30 DAYS RAW

What better way to start off a brand new year than to challenge yourself to 30 Days Raw?!

One of my rawbie buddies and I have dedicated this sparkling fresh month to really tuning in and tuning up our raw foods lifestyle. New recipes, old favs, local foods (doesn't get much more local than my veggie garden!), sharing our passion for healthiest eating and nourishing the spirit as well as the body.

Day one:
Breakfast is easy - green smoothie, of course (banana, apple, spinach, kale, parsley, celery).
Midday - a big 'ol mixed green salad (arugula, kale, sweet red/yellow bell peppers, scallions, tomatoes, sunflower and sesame seeds, with a tangy dressing of EVOO, lemon juice, miso, fresh ginger, garlic and turmeric - super!
Dinner - a new soup recipe - Borscht. I adapted this from "Dining in the Raw", one of my well-used volumes.

Get ready for a real dazzler - nothing like beets to put some bright pink in your bowl!

BORSCHT

This is the original recipe - I'll note what I changed.

1 lb. beets, peeled and chopped (I used 2 med. beets fresh from the garden)

1 c. fresh carrot juice (I didn't want to get the juicer out, so I just used two fresh carrots, about 5" long)

1 c. almonds (since I was cutting down the recipe, I used about 2/3 c.)

4 scallions, minced (I used 2, coarsely whacked)

1/4 c. fresh dill (no dill in the garden - I used 1 tsp. dried dill weed)

1 cucumber, peeled and diced (I used about a half)

dash cayenne

Braggs to taste

The original recipe said to make almond nut milk and strain it. I just dumped the almonds and all the rest (except cucs) in the VitaMix along with about 1 1/2 c. very warm water, and blended it all up smooth. It tasted grand!

I poured half of the batch of soup into my bowl, stirred in most of the diced cucumber, used a spoonful to garnish, along with a sprig of parsley just for fun.

This was a thicker soup than the original recipe - I do like thick soups in the winter, just seems more satisfying. I also liked it warmish, rather than the traditional chilled Borscht. I'll use the original version for a summer soup!

What a blessing, to trundle out to the back yard raised bed garden and pull some beets and carrots, nip some verdant crisp kale leaves and fluffy parsley. I'm so fortunate to live in a climate where winter veggies can hold in the ground for several months, even through frost and freezes. On the coast, we usually don't have very long bouts of freezing temps in the winter.

Kale loves it here! I grew three kinds this year. The big leaf with pinkish-purple vein/stem is called Peacock. The darker longish leaves are Lancinato (sometimes called dinosaur kale), a sweet variety that has been my fav for years. The curly-edged leaves are Winterbor, a sturdy plant that will hold up for several years. There are 4-year old plants at Don's Waterfall Nursery, still going strong in the organic beds tended by Don and Janet - good folks to know!

The kale starred in the lunch salad, well-chopped to make chewing and digestion easier. Saved a few leaves for tomorrow's green smoothie. I feel rich!

My tummy is happy, my body feels light, we're off to a tasty beginning of 30 DAYS RAW!

Potato Bug...

OK. So it's a CARROT bug.


But he's after those potatoes.



It's so fun to go out to the raised beds and pull carrots in the middle of winter. Sweet, tender, crispy.



And sometimes kinda funky.

Butternut Squash Soup with Garlic Creme

With Christmas hard on the heels of Thanksgiving, this colorful, velvety soup is a great candidate for holiday dining. I took it to the family Thanksgiving potluck, and plan on a repeat performance at Christmas. It is delish! Easy and cheap, seasonal and satisfying. The Garlic Creme can turn it from Really Good to GRREEEEAT with a five-second garnish trick.l

Ingredients: medium butternut squash, carrots, apples, fresh herbs, and some seasoning.

Butternut Squash Soup with Garlic Creme (4 servings)

In processor (not blender) fine chop:

4 c. peeled, cubed butternut squash (one smallish squash; peel with veg peeler, split in two, scoop seeds and cube squash meat)

3 med. carrots

Transfer to highspeed blender (VitaMix) for smoothest soup. Or continue in processor. Add:

2 med. chopped apples, cored, UNPEELED

1 T. miso (0pt)

1 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

1 clove garlic, mashed

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. curry powder

2 tsp. fresh rosemary (1 tsp. dry)

1 tsp. fresh thyme (1/2 tsp. dry)

1 tsp. fresh sage (1/2 tsp. dry OR use poultry seasoning)

Blend smooth. Adjust seasonings to taste.

If you want warmed soup, pour into a quart jar with screw-on lid; submerge jar in very warm water until soup is warm to touch. Can also be gently warmed in pot over low heat, or in double boiler; just don't overheat.

Garlic Creme

Blend smooth:

1 c. soaked raw cashews (soak at least 30 min., drain)

2 med. cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/2 c. water

Transfer into squeeze bottle.

To serve:

Pour soup into wide bowls (warm bowls first if desired). Squeeze Garlic Creme from bottle in 2 or 3 concentric circles on surface of soup. Using a toothpick or chopstick, draw lines from center of circles through rings to edge of bowl, forming a "webbed" pattern.

Sprinkle with a few pumpkin seeds.

Enjoy!

Watermelon Salad

I know, watermelon season is about over.


I've had an organic Hermiston melon lounging in the spare refridgerator for a couple of weeks, and finally decided it was time to use it. Savoring that last sweet taste of summer. So I brought it in to continue it's lounge, on the counter for a full day to warm up and release it's goodness. While we typically think of melons as served icy cold, that doesn't always do them justice. So here is a room-temp recipe as an experiment.

WATERMELON SALAD

Combine in a small bowl and allow to marinate for 10 minutes:

3/4 c. thinly sliced red onion

1 T. fresh lime juice

In large bowl, gently combine:

1 1/2 qts cubed watermelon

3/4 c. feta

2 T. olive oil

1/2 c. sliced black or kalamata olives

1 c. chopped fresh mint

Add the onion/lime, toss gently again. Let set for 10 - 15 minutes to allow flavors to marry. It may also be chilled if you prefer.

This is a surprising flavor combo. When my sister first read the recipe, her comment was, "GAG ME!" She was sure this was a loser.

Here's the deal. The saltiness of the olives and feta are the perfect foil to the sweet melon, and along with the mint, flavor notes are sparked that compels you going back for another bite and another bite - just one more - to evaluate and enjoy.

I personally found it delightful, a dish I will make again.

It's worth a search through the produce department for a lingering melon!


(The mound of hummus is a wonderful sprouted garbanzo recipe - I gave it a couple of grinds of mixed peppercorns just for fun. The cucs are from the garden, they are hanging in there, along with lettuce and kale!)

Oats 'n Groats

Nope, it's not breakfast - yet!

So what do you do with whole oats and buckwheat groats, raw almonds, some juicy gloriously ripe peaches and real live maple syrup?

First, you sprout the oats and buckwheat. Just put a cup of each in jars (or together in one jar if you aren't planning on using them for anything else but breakfast), cover with at least twice as much water, and let soak overnight. Now they are germinated, ALIVE! In the morning, drain and rinse really really well in a sieve, pour into a wide shallow bowl, set it back somewhere on the counter and let them sprout. Then you rinse and drain them again that evening, put back into the wide bowl and let them keep sprouting overnight. Rinse again in the morning, and they should be ready to eat. They can go for one more sprouting day (rinse and drain morning and evening) if you want a softer chew texture.

See those itty bitty sprouts on the buckwheat?

Now don't go buy some almond milk. You want to make it yourself. Of course you do! Since we don't all have maple trees in the back yard, you CAN go fetch that from the store. It's technically not "raw", having been cooked down to syrup, but it IS pure. Pure goodness!

Here are raw almonds, spouted on left, unsprouted on the right. Nuts don't show sprouts, by the way. So you can just called them "soaked", it's OK.

Put the almonds in a container, cover with twice as much water, let set overnight, and they are ready. They need to be rinsed, then they can be stored in the refrigerator, covered with water. But first make some almond milk. Dump about 1/3 c. of almonds in the blender, add about one and a half cups cold water, and blend until you have "milk". Some folks strain it in a nut milk bag, but I love it right out of the blender. A little bit grainy, but delish! Store the milk in a lidded jar in the fridge.

OK, now we're ready for breakfast! Scoop some of the sprouted grain into a bowl, peel those sunny peaches and cut them over the top. Drizzle with maple syrup, pour on the almond milk, and get ready to faint!

If you really want to gild the lily, sprinkle on a couple dashes of quality cinnamon. Whoa nelly.
THIS is what I call breakfast!

It's hard to stop with one bowl. But it is filling, and soooooo much better than cooked rolled oats. I just can't tell you. You have to experience it....

And be sure to do it SOON, because those glorious fresh peaches will be gone before you can say "fall is here"!

Mono meal

One of the lovely things I've learned while on this raw journey, is that a meal that is perfect for me can be quite different from a "traditional" meal. In other words, I don't need a variety of foods to be satisfied and nourished.

A "mono meal" - one item. Rather monotonous? Not at all. Especially if the bowl is full of fruit. It could be just ONE type of fruit. Today I felt a craving for a mixed bowl of sweet and tart, juicy and crisp - but first I went blackberry picking!

After loading a bowl with jewels, I slipped a banana from it's skin and into the Vita-mix, added a heaping spoon of sin (that's raw cashew butter), a good dash of cinnamon, and blitzed it into a creamy topping. A nudge from somewhere in my head made me reach for the sesame seeds, and in they went. Next time I might grind them first, the creamy was a bit "seedy". But the extra helping of calcium seemed to be what I was needing. I "listen" to my body a lot when deciding what to eat...

After the picture was taken, I poured on about another 1/2 cup of that luscious cream!

I've had mono meals of just a couple of bananas for lunch. Or several cucumbers. A apple is usually in one of my bags, snack on the run.

Raw life doesn't get much easier - or tastier.

Great Balls o' Fire!

OK, so the song title dates me...but I couldn't resist, 'cuz these balls are so full of ENERGY!


If you've ever indulged in LaraBars, you will appreciate this "recipe". I use the word lightly, because it's more a matter of ratio.

RECIPE: 1 part "wet", to 3 parts "dry".


It was fun to check out a couple of LaraBars and come up with similar flavors. The Lemon bar and the Apple Pie bar looked like a good place to start.

This was a project for the most recent Raw101 Uncooking class I've been teaching monthly over the summer. The topic for this class was "Sweeties". Dividing the students into three groups with three different bags of ingredients/recipes to choose from has been a fun way to do a sort of Raw Iron Chef! The group that got the red bag made Truffles, and these great energy balls.

Each ball recipe began with 1cup of dates pulsed to a paste. Then the 3 cups of dry ingredients are worked in by hand, to form a nutty glob. Bits are pinched off, rolled into balls, then rolled in sesame seeds if desired. Expect to have really sticky gooey hands, but you get to nibble off the bits and pieces that stick to your hands - yum!

In the small balls we used some Young Living Lemon Essential Oil for the lemon flavor along with some microplaned lemon peel. TASTY!! The nuts used were cashews, macadamias and almonds.

The larger balls used a different combination for the 3 c. of dry ingredients: pumpkin seeds, raw sunnies, Brazil nuts, cashews, macadamia, almonds, walnuts, hemp seeds, sesame seeds,
diced dried apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of vanilla.

These are great treats, handy for hikers (wrap individually to keep in pockets), great for mid-day pick-me-up, lunch on the go, or whatever excuse you can think of to enjoy a healthy, delish bit of crunch and sweetness!