cooking around the world is that everyone seems to love crepes. Of course we all know the French, but what about Ukranian and Nepali ones? As it turns out, almost every cuisine has its own type of crepe! Sure enough, the Vietnamese have their own special version too, and even amid the ubiquity of a thin pancake, there is something truly unique about Banh Xeo.

Unprocessed does not always equal healthy. Case in point? Sugar and salt.

Chia seeds can seem intimidating to begin with, but once you get to know them and understand not only what they have to offer you nutritionally, but what they can do for you in the kitchen, you will start adding them to everything… like this chia jam!

The avo-choco combo in this dessert makes for an exceptionally smooth pudding. The spice is optional, but eating the whole bowl may not be"¦.Enjoy!

Need a delicious Italian Salad Dressing recipe? Look no further! Only half of the ingredients in this easy recipe are absolutely necessary. The other half are optional–which makes this dressing incredibly flexible.