Food

Everyone should have an easy, no-bake, go-to dessert recipe. This one is mine. Endlessly customizable, depending on the seasonal fruit available, I particularly love how this autumnal take combines tart cranberries with earthy pecans and herbal rosemary.

This hearty plant-based soup gets its velvety creaminess from the addition of tahini, or sesame seed butter. Nut and seed butters can be added to a variety of applications to help thicken or enhance the mouthfeel of a dish. Try stirring a tablespoon or two of your favourite seed or nut butter to sauces, salad dressings, or smoothies.

This drink is like a hug in a mug. While typically served chilled over ice, horchata may also be served warm, which makes it perfect to enjoy during cooler months.

This delightfully bright and flavourful side dish might just steal the show at your next meal. Quinoa gives this recipe a nice punch of plant-based protein, while a myriad of seeds and herbs come together in a symphony of flavour.

This creamy vegan cheese comes together easily and can be enjoyed spread on crudité and crackers. But don’t stop there. It’s also divine dolloped over roasted vegetables or used as an alternative to ricotta cheese in lasagna.

Indulge in this fragrant elevated twist on a classic dessert that combines the nutty richness of brown butter with juicy Anjou pears and warm gingerbread spices.

Enjoy a hearty and flavourful beef stew with a rich, garlic-infused broth thickened with sourdough breadcrumbs and filled with classic vegetables.

Experience a burst of flavours with creamy yogurt, soft poached eggs, bright chive pesto, and a drizzle of homemade hot honey, all served with crunchy sourdough.

Start your day with this vegan protein-packed baked pancake bowl featuring winter-spiced persimmons and a luscious date “caramel” drizzle.

Warm up with this velvety, spice-infused soup made from sprouted red lentils and heirloom carrots, topped with coconut cream and fresh herbs.

This recipe is inspired by Greece’s Blue Zone on the island of Ikaria. Ikarians make use of the herbs that grow around them in their teas, eat local honey, and consume goats’ milk and cheeses rather than from cows’ milk. This luscious panna cotta recipe is made with goats’ milk and yogurt, sweetened with honey, and scented with lemon and rosemary before being topped with walnuts and figs and more honey.

In Loma Linda, California, diets consist of fruits and vegetables as well as legumes, whole grains, and nuts. This crisp and juicy salad is inspired by those ingredients in the form of leafy greens, garbanzo beans, tomatoes, fennel, and sweet grapes. The toasted buckwheat adds a delicious crunch.

The Sardinian diet contains a lot of vegetables and is known for good helpings of barley and Pecorino, a sheep’s milk cheese. While not recreating a Sardinian dish, we've been inspired, for this hearty bean and barley stew, by those Sardinian ingredients. Warming and comforting, it's filled with barley and convenient, protein-packed Borlotti beans and infused with flavour from carrots, onions, fennel, and herby thyme. It's also packed with Italian lacinato kale for a healthy dose of greens.

The Okinawan diet is comprised of 67 percent Okinawan sweet potatoes. These purple-fleshed sweet potatoes are rich in anthocyanins, powerful blue and purple pigments with antioxidant properties. The rich purple colour has inspired this fusion dish. It follows a classic gnocchi technique, but the purple colour and touch of miso give it an interesting twist paired with leafy spinach and shitakes.

Beans, squash, and corn are known as the “three sisters” and are a key part of the diet of centenarians in the region of Nicoya, Costa Rica. These breakfast bowls draw on those reliable sisters with a nod to the Costa Rican dish gallo pinto, a mixture of rice and beans, spiked with cilantro, often eaten alongside scrambled eggs. We've topped these bowls with a fried egg instead, but the choice is yours.

These rich little morsels are the perfect ending to a beautiful dinner. The dark chocolate perfectly satisfies that craving for sweets after a big meal. The pecans, pumpkin seeds, and cranberries, along with the warming spices of pumpkin pie, pay tribute to traditional Thanksgiving ingredients. These morsels can be made well ahead of time and stored in the freezer until needed.

Thanksgiving isn’t complete for many of us without a potato dish, the comforting starchy staple we all adore. These stacks are the perfect handheld potato dish for your holiday grazing table. While garlic and rosemary are a fan-favourite flavour combo, the addition of the balsamic glaze adds a hint of sweetness and tang.

These pop-in-your-mouth stuffed mushrooms are the perfect addition to your Thanksgiving table. The combination of fennel with the lentils and mushrooms gives these bites a meaty taste that are actually completely plant based―and Thanksgiving grazers may never guess.

These easy, yet elegant, handheld endive packages have all the flavours you need with salty bacon, sweet apple, fennel, and creamy beans, enfolded within and balanced by the bitterness of Belgian endive leaves.

If you want a traditional Thanksgiving without the daunting task of cooking a turkey, this dish is for you. With these yummy handheld turkey pastry cups, you get all the Thanksgiving flavours without the overwhelming effort. Making the turkey filling a day or two ahead of time will make life that much simpler, allowing you to have a turkey dish on the table and ready to enjoy in less than half an hour. And, for an equally delicious plant-based version, you can easily omit the cheese and switch out the turkey for a veggie ground.

Entice your family and friends into your home with the aroma of freshly baked bread, setting the tone for a cozy Thanksgiving dinner to remember. This easy bread recipe comes together quickly because it doesn’t need any time to rise. This savoury twist on a normally sweet loaf will be a welcome addition to your dinner table. Buckwheat flour lends itself well to the savoury flavour with its slightly earthy taste. Make this bread completely gluten free by choosing a gluten-free beer.

Nothing reminds me of summer more than this combination of sweet strawberries, tropical mangoes, tart limes, and savoury basil. Fruit is nutrient dense, and mangoes are packed with vitamins A, B6, C, E, and K, as well as copper and magnesium. Not only is this simple sorbet a refreshing way to end a meal, it’s also a great way to boost your nutrient intake!

Allowed to range freely and eat grass, rather than grain, bison have less fat than their cow counterparts, and their meat is less marbled than beef, meaning that fat is easier to opt in or out of. My family’s bison and black bean stuffed peppers contain lean, ground bison and high fibre black beans, creating a healthy, hearty twist on a comfort food classic!