Gremlins

I had a little bit of a Saturday high today, filled with an overwhelming sense that life is so good.  The only thing that popped my happy bubble the tiniest bit was opening up the red and white envelope that arrived in the mail.  So, I swear that I have Netflix gremlins.  I am consistently confused upon discovery of some artsy, foreign, LeFilm Festival winner in my PO box.  Said movies sit on our shelf night after night, sadly listening to our evening conversation.

Me:  Want to watch a movie?
TH:  What do we have?
Me:  "The Brave Little Toaster".
TH:  Ummm, forget it.  I'm too tired to read subtitles.

Wtf?  Where do these mystery movies come from?  I have to admit that NPR reviews and I might play some small part in this.  My memory has been a bit faulty lately.  TH says I have successfully killed any former Netflix excitement he used to harbor.  I think he should blame the Gremlins.

Post Kenpo workout snack:

buckwheaties

frozen blackberries smooshed with honey and lemon

almond milk

For lunch I blended up another batch of curry sauce from Delightfully Raw.  It is so fantastically delicious.  Last week I used it to make kale chips, a kelp noodle dish and dipped veggies in the leftover sauce.  I needed to make more to pour over veggies and warm up in the D.

I'm in the process of putting together my first Moonie Pies from Sweetly Raw.  All the separate parts were quite tasty, so I'm expecting heaven when I put everything together.

Question:  Anyone made any yummy raw recipes with sunchokes?

Green Smoothies Revisited

One of my favorite things about eating raw is drinking a giant breakfast smoothie each morning.  I had no problem giving up coffee when I began starting my day with a glass of green energy.  Smoothies are great because you can use whatever produce you have available.  Blend a mix of the following for gorgeous green goodness:

• Fruit, fresh or frozen.  The only fruit I haven't enjoyed in a smoothie is kiwi- it makes my tongue feel furry.
• Leafy greens.  I like spinach, kale and rainbow chard.  While visiting my parents this summer I stuffed Vivian full of chickweed from their garden.  (I liked it, but my sister's boyfriend said the smoothie tasted like mowing the lawn.)
• A healthy fat to increase nutrient absorption.  I use coconut oil, but avocado, almond butter, flaxseed, and hemp seed are all delish as well.
• Extras- only if you are looking to take your smoothie to a whole 'nother level:  
• spirulina- blue-green algae high in B 12
• raw protein powder (I love Sun Warrior-cool name, right?)
• maca- a powdered Peruvian root that tastes yummy and is said to increase, ahem...energy and stamina in a certain room of your house that contains a bed
• There are endless supplements you can add to your smoothie, but keep it simple at first!

My smoothie this morning was packed with frozen bananas (I always have cut-up, ripe nanners in the freezer), pears, an apple and pomegranate.  

Giant dinner salad (spinach, sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, leftover marinated veggies and olives.  Yum. 

Of course a little dessert was necessary.  I had a few Super Caramel Chocolate Tarts from Delightfully Raw hiding out in the freezer.  

Weird Hippie Dishes

I was never really a cooked pizza fan.  It might all stem from the day long ago when my sister puked in Pay 'n' Save after eating at Pizza Hut.  The image of miles of gooey, greasy mozzarella encasing the shelf of Barbie corvettes is permanently etched in my memory.  

Raw pizza, however, I do enjoy quite a bit.  Without all that cheese you can actually taste the separate flavors.  This evening I pulled out one of my frozen crusts and topped it with tomato sauce (leftover from the zucchini pasta dish), cheeze, spinach, and finally veggies and olives marinated in nama shoyu, olive oil and garlic.  A brief stint in the D and mmmmmm.  It may look like one of those weird hippie dishes, but it's the real deal. 

All pizza ingredient recipes from Delightfully Raw

I made TH a vegan cauliflower slow cooker curry that smelled amazing.  (I adapted the recipe from here).  This also looks like something I would have been embarrassed to bring to lunch in middle school, but TH likes it. 

My evening chocolate fix (brownie from The Raw Dessert, coconut whipped cream from Delightfully Raw):

I went a little big on the coconut whipped cream

Question:  Does anyone have any good slow cooker recipes?  I don't eat much cooked food, but I love to throw a bunch of random ingredients in the slow cooker and come home to lovely smells in the cabin. So much easier than cooking for TH after work.  

Raw Curry

Eating raw in the winter doesn't appeal to some people because they believe that eating raw means always eating cold food.  This is so not the case!  When I have a hankering for a comforting,  soul-warming dish I simply put my lunch/dinner plate in the D and pull it out when it's warm all the way through.  For example, this weekend TH and I enjoyed an outstanding curry with kelp noodles.  I used my leftover kale chip curry sauce from Delightfully Raw and mixed zucchini, cabbage and broccoli in with the kelp noodles. The combination of creamy sauce and the D helped the noodles lose their crunchy texture.  It was flippin' fantastic.

We followed the curry with a little raw cheesecake from, once again, Delightfully Raw.  This meal was pure bliss.  

Damn, I have a crush on that recipe book.  I love that I can confidently make any recipe, secure in the fact that I will not be wasting hard to come by ingredients.  I have one raw food recipe book, which will go unnamed, that I had to stop using because every recipe I tried tasted like it had been dug out of the litter box in a demented cat lady's house.  In fact, I just found several jars filled with brown substances of varying consistencies in the freezer, thanks to the afore mentioned recipe book.   I remember thinking, "I can't throw this away.  Maybe I will like it later."  Still not liking it.  

Question:  Do you have a favorite always reliable recipe book?

Kale Chips for Breakfast

This morning the D offered up curry kale chips (recipe from Delightfully Raw).  If you are a kale chip fan, you must try these!  The sauce is sweet and a just a tiny bit spicy.  I had to do some substituting as organic red peppers are nearly impossible to find this time of year.  I replaced the red pepper with extra carrots and some zucchini.  Scrumptious curry sauce made from veggies?  Hell yeah.

I also made the (imo, better than cooked) pasta sauce from Delightfully Raw.  It has been so much fun to uncook my way through that book! 

I couldn't find my mandolin to make pretty noodles (I must have given it away after shredding my fingers one too many times) so I peeled a few zukes for the noodles and topped the sauce with:   

Brazil Nut "Parmesan" 

2 cups Brazil nuts, soaked for a few hours

juice from 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp (+?) salt

2 tbs nutritional yeast 

Blend* ingredients and then crumble onto dehydrator tray. Leave in the D at 105 overnight. 

*Food processing might be easier, I just didn't relish the idea of cleaning the f.p. afterwards. 

The parmesan added a nice tangy, salty, crunchy texture.  Of course, TH had to mention that it tasted nothing like the real thing, but whatever. 

A little post lunch dessert:

I used real vanilla beans in the cheesecake and I think it made a difference in flavor.   The outsides look like dried up worms, but inside there are thousands of tiny, aromatic seeds.  It's kind of a hassle to scrape out the seeds, but your fingers will smell great afterwards!

Question:  Has anyone ever blended the entire vanilla bean, pod and all, into a dessert?

Raw Honey Time

When I opened up our Full Circle Farm boxes today I was pleased to remember that I had ordered this raw honey along with my weekly produce:

After a little spoon licking I knew I needed to put it to good use. First, I tried it out in my mid-morning power pudding. 

1/8 cup chia seeds

6/8 cup water

sweetener to taste (I used a teaspoon of honey)

gogi berries

pomegranate seeds

Chia seeds, according to Dr. Weil at www.drweil.com, are higher in omega-3 fatty acids than flaxseeds. They are also full of antioxidants and other goodies like fiber and calcium.  I love them because of the fun goo that develops with soaking.   

Mexi Mountains for lunch (guac on raw crackers, a little salsa and hot sauce drizzled on top):

I had the counter rocking with my wimpy food processor as I put together a cheesecake crust (almonds, dates, vanilla and salt) and then tried my raw honey and new sunflower lecithin in a cheesecake filling recipe from Delightfully Raw.  It had an amazing texture and a rich, decadent flavor.  

Can't wait to have one of these lovelies for dessert: 

"cheese"cake tart with blackberry sauce

Keeping it Simple

When I have time on the weekends I like to play with somewhat complicated raw food recipes.   During the workweek, however, I like to keep things quick and easy.

Breakfast is always a green smoothie, which I carry to work in a mason jar (inducing the gag reflex in my first period class).

Lunch is veggies and some kind of dip that I've prepared in bulk over the weekend. This week's dip is Ani Phyo's raw Red Pepper Hummus.  

In the afternoons I snack on fruit and nuts or raw cereal and nut milk. 

Weekday dinners are always a gigantic salad with EVOO and ACV, or a dressing made over the weekend, like this yummy ranch from Sunny Raw Kitchen.

TH always has a smaller salad, then I usually make him something cooked.  This evening I had some extra squash and zucchini kicking around so I sauteed it in olive oil, sea salt and pepper.  TH enjoyed it in a tortilla with beans and goat cheese.  It smelled lovely.

Dessert is often some kind of chocolatey goodness.  Before eating high raw I always craved dessert, but rarely let myself eat it.  Now I eat dessert every night that I want it.  It's so fun to eat something this delicious on a regular basis and not gain weight or feel yucky after eating it.