Kitchen Monk Staples
Our own simple, homemade basics: milks, dressings, sauces, and treats with a few ingredients and no fancy skills. Taste, adjust, and make them yours.
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⏱️ Prep: about 5 min per blended staple (estimate) · 🔥 Cook: none, except herbed beans: about 10 min to water-sauté the onions and warm the beans (estimate) · 🍽️ Servings: varies; each recipe gives its own amounts (date caramel nutrition is per 1 tbsp) · 🖨️ To print: use your browser’s Share or ⋮ menu, then Print.
Kitchen Monk™ · Every recipe here is served by lamplight. 🪔 Our lamp at every table.
🌿 The Kitchen Monk Standard™: Kitchen Monk™’s own recipes start whole-food, plant-based, and salt-, oil-, and sugar-free (no added salt, oil, or sugar). “Kitchen Monk beans, salsa, broth, and tomatoes” mean no salt added, in bisphenol A–free cans, glass jars, or paper cartons, or cooked from dry at home. 🏷️ Outside recipes, videos, and guides follow their creators’ own standards, so check the ingredients and use our swaps. 💚 Not there yet? That’s okay. We’ll work with you toward it, one step at a time. See the Standard →
Jump to: Milks · Dressings & sauces · Ketchup · Beans · Treats · Label tip
🌴 Dates reign supreme. Every variety of whole date is our go-to whole-food sweetener: fruit, not added sugar. Every recipe here is free of added salt, oil, and sugar.
🥛 Two-ingredient milks
🥜 Homemade nut milk
2 tablespoons nut butter + 3 cups water. Use a nut butter that’s just nuts, with no added salt, oil, or sugar. Blend until smooth; no straining or soaking needed. Add a date or a little vanilla if you like it sweeter. Refrigerate and shake before using.
🍌 Banana milk
1 ripe banana + 1 cup water. Blend until smooth. It’s naturally sweet and great on cereal. Best enjoyed the same day; refrigerate leftovers.
Try it: sprouted-grain cereal (check the label for added salt or sugar) or plain rolled oats + either milk + frozen blueberries or pomegranate arils. Need more energy? Blend in a few dates.
🥗 Dressings & sauces
Every dressing below starts the same way: put everything in a blender, start small, blend, taste, and adjust. Thin it with water; sweeten it with a date.
🍅 Creamy tomato dressing: no-salt-added tomato sauce + nut butter + vinegar. (Start with about ½ cup sauce, 2 tablespoons nut butter, and 1 tablespoon vinegar.)
🌿 Golden lemongrass dressing: lemongrass, hemp seeds, turmeric, cumin, and a date, blended with water.
🥬 Plant power cabbage dressing: raw cabbage or another cruciferous vegetable, a splash of apple cider vinegar for a kraut-like tang, fresh ginger, turmeric, a pinch of cayenne, dates, and nut butter. (We use fresh cabbage because store-bought sauerkraut is made with salt.)
🍇 Any-flavor balsamic: pick a plain or flavored balsamic vinegar with no added sugar (check the label; many flavored ones are sweetened), then blend it with a spoon of nut butter and unsweetened coconut flakes. Change the vinegar, change the whole dressing.
🍅 Date-sweetened ketchup
Blend no-salt-added tomato sauce, a little onion and garlic powder, a few pitted dates, a splash of vinegar, and a tiny pinch of ground clove. Sweet version: Riesling vinegar. Tangy version: apple cider vinegar. Refrigerate in a jar.
🍯 Nathanael’s favorite: Barhi date caramel
Soft, honey-like Barhi dates make the silkiest date caramel. Pit them and blend with just enough water to make it smooth, plus a splash of vanilla if you like. Any variety of date works; Barhi is simply the one we reach for first. Spoon it onto oatmeal, fruit, or soft serve.
🫘 Herbed beans
Warm cooked beans, or rinsed no-salt-added canned beans, with leeks, onion, and garlic that you’ve water-sautéed or microwaved. Then fold in a handful of fresh herbs. Plain lentils work the same way. More ideas: The Bean Principle™ →
🍨 Treats
🍌 Frozen-fruit soft serve: push frozen bananas (or other frozen fruit) through a masticating juicer fitted with its solid “blank” screen, a trick popularized in juicer reviews by John Kohler. No juicer? A food processor or strong blender works too.
🥭 Tropical whip: banana, mango, frozen jackfruit (unsweetened), walnuts, unsweetened coconut, a squeeze of lemon, and vanilla. Blend it thick.
🧁 Muffin tip: sprinkle chopped nuts on top before baking for crunch and staying power.
🏷 Kitchen Monk label tip: fiber 5-to-1
On breads, cereals, and crackers, compare total carbohydrate to dietary fiber. If the carbs are about 5 times the fiber or less (for example, 25 g carbs and 5 g fiber), it’s likely a whole-grain, higher-fiber choice. While you’re there, check the ingredient list for added salt, oil, and sugar. It’s a quick shopping shortcut, not a rule to stress over.
Pair these staples with: ⏱ Rescue Meal™ · 🍽 Flourishing Plate™ · 🍲 Garden Pot™ · 📊 Explore Our Meals · All Food Tools · 🟢🟡🔴 Red Light, Green Light
🍯 Nathanael’s favorite: Barhi date caramel, measured
Blend ½ cup pitted Barhi dates (or any variety) with ¼ cup water until silky, adding a splash more water if needed. A little vanilla or cinnamon is lovely. Keeps about a week in the fridge.
📊 Per tablespoon, about: 26 kcal · 0.6 g fiber 🌾 · under 1 g protein · under 5 mg sodium. 🎉 Sweetness that comes with fiber: whole dates keep the fruit’s fiber, unlike syrups and sugar.
Estimate from United States Department of Agriculture FoodData Central (Standard Reference Legacy) values for dates; energy is the standard United States Department of Agriculture total. Date varieties differ a little. Calculated October 3, 2026, with artificial intelligence assistance; a second-person check and registered dietitian review are still to come. If you manage blood sugar, dates still count as carbohydrate; ask your care team how they fit.
Kitchen Monk home recipes. Amounts are starting points; taste and adjust. Nutrition estimates for these staples are pending until we standardize amounts. ⚠️ Contains common allergens (tree nuts, peanuts, coconut, and sesame in some nut butters); swap in seed butters if needed. Ask your clinician or a registered dietitian if you have kidney disease, diabetes, food allergies, swallowing difficulties, or a medical diet. Brand and product names mentioned belong to their owners; no sponsorship or endorsement. Educational only, not medical care. Questions? rfjeep@gmail.com (please don’t send confidential medical information). Last updated October 9, 2026.
🌿 Explore the National Health Association meal library
Kitchen Monk™’s most recent documented National Health Association catalog review (November 2, 2026) reports 527 deduplicated National Health Association source-version records, including separately documented recipe formulations; this is not a count of 527 unique dishes. The historical October 23, 2026 index contained 539 web/PDF entries (316 National Health Association website recipe-page entries plus 223 conference-PDF recipe entries), with overlaps: 539 is not a verified count of distinct recipes. These are our working inventory figures, not official National Health Association totals or a fresh complete recount. We credit original recipe authors and link to source recipes; videos and grocery-list features vary by entry. Check each source ingredient list before calling a particular recipe salt-, oil-, and sugar-free: some originals include sweeteners or prepared condiments. · Official National Health Association recipes ↗
Nutrition status: We have not yet calculated verified per-serving nutrition for this National Health Association collection. Estimates will be shown only after checking ingredient amounts, substitutions, recipe yield, and matching ingredients to documented United States Department of Agriculture FoodData Central records; otherwise we mark analysis pending. Cronometer is independent and optional: its free Basic account supports manually created recipes; paid Gold provides website recipe import and friend-to-friend recipe sharing; and Cronometer Professional can share custom foods, meals, and recipes with connected clients (Cronometer documentation updated October 29, 2026). These features do not create a universally public Cronometer URL for each recipe. Verify every ingredient match and serving yield before logging, and note that our sites do not sync any recipes or personal diaries to Cronometer. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing™ endorse the National Health Association for patient education. This is our own endorsement; the National Health Association has not endorsed or sponsored either site.
