Candle 79 Frozen Delights

While most New Yorkers digest the summer heat at farmers markets, BBQs and beaches, Bart and I have been busy introducing a new, ice-cold addition to our Candle family of plant-based foods. After 25 years in the making, we finally did it! We took the Candle chefs’ palates and vegan wisdom and developed a line of delicious frozen entrées which are available at Whole Foods Markets nationwide. This is a summer full of dreams come true for us. We have furthered the reach of our mission (and our foods) in support of those who share our commitment to the health of people, animals and the planet. We are equally thrilled that our packaging will help promote awareness of our partners at Farm Sanctuary and The Humane Society of the United States – two incredibly compassionate organizations. Although eating Food Fresh From Farm to Table is our trademark, we are proud that fans of our restaurants can now get delicious, vegan comfort food at any Whole Foods Market across the country.

I loved frozen dinners when I was growing up. It was a Friday night treat, and many cherished memories were created when my family gathered together for dinner. I am hoping our food helps to create the same type of joyful atmosphere that I had in my youth. Bart and I have been rekindling that tradition as we sit down to watch a Mets game while sharing a frozen Miso-Ginger Stir Fry and Seitan Piccata. These vegan meals are delighting food enthusiasts who thought they couldn’t enjoy plant-based cuisine or a satisfying lifestyle. These are exciting times for Bart and me as well as the rest of the Candle family.

Food is a form of comfort for many. To be able to buy food you trust (always dairy-free and vegan) brings eating to a whole other level of comfort. It is the way we eat and the intention we put into our food that nourishes and heals us. I’d love to share a recipe that’ll help relieve you from the summer heat while cultivating your health and wellness. We developed this smoothie recipe in partnership with the Killian Mansfield Foundation’s Aromatherapy Initiative, a project to empower children with cancer to feel better through self care such as acupressure, diet choices and reflexology that are integrated with their medical treatments. Our Super Food Superhero Smoothie below can be found in the first phase of Grumpy Fish booklets given free to more than 1,200 children with cancer in three different states. If you have leftovers, pour them into a popsicle mold, and enjoy on a hot day!

Super Food Superhero Smoothie
from Candle Café in New York, N.Y.

Chia seeds are a super food, loaded with omega 3 and protein, fiber, and antioxidants for cellular health!

½ cups coconut water
¼ cup blueberries
¼ cup strawberries
½ banana
1 tsp dry chia seeds

Blend coconut water and fruit until well mixed. Then add the chia seeds, and blend on low for 30 seconds. Let the smoothie sit for about 5 minutes.

For more delicious vegan eats, visit Candle79.com and Candlecafe.com.

Spring Awakening – A Savory Season

Each season sings its own melody that reflects the aliveness of the earth’s natural growing cycles. The first breath of spring heralds rebirth and a start to the gentle growing season: the slow unfurling of leaves, the tiny baby shoots as they push up through the ground, awakened by the sun and an inner knowing.

Just as the knowing of the plants triggers them to grow, the wisdom in our bodies awakens our senses to the healthful spring foods the land will produce. If we allow ourselves to listen, we are all in harmony, making up a vibrant symphony of sorts. The spring crops sprout and flourish just as we are ripe to experience the life-giving foods of springtime at its fullest.

Spring is a time to shed the layers of winter, to stretch our limbs and turn toward the sun. We begin to eat lighter foods: nourishing tender greens, buttery lettuces with the simplest of dressings, baby vegetables so sweet they need barely a whisper of sea salt, a breath of tarragon or thyme, a drizzle of olive oil.

Candle Cafe and Candle 79 rekindle their relationships with the local farmers who supply the delicacies of the season. It’s always a privilege to work with farmers to supply our fourth generation of clients with the best, most nutrient-dense food available. Our motto of “Food Fresh from Farm to Table” sings of spring. As the early crops unfold, the melody of fresh herbs and delicacies like fiddlehead ferns, asparagus and ramps are the chef’s inspiration. Memorable meals are made of these melodies and keep us on a path toward inspired wellness.

Spring is a wonderful time to cleanse away the old. Eating more raw vegetables and fruits or easing into a nourishing  juice cleanse can be a great way to give your body the gentle nudge it needs to feel vibrant and well. I’m pleased to share Candle 79 Chef Angel Ramos’ recipe for a simple spring salad and Candle 79 Bar Chef Kyle Bullen’s recipe for a wonderfully rejuvenating elixir, aptly called “Rejuvenation.”

Cheers to your Crazy Sexy spring awakening!

Spring Salad

-8 ounces spring lettuce mix
-1 fennel bulb, cored and thinly sliced
-2 blood oranges, pith removed and sliced to ¼ inch segments
-2 teaspoons thyme, chopped
-1 teaspoon parsley, chopped
-2 tablespoons organic extra virgin oil olive
-Salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in a bowl. Serve and enjoy!

Rejuvenation

-3 ounces cucumber juice
-2 ounces George’s Aloe
-¾ ounce lemon juice
-½ ounce ginger agave simple syrup (mix grated ginger and agave nectar)
-Soda water, as needed

Build first four ingredients in a 16-ounce Pilsner glass, add ice to top, fill with soda water and mix and enjoy!

Photo credit: Rubber Slippers in Italy

Creating a Plant-Based Holiday You and Your Family Will Love

In his book, “Look Two Ways on a One-Way Street,” my partner Bart Potenza states, “Life can be a bowl of cherries, but you might have to bring the fruit and probably the bowl, too.” This can be especially true for those of us who want to experience a compassionate, plant-based holiday meal when many of our friends and family members still cling to more conventional holiday meal choices. For me, the best way to share the love and joy of the holiday is still with food. Holiday cooking, eating and even cleaning are meditative practices of a sort and bring people together. So, how can we share a compassionate meal for the holidays and still please everyone? By making delicious traditional foods that speak to everyone’s heart using plant-based substitutes that are so tasty no one will miss the turkey!

In Alicia Silverstone’s book, “The Kind Diet,” Alicia shares delectable recipes that will delight you and your guests at your Thanksgiving table or at any holiday celebration. Start with Alicia’s velvety sweet kabocha squash soup for a scrumptious first course. For your main dish, try her Candle Cafe inspired pecan crusted seitan along with the Thanksgiving tofu. These hearty, comforting dishes accompanied by cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce and warm pumpkin bread make a delicious holiday feast. Pair them with Alicia’s warm spicy wine for a special toasty treat called glögg. Alicia is not only a wonderful actress and compassionate animal lover, but a real foodie too – her love for delicious food is evident in every bite of these wonderful recipes.

Whatever you choose to make this holiday season, use your inner chef to add your own flare! Incorporate local produce and have fun. Many traditional holiday dishes are easy to change and taste better when “veganized.” Take sweet potato casserole with melted marshmallows on top. Easy vegan solution: use Sweet & Sara vegan marshmallows and Earth Balance soy margarine in place of butter. And of course, to make your holiday complete we can’t forget sweets! Veganizing the traditional pie is easy and delicious and a fabulous addition to any holiday feast. Candle Cafe and Candle 79′s talented Pastry Chef Jorge Pineda whips up local apple cranberry pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie topped with house-made vanilla coconut or soy based ice cream or vegan whipped cream on holidays and every day. As the home cook you can buy a premade crust and fill it with your favorite filling. “The Candle Cafe Cookbook” has a wonderful recipe for apple pie and a recipe for decadent pumpkin pudding that makes us swoon. Another way to go is to start a new tradition – share your favorite vegan recipes in the comments section below! The recipe my family can’t live without is one for chocolate peanut butter cups. Making these is fun for the whole family and a great way to spend a holiday evening – my niece and nephew love them!

I hope you enjoy creating a compassionate holiday meal with your loved ones. Our old traditions and rituals are deeply imprinted in us from childhood and can be a source of comfort, love and strength. But creating a new tradition of making and sharing delicious meals that are kind, healthy and sustainable can become a treasured addition to your family’s holiday season. Just remember to cook and share with love and tolerance. (After all, we all had to start somewhere on our journey towards a more compassionate life.)

Cheers to the celebration of food, family and friends, the honoring of our bodies and Mother Earth, and the spirit of giving and gratitude this holiday season. Spread the joy!

With gratitude and love to the amazing team at Candle Cafe and Candle 79 who make every day a holiday.

Thanks for giving,
Joy

Photo Credit: striatic

What’s the Secret to Candle 79’s Success?

I love farmers markets more than any other market or store. I love carrots more than karats! Knowing the people who grow my food is important to me. I love weekly visits with the farmers from our area. Seeing the farmers’ pride and joy for a job well done caring for the land and their crops enhances the flavor and nourishment of what I buy from them. I love tasting the delicious fruits of their labor that were just picked and grown under their care to support their families. I buy as much of the best produce as I can! I come home with the best and freshest fruits, vegetables, herbs and even organic local mushrooms. I am so excited about how I am going to prepare these gems.

My current use for all this produce is the work I’m doing for “The Candle 79 Cookbook.” This cookbook is going to be extraordinary thanks to talented chefs Angel Ramos and Jorge Pineda, and the entire Candle 79 Team led by Benay Vynerib and Francesca MacAaron with the support of Mark Doskow. It really does take a village to do what we do, especially to meet our lofty goal of changing the world. We need to support each other, so we can support good people doing good things, and the efforts of those good people can grow that much greater. By the people in my local community supporting growers and their sustainable practices, I’ve recently seen my local health food store decide to carry only organic produce. It’s so exciting to see the commitment of a community come to fruition. As Bart and I always say, and firmly believe, “When you commit, providence will provide.”

Do you know the story of how Bart and I have experienced this in our own lives? I tell this story all the time, so skip over it if you’ve heard it already. On Friday, Aug. 13, 1993, Bart and I won the New York State Lottery. We didn’t win millions, but we won what we needed: $53,000. That was the seed money that allowed us to open what is now Candle Café. It must have been meant to be that Candle Café was to be born and become a vehicle to feed millions wholesome, plant-based foods.

Home from the market and from the health food store with an incredible array of fresh and delicious food, I’m getting hungry. It’s time to whip up something good to eat. I love to create magic from the farmers market. First I prep the greens – gorgeous greens. I am so excited by dark leafy greens. I want to make them lemony and garlicky. Then I cut some onions and leeks to do a stir-fry with them as my base. What next? I think I’ll add the mushrooms and this beautiful red and green cabbage I have. I also will add toasted sesame seeds and raw hemp seeds before finishing it off with fresh herbs and a cayenne kick at the end. It’s so exciting to create a meal you love for yourself and loved ones. I can feel sad or be in a funk, and when I start to cook it makes me feel better. I think it is because I am actively creating a healing meal that nourishes my body, mind and spirit.

Over 26 years ago Candle Café was one of the first restaurants to use the expression “food fresh from farm to table.” That has been our day-to-day mantra ever since. No “virtual” farms, just incredibly hard-working men and women growing and picking the crops that have appeared on our daily menus ever since. I find it so inspiring that we can share this commitment with our now fourth-generation client base that have shown by their loyalty that they too love and respect our mission of serving fresh organic vegan food every day. Live, love, laugh and cook.

Photo Credit: M. Gibion

Food Revolution

The Food Revolution has begun, and we must all participate if we want our children and our planet to survive and thrive. Our consciousness is being raised by many inspirational people: T. Colin Campbell, Alicia Silverstone, Tal Ronen, Rory Freedman & Kathy Freston, to name a few, all best-selling authors with a message and passion for creating a healthier culture and planet. Also, let’s acknowledge the passionate Jamie Oliver, who is taking a stand in what I call a “food intervention” in Huntington, West Virginia after his successful ventures in England. He clearly identifies that lack of fresh food is a matter of life and death. As a nutritionist, I am overjoyed by Jamie’s candor and care for people’s health, happiness and culinary satisfaction. I share his triumphs and failures as I have spent the past 4 years working with the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food and The New York Department of School Food in the Future Leaders Institute (FLI) School, a charter school in Harlem. There have been plenty of tears of frustration and yelps of joy over the past years, as we have worked on the front lines of change within the New York City school food system. The challenges are many, but the importance of feeding our children quality, plant-based foods has never been more apparent. The time is now, and we must ask for what is our children’s birthright: GOOD CLEAN FOOD.

I have been a nutritional consultant for 20 years (which is hard to believe since I still feel I am in my twenties). I have studied food and its impact on mood, health and self-esteem, and I am convinced that by feeding our children well we can heal so many health concerns—childhood obesity, asthma, diabetes, and heart disease, among others—while fostering a happier, healthier, and more productive society. It is awesome that we now have the support of our First Lady, Michelle Obama. Her support could be the seed for a team of powerful change agents and activists who are unstoppable in their commitment to the health of our children and the future of our food supply. I could not be happier that Michelle Obama’s focus is on this issue. What a blessing!

Over the past four years, Candle Cafe and Candle 79 have been partners with the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, cooking plant-based meals for the children at the FLI School and three other schools in the same building. We have been on the front line, in this case the lunch line, talking with the kids and guiding them as they learn that there are delicious, healthy alternatives to the fat-, salt-, and sugar-laden status quo. Our progress, although at times discouraging, has been a transformational experience for all of us. As I would walk up and down the lunch line to inform the kids what would be on the tray when they got to the front of the line, I was so ecstatic to be sharing my excitement about the food that was being served as the healthy choice that I would literally be singing and dancing! I empowered them all to be food critics and try new foods. Although they love the word YUCKY, I would ask for a more detailed description of their food preferences. The children’s most common critique was that the food was not sweet or salty enough—proof we have work to do to retrain their taste buds from the adulteration of sweets, fat, and excessive salt bombarding their palates! I have seen kids in baby carriages being fed Coke for breakfast. Trying a new food is commendable, but I always reminded the kids of the statistic that it can take ten times to try a new food before you know whether you actually like it. Education is a powerful tool that has allowed for change.I get very emotional when I see what our kids eat and drink, because I know the negative impact on the body, mind and spirit.

We have developed recipes for the NY Department of School Food with the support of Chef Jorge Collazo and Stephen O’Brien that meet standards and taste delicious. We also have empowered the kids to write and submit their own recipes so that they could actively contribute to the recipes used in New York schools. The recipe contest was held at the James Beard House, where we tasted and chose a winning recipe to be served in school. The excitement and maturity of the students who participated was heart-warming and life-changing, and the recipes they created captivated our taste buds.

What an honor to be able to sit with the kids and their parents to talk food and its many powers. One moment I will never forget was when a young mother jumped up on the table and did a spin around and said, “Look at my body, 15 pounds lighter and no more asthma or blood sugar problems!” She was so proud of her accomplishments. She took control of her eating with new recipes from our food demo portion of family dinner night. It was brave of her to open up to the new information she was learning, to move beyond the fear of change and the worry that it would be too expensive for her to choose healthy foods for her family. The truth is, it is too costly not to make healthy choices! This is an obstacle we can help people overcome, but only if we demand change from our government and institutions, commit to healthy foods in our nation’s schools, and demand support and funding for school lunch programs and local farms instead of industrialized food production and factory farms.

The issue does not end in the lunch room; it is in our homes as well. Teaching our children and their families where their food comes from and how to create delicious and nutritious meals is an ongoing education. At Candle Cafe, we are feeding a fourth generation of clients who have embraced our food and our mission. Kids are choosing us for their birthday parties and other celebrations, and bringing their parents to dine with us. What a thrill to see children seek out our food and the compassionate, green, and sustainable mission behind the food. Food Fresh from Farm to Table is our mantra, and it’s what motivates us. As my partner Bart Potenza would say, “It is easier to change people’s religion or politics than it is their food habits.” So, we have our work cut out for us! As a result of passing the junk food habit through generations, we have compromised our immune systems, but healing happens on a profound and far-reaching level when we “begin at the beginning” and start with our children. We must change the story—we must change the world of food. We must demand change from our leaders and vote with our consumer dollars and forks, supporting local farms and farmers’ markets, choosing organic, fresh, healthy plant-based foods. Change starts with you! Join me in a food revolution!

Much love, health, peace and veggies,
Joy