This is my 4th and final installment on really small foods that pack very large punches and avoid you having to eat 50 lbs of salad a day to get nutrition. I have previously talked about chia, flax, and blackstrap molasses. My fourth installment may sound kinda illegal, but it isn’t. Shelled hemp seeds. They can be obtained (legally) at your local health food store. They usually come in the form of a toasted snack or simply raw.

I prefer the raw seeds. They are tiny little guys and very soft. These seeds are considered a complete protein, a source of omega 3/6/9. One tablespoon is loaded with protein and significant nutrients (click on each to see why: vitamin E, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and maganese). Grind these up in the coffee grinder and mix them in anything: smoothie, peanut butter, cookies, pancakes, etc. I buy Ruth’s Soft Hemp here at the Akins, the local grocer. An 8 oz. bag will run you $11. Much cheaper than the illegal alternative (or at least from what I remember in my college daze).

Peanuts, to be exact.

We started eating almond butter a couple years ago simply because it was not as “strong” as peanut butter, but it also packed all the nutrition with less saturated fat (make no mistake, it still has fat. Almond butter is expense in general ($6 as opposed to $2.50 peanut butter) , but ridiculous in the two stores in Tulsa that sell it ($11+). This has caused me to pick it up at Trader Joes in CA on my biz trips.

Since I have already started throwing nuts in a blender, I decided how hard would it be to just make my own nut butter of some kind. So, I threw a handful of almonds, pecans, flax seed (gotta have the flax), and walnuts into a blender. They chopped up to a sticky powder. This was hardly spreadable. Instead of pouring oil into it to make it more “creamy”, I opened a can of conconut milk and threw it in. That definitely worked. I finished it off with some cinnamon and sugar to add a little sweetness.

When it was all said and done, I took a wiff of the stuff. It smelled like a cross between maple pancakes and tropical something. When I tasted it, I was shocked at how well all the flavors came together. Since then, we have been making a batch a week and just kinda throwing it on bread, in cereal, or even in my smoothie. Compared to peanut butter, it has a wider spread of protein, nutrients (especially calcium and iron), and is very “basic” (as in chemistry) to neutralize stomach acid, a natural antacid.

After we had finished our meal the day before, I had about 4 tablespoons of the pesto mix left. We decided to make grilled veggie sandwiches for lunch. I made these two weeks before we went vegan just to experiment with taste. We liked the sandwiches then and we wanted to try them again now.

I took a red pepper, green pepper, yellow squash, green squash, and an onion and sliced them into big pieces. I kept the marinade simple with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. The veggies were grilled on our backyard grill for about 15 minutes (7.5 on a side) at 425 degrees. For bread, Aleta brought home some nice french bread. I cut some big slices, coated them with olive oil and grilled them nice and brown.

Back to the pesto. I added 2 tablespoons of vegan mayonnaise (which is quite good) to two tablespoons of the pesto mix. We could have dipped it on the bread right there and called it a day. The sandwiches were crafted with the pesto spread on both sides, squash, peppers, onions, and fresh avacado.

Flavor explosion.