Archive for the ‘Living raw’ Category

Sometimes, when I’m paying attention, I am mesmerized when I slice open some beautiful raw fruits or vegetables. It is all so amazing. I wanted to write about how beautiful it was but the word beautiful just wasn’t enough. I found the word “resplendent” in my Thesauraus: shining brightly; full of splendor; dazzling; splendid. It’s a good word.

There is no question in my mind that fruits, vegetables and greens were created to be resplendent so that we would be attracted to it and and want to eat our fill. It couldn’t be any simpler! Resplendent colors – (open a papaya!); incredible designs -(check out a cauliflower up close); amazing aroma (the list is too long!)

What about nuts and seeds? Look at the regal sunflower with its bright yellow petals. Almond shells hanging on a tree are covered by a thin layer of bright green meat that tastes like a Granny Smith apple. Look at dark green beautifully curly kale, so rich. Now think about that which we shouldn’t be eating… (I started to write some examples, but they weren’t resplendent and I didn’t feel resplendent writing the words.)

Mother Nature gave us a big clue what to eat: it will be resplendent! It can be so simple.

A really cool thing about preparing raw food is that you can keep working with the finished product. I really don’t know what to call it – for example if you cooked a lasagna – you probably couldn’t puree it and re-cook it to create a new meal.

But raw food, for example raw soups you can dehydrate, or add more raw ingredients and dehydrate into a raw cracker. Raw food never needs to go to waste.

I made a few special recipes to take to Thanksgiving with my family, (they were eating cooked). I made a green salad to share that turned out really good.
Chopped romain with pecans, diced tomatoes, diced yellow bell pepper, soaked goji berries, strawberries, cucumbers. With a light balsamic vinegar/olive oil/honey/cinnamon cranberry dressing.

My side dish was Bartlet Pears with Cinnamon Cranberry Sauce and Spiced Ginger Cream. Found the recipe on Gliving.com – this sauce had an amazing flavor!

 I also had a slice of carnival squash topped with raw dressing. Just a few bites of that and I was stuffed! Guess all those nuts fill you up. I soaked the squash in salt water, drained it, dehydrated it for a couple hours which softened it a bit. Then I rubbed it with cumin. The dressing was a handful each of pecans, walnuts, almonds. Processed with a little squash, celery, sage, onion, parsley, salt, pepper. Pretty tasty!

For dessert I had a Mango Cream Tart (also from GLiving.com)

What to do with the leftovers? The squash and stuffing I turned into a savory raw bread! I ran the squash and nut stuffing through my Omega auger juicer to turn it into a paste, adding some left over red and yellow bell pepper. Then I stirred in fresh ground flax seed, the leftover cinnamon cranberry sauce, dulse, kelp, chopped raw olives, sunflower seeds and a little coconut oil. Spread out on 2 teflex sheets and dried at 110 for a few hours.

 I cut it into little squares that remind me of those little “coctail rye” bread loaves. Probably high in calories with all the nuts. So I’ll make them last! Should be good with lettuce and tomato!

The mango tart was only a 6″ tart, but was so filling I only had a sliver. And everyone else was chowing down on 3 different kinds of cooked pies and didn’t try mine…so I had lots left over.

I put the entire tart in a food processor with 2 bananas, a little fresh ground flax seed, vanilla and cinnamon. Spread it on one teflex sheet about 1/2 in thick or less. Dried it at 110 for a few hours. When it was dried enough to handle, I cut it in small squares – spreading honey on some and adding coconut just for fun, (then dried some more).

These turned out good. Probably could have added something to sweeten it more – but I think they will be good as a side to a green salad with pears I think!

I’ve been wanting to try a glass straw for a while. I typically don’t use straws, but I love the fact that glass straws are an environmental alternative to adding more plastic to the land fills and water ways. And of course the less plastic touching your food the better.

So I finally got around to ordering some and found the COOLEST glass straws on the internet!

They are handcrafted by California glass artist Mark Black from GlassParadise.com They are the only ones on the internet I found that are these wonderful solid colors. You can buy one or a set (great pricing, fast shipping).

And if you think that a glass straw is something that will break the first time you use it, don’t worry – glass straws are made of the same Pyrex glass that sturdy cookware is made with. These are their standard 9″ straw – you can see that they are plenty long enough for my quart jar for juice and smoothies. And they will also make longer ones and fatter ones. The fatter ones are called “Smoothie Straws” though I found these to be fine for smoothies – but my smoothies aren’t chunky.  And they even have very inexpensive little straw brushes to clean the straws! (for those times when you forget to rinse when you finish using them)

As an artist I love that buying from Glass Paradise supports other artists – independant glass blowing artists! Check it out!

(Okay, so I wrote a whole entire post about straws…but I just get excited when I find such a great deal for such a cool thing)

The weather has turned cooler here and I was craving some soup.

Using my Vitamix I pureed up some soup – kept it on high for a little longer to warm it up a bit. Being a high speed blender you can do that!

This was adapted from an Elaina Love  recipe – I blended up a red bell pepper, half an avocado I had left in the frige, one small organic carrot, handful of cilantro, dash salt (I use Real Salt available from WholeFoods), dash of cumin. It made way too much for one serving so I refrigerated the rest.

Taking a tip from Ann Wigmore I dehydrated the leftover soup. I added a half cup of sprouted buckwheat (which I turned into “nut butter” by running it though the auger juicer).

I also added 2 chopped green onions, minced about 4″ of fresh rosemary, added more salt and cumin.

I poured this mixture out on a teflex dehydrator sheet and dried it at 105 degrees for about 2 or 3 hours.

I used a spatula to spread it around evenly and even shook the tray to even it out. It dried really fast, I flipped it over onto the screen in about an hour. It was too thin to actually be crackers. I broke them up and put them in a jar. If I can keep out of them, I will use them to sprinkle over salads! Really tasty, made the house smell great!
  

It is biologically appropriate for humans to eat a plant based diet. We know this because we don’t have claws, fangs and short digestive tracts to name a few reasons.

Our pet cats and dogs should eat a raw animal based diet because they do have sharp teeth and the short digestive tracts. And like humans, when they live a mostly raw diet, our pets become amazingly healthy and vibrant and shiny.

One of my fantail goldfish died and it prompted me to move the remaining fish from the small outdoor bog pond to an indoor aquarium. The aquarium set up came with water treatment filter, heater, light and tropical fish flake food. I wondered if it was okay to feed tropical fish food to my gold fish – so I asked online. 

 And I learned a lot.

Where do I find biologically appropriate food for my gold fish? It’s not in the flake food sold at pet stores.

I started reading the labels of the fish food I had on hand.

TetraFin Goldfish Flakes lable: fish meal, ground brown rice, yeast shrimp meal, oatmeal, wheat gluten, soybean oil, fish oil, corn gluten, algae meal, sorbitol, lecithin, potato protein, ascorbic acid, yeast extract, inositol…and then about 20 more words of things I can’t pronounce as well as red, yellow and blue dyes.

Hai Feng Fast Color Gold Fish Food label: (pellets) wheat flour, fish meal, wheat germ, shrimp meal, spirulina, corn meal, soybean meal, L-lysine hydrochloride, algae meal, lecithin, choline, BHT, citric acid, calcium, phosphate monobasic, minerals, 16 vitamins.

Aqueon Tropical Flakes:Whole fish meal (salmon, herring & other mixed fishes), whole wheat flour, soybean meal, whole dried krill, wheat gluten meal, dried yeast, squid meal, wheat germ, corn gluten meal, kelp meal, fish oil, spirulina, garlic, natural astaxanthin, marigold powder, chili powder, spinach … and about 18 more words that are unpronounceable. 

Fish were not created to swim up the plowed rows of a farmers field trying to get at the potato and wheat, rice and soy. I’m on the hunt for awesome food for my little fantail friend. I had some floating anacharis (a water plant) in the bog pond, so I put that in the aquarium. I had it because they produce oxygen – but I’ve since read that goldfish like to eat them. So at least the little guy is getting his greens.

Some may say that worrying about biologically appropriate food for a simple goldfish is taking things too far. Well, people that have fish as pets and love them would disagree. And it’s also the principle of the thing – I’m sick of how manufactures use dyes, wheat, rice, potato, soy and sorbital in everything on the shelf.

It’s not all their fault – the public contantantly demands cheaper prices, so manufactures have to use cheap fillers and cheap lab made ingredients to bring the price down.

If you don’t want that – vote with your dollars.