raw kale chips! found in calgary, alberta!

i really didn't expect food success in calgary, alberta. me and paul brought a bunch of organic produce and snacks for our time here as we expected it to be expensive or non-existant. going to planet organic the other day proved us wrong!
we got kelp noodles like we love back home for $6.50! $1 cheaper than back home! and the produce appears to be cheaper! $1 cheaper too! like $2 romaine and $1.50 avocados? what is going on? i am excited there is a market for organic products in cowtown, alberta! though my main impression of the areas we have seen is that everyone here is living in EXCESS. there is oil money here! and no tax! people have more than one iphone and car... massive and new houses with new furniture. i wonder where the old stuff is?
in the town of didsbury, alberta (population 5000), the one coffee shop here serves soy and rice milk and has gluten-free options! and paul's mom found daiya cheese and coconut bliss ice cream at the grocery store here? i am so excited there is a market for it here! seemingly in the middle of nowhere!
anyways... i bought kale chips made by rhythm superfoods at the planet organic.

i haven't even seen this brand before! (**february 2012 update - i have now seen these in greens market in vancouver**) i think the store had 4 kinds of them for sale for $6.99 which is a nice price as i find if you buy them in vancouver, they are about $10 a bag. i got kool ranch but the bag i got tastes (or smells) a bit stale. paul said the flavour was 'trying too hard' which i agree. his kale chips are my favourite! he made some for this trip (and did some chards also) and they were AWESOME. only one of his nephews would try the "leaves from vancouver" though.
it was nice to make a raw lunch the other day using the kelp noodles and blending up tomatoes with a bit of lemon, a bunch of fresh basil, a few sprinkles of salt and oregano and a pour of olive oil, and then adding sundried tomatoes. i had mine on a bed of arugula and some other greens:

we have just a couple days left here and i hope we get a chance to check out gratitude cafe somehow, perhaps tomorrow?

we enjoyed some vegan goodness at the coup today for lunch which was fun. and the gratitude cafe is just a 6 minute drive from there. i'm curious about prepared raw food in calgary! the coup had a raw dessert but i wasn't too interested in it as it was agave-sweetened. 

i had the seaweed soba ($12) and some bites of everyone else's borsht and grilled pita sandwich things!

oops, here's soup. it's been awhile.

i haven't written anything in forever. i swear i have been making lots of new things with success! hmm... well, to start is a soup today! i'm so happy it didn't taste awful! (for once)

what it is: brazil nuts, filtered water, a sliver of red onion, a couple sprigs of parsley, a stalk of celery, a carrot, a leaf of romaine and a spoon of sprouted chickpea miso. i was paranoid that i put too much onion in (i remember in attempts before that a little onion or garlic goes a long way when doing the raw soup) so i added more watery greens than i was originally thinking. i added the brazil nuts for creaminess when i worried it'd be too watery or "hot juice"-like. anyways, success! i ate it all with ease and even enjoyment. ha.
i feel like i should dump some photos on this ol' thing for an update so here goes...
last week i went for a picnic on the patch of grass in front of the storage place, across the street from organic lives. my friend had the tapas platter and i had one of my 'usuals', the tostada salad. of course, in my excitement to be eating AND eating outside, i slid the salad onto my lap first. but no matter.

so i bought tocotrienols the other day from, yep, organic lives, and i'm excited to up my vitamin e (so far, i've been using it in smoothies including a fantastic brazil nut milk, frozen pear and banana with ginger one). my skin has been freaking out lately and it's been driving me crazy!!! hoping more vitamin e is going to help... i was pretty proud of my "raw glow" as of last year. i guess detoxing can take quite awhile though. and i recognize i need to sleep more than a few hours a night. anyways... on the weekend, i managed an afternoon off to go on my friend's boat for a cruise around vancouver. it was BLISS!!! the water, the wind, the sun, the friends, the classic rock on the radio... the next day, my skin was noticeably more clear! i can't believe that one day can do that!!! so anyways, i have just a couple weeks until summer vacation and i'm going to be trying to sleep more and relax more before then but i'm hopeful that i will feel a lot healthier very soon!

okay, what else has been inspiring me lately? raw dessert! my friend alexia made this cheesecake a couple weekends ago for our friend anna's birthday:

 isn't it gorgeous? it tastes as great (or better?) than it looks!!!

i'm pretty sure it's the white chocolate-raspberry cheesecake (page 95) of sweet gratitude, the desserts book of cafe gratitude - an organic vegan place in san francisco i've somehow never been to despite visiting sf at least 3 times? anyways, alexia swears by this book and i requested it from the library right away. i now have it in my hands and am excitedly getting ready for my first attempt at something - the alexia-recommended "lemon-poppy seed cake" (page 54). i'm thinking if the sun comes out next weekend as well, it'd be super amazing to bring this out with some friends on grass somewhere or maybe if i'm especially lucky, on the water again!

hmm, so what other excitement? i've started making cracker/bread type things again! i was inspired by organic lives's sesame gaufrette but thought i'd try something to make a wrap. i blended up soaked medjools, sesame seeds and red onion, orange and a date or 2 and spread out on the teflex. ooh yes! so great! i don't have an exact recipe but each time i've done it, it's been great! though i do recommend one orange rather than 2. me and paul are imagining raw perogies in the near future! YES!!!

and what else? i finally attempted to make coconut jerky! i have been nervous about wasting my frozen organic coconut meat (not the cheapest stuff ever) on such attempts but i have since learned, you can't really screw up a good thing. coconut is just so fantastic... i guess if you have all yummy things together, you can't go wrong! regardless, i felt safer with a recipe to at least loosely follow and this is the one i found: 

Meat of 1 Young Thai Coconut - sliced in strips

Marinade:
1 T Agave
1 t Nama Shoyu
1/4 t each of Cardamom, Cumin, Cinnamon, Black Pepper and Salt

Marinate the Coconut strips in the marinade for 4 hours and then dehydrate.
I liked it best after in for 3-4 hours before I went to bed, but then I flipped and left it in until morning - and they were a bit too tough, still very delicious and great exercise for the jaws! 

ok it's funny to me now as i guess i didn't follow this all that closely but i was definitely heavily inspired. i don't use agave so i'm not sure what i used, if anything, in it's place.. i'm sure i used tamari instead of nama shoyu (not raw or soy-free but them's the breaks!) and i used the caradamon, cumin and cinnamon and some salt and maybe pepper. the texture is so awesome when you dehydrate the meat. i'm excited to experiment with this further!

hmmm... what else? well i am always super inspired and excited to eat at buddha-full in north vancouver. 

a few weeks ago, there was some sun and my friend and i ate outside. i finally tried their raw lasagna!

 super delicious, as to be expected, though i thought it was a little small for the price. but i am more than willing to pay for such things. i'd much rather have access to this kind of take-out than anything else!!!

bought a cheesecake for the bus ride home :) is it bad that i can no longer remember what kind it was?

ah, and as usual, had to get some of agathe's raw burgers for easy dinner later at home! 

here's some pics from the last time we made raw burgers at home!

it appears that agathe is no longer producing raw food items under the name "nature provides". looking at buddha-full's site, her company now appears to be called "tao organics". 

it looks like i will get to go to buddha-full on wednesday (hurrah!) so i'm excited to try one of their new menu items!

okay... 2 more updates... since i last posted, paul has been inspired to make his own raw dinner! i was so excited! it's always so much fun to eat something someone else has prepared!

i wish i could remember what he put together but i think it involved kelp and zucchini noodles, avocado, nutritional yeast (undoubtedly), tomato... and awesomeness. :) 

and last but not least, my 2nd year volunteering with growing chefs is almost done yet again. here's an inspiring photo from probably a month back already! look at this classroom garden! happy sigh!

happy growing and eating and loving!

bananarama!

tell me this doesn't look like the perfect thing to come home to after work... coconut water and the new chocolate banana pie from organic lives!

my new favourite dessert!!! (besides the brazil nut/almond heart cookie, of course!)

i was in the mood for macaroni and cheese and this didn't really do it for me but it was fun to use kelp noodles again and experiment with making a sauce with brazil nuts. i added some pistachios and lemon and nutritional yeast and regrettably a bit too much chili powder. i added some parsley (and cilantro) and steamed some spinach (for iron's sake! i just learned the other day that spinach's iron content is way more absorbable when steamed) and chopped red pepper and mushrooms.

soup and sandwiches and... pad thai

so the other day, i tried to make soup again.. this time it was too salty. 

 but then i made ice cream out of frozen bananas (with cacao macaroons on the side) to make it all better!

 but really the best lunch is a sandwich using whatever veggies on hand, brazil nut and nacho "cheeses" on the juice pulp/flax dehydrator bread!

 i have to start using the recipe books i have! i've started looking through ani phyo's raw food essentials and did kelp noodles with pistachio avocado pesto. so creamy and great!!!

 had cashew creamery's cacao chip mint ice cream spread into a cacao coconut frozen crust for dessert.

 i put too much coconut oil in the crust but it was super fun to eat! like dq ice cream cake. sort of.

 ok and then i tried soup AGAIN. this one wasn't a total bust! and paul actually ate it all... with lots of nutritional yeast of course. this one was inspired by ani's kream of broccoli (page 138) but i didn't add the red pepper kream on top and i used brazil nuts instead of cashews. simple, green and good!

 ooh but the real hit... the pad thai with kelp noodles! (page 227) wish i added crushed nuts of some sort on top or cauliflower or something to look more pad thai-ish. but the cilantro and lime and bit of jalapeno glow... yum!!!

vitamix! YAY!!!!

so... i got some money from christmas and my birthday to use towards a vitamix... i didn't want to get one before korea because i was sure i would be thinking about it going unused for a month and it would TORTURE me!!!
so i finally have one and just 2 days ago, i finally used it!!!
first things first... a smoothie!

one of paul's favourites is matcha with frozen banana, almond milk and a bit of maple syrup (which i used) or dates. GLORIOUS. and wow, so quick to make AND ridiculously smooth.

i kept with the green theme... and put carrot, broccoli in with some filtered water and tahini, some garlic, red onion, salad booster, nutritional yeast, a pinch of himalayan salt, some lemon.... blended that for 5 minutes and it was nice and hot. tried it and it had TOO much taste. i added some macadamia nut cheese (which i found quite bland) and maybe it helped, maybe it didn't.
finally, i served it with some pieces of sesame gaufrette from organic lives.... i think that might be the key for me: adding texture to soup. making something so smooth is exciting but i think soup tastes better if it has chunks in it. i tried this soup with the strange carrot pulp stuff i made earlier too. except that got all soggy and i didn't like it so much. next time i think i'll add some finely chopped veggies.

i had some left over still the next day and so i tried it with fresh dill and zucchini and cauliflower on top.

 it was still not good. boo. i have to keep things simple i guess. i will use more veggies and less spices or pungents (ie onions, garlic) next time. i'm going to have to try some of the soup recipes from the sunny raw kitchen. i did manage to finish the strange soup tonight, however, when i added a million slices of carrots!
the real hit of last night was my old faithful marinara sauce ala ani phyo. you can get the recipe most similar to what i did here. i love how quick it is. throw it all in the blender and it's done! usually i use the spirooli to make zucchini noodles but tonight i rinsed and soaked some kelp noodles. and i mixed the sauce in with them and had them sit for awhile in the dehydrator. i don't know if that's the trick to getting the crunchiness out but wow, they were so soft and noodley! so awesome!!! oh yah and the 'parmesan' on top is brazil nuts and nutritional yeast that i crumbled in the food processor.

later that night, paul made rooibos tea and well, i couldn't resist using the blender yet again so i poured it in with a couple dates and some almond milk. YES FOAM!!!! paul said it tasted like perfume. but i liked it. so there.

 and finally... i made some ice cream, inspired by this. frozen banana with frozen blueberries, blended with a pinch of cardamon and a splash of almond milk.

i <3 my vitamix!!!

korean middle school cafeteria day 11

wow! so it was my first morning not making it to the cafeteria! i had chia cereal in the container leftover from vegan treats for my students! hurrah for good skype conversations that make it hard to part...














and today was an exciting day as i had prepared my kelp noodles with sundried tomato pesto last night. i added a bit of olive oil to be a bit more liquidy and it helped soften the noodles a bit. i'm trying to think of a vegetable crunch feeling that is similar to unmarinated kelp noodles... nothing is coming to mind yet! but there is something comparable, i swear!














and hooray for dinner too! it worked out great as tonight everyone gets pizza but i feel okay as i had amazing meals today ^_^

korean middle school cafeteria day 6

a great day for meals, it was!

started with apples with the morning cereal! hurrah! i was craving them like mad yesterday...














then for lunch, i had my remaining kelp noodles i had marinated last night in olive oil and sundried tomatoes... added nutritional yeast and crumbled didi's mac'n'cheese cracker (boxed cookie texture) on top and then wrapped up in lettuce or those perilla leaves that are fuzzy and i don't like the taste on their own... it was glorious! oh yah, and there was the white melon and then, later they brought out oranges! AMAZING!!!



































for dinner, there was spaghetti for everyone and i just had a salad but i wasn't even hungry after my awesome lunch. so hurrah!

korean middle school cafeteria day 5

well... today was the day... i tried my kelp noodles!

but before that... breakfast... chocolate chia cereal this time. i think it's 88% raw if you're concerned with such details.
















but check these out! i mixed up some sundried tomato pesto last night with kelp noodles and hid them in the staff fridge. the noodles softened up into noodley noodles (ie not the crunchy kelp they were to begin with) and the pesto was so nice! and i love how it looks like spaghetti.












so i had the same thing for dinner but it was still glorious! hurrah! (don't know why i can't rotate this photo?)