raw pesto, minus the pesto.

late this afternoon, after only a smoothie this morning, we had suddenly realized we were hungry. paul thought of using kelp noodles and then i started imagining a raw pesto on top. i looked at food and yoga for life's recipe and realized we only needed to get some fresh basil so i headed to the store.
as soon as i got there, there was no organic basil to be found and the conventional basil, having been kept in the refrigerated produce section for however long, was now all brown and mushy. i figured we could do a pesto minus the basil which would mean something more similar to an alfredo maybe?
so i started making food and yoga's recipe without basil, but using everything else (including the sunflower seeds) but then also added an avocado! yum! then, i checked the cupboards and realized we didn't have any kelp noodles!
isn't it funny how you can start with one idea and change it completely by the end?
so paul went and got zucchini and we ended up with the most fantastic creamy zingy sauced noodles.

this recipe's a keeper! a finger-licking-the-bowl-after-you-used-a-spoon-to-scrape-excess-sauce-to-eat-after-you-ate-all-of-your-noodles recipe!
i added a fair bit of water because with all the nuts and seeds, this sauce was quite thick. (can't assure you that i measured the original recipe's ingredients! sorry!) so i'm imagining making a spreadable cheeze next time using the lemon, garlic, sunflower seeds, walnuts, avocado, nutritional yeast, rock salt and olive oil. YUM!

favouritesalad.

on friday, totally uninspired to make my lunch, i threw together my favourite things for a lunch i could look forward to and enjoy:
- sliced field cucumber (skin scraped with a fork first to soften)
- a couple stems of fennel, chopped
- one avocado, cubed
- a couple small spoons of raw, traditional sauerkraut, chopped
- a few leaves of basil, sliced

and i planned to repeat it today so i could get a picture of it,  but i couldn't find any cucumber! so, here it is with zucchini noodles instead. and some radish! still yummy! ^_^

zucchini pasta with creamy something sauce!

if i didn't know what was in this, i'd have NO idea. everything blended together so nicely!

i found this recipe for "raw zucchini pasta with carrot-cashew creme sauce". i used only 3 zucchini so i had sauce left over, i didn't use peas or onions or basil, i used chickpea miso, probably 2 tablespoons of sun-dried tomatoes and i used the optional roma. and my juicer is still dead and un-replaced, so i vitamixed a few short carrots with a bit of water and it was great!

 and for dessert... frozen banana blended with a little water and strawberries with cacao nibs on top! YES! could've put in the freezer a bit to firm up but we couldn't wait!

kindergarten lessons in raw food!

oops, so it's already july but i'm a bit behind in posting. a few weeks back, i had the pleasure of being in a kindergarten class for a morning and they usually bake bread and i didn't want to deprive them of their friday cooking lesson so i thought i'd try an 'un-cooking' lesson!

first we combined ingredients for the marinara. this is my go-to sauce that i got from you guessed it, ani phyo. i'll have to look up what book. whenever i'm at a loss for what to bring to a potluck or to quickly whip up for dinner guests or to add to something else (like back in february's lasagne), i love blending this up! i'm grateful i used a recipe i was really familiar with as trying to coordinate jobs to involve 15 active young ones is a challenge! in hindsight, i should've tested the recipe out using the hand blender in advance. and i maybe should've measured out everything first as that took awhile and we almost had a REALLY oregano-inspired marinara. but it's funny, no matter how non-exact the ingredient combinations were, it turned out well! the kids loved smelling the spices (basil was a favourite) and were curious of what this would turn into.

 the sauce took so long though that i had to send them for their recess play time while i took 20 minutes frantically trying to hand-blend the sauce into something without the big sun-dried tomato chunks! or, my worst fear, garlic chunks!

 here is the part i knew would be a hit... the spirooli! before recess, i was so scared about the results as the kids were eagerly telling me how much they didn't like vegetables (ack, the whole recipe!), especially tomatoes (gah! fresh and sun-dried in this dish!) but telling them i worked in a restaurant seemed to help. since i 'must know what i'm doing', they seemed to trust the vegetable preparations!
each of them had a few turns of the spirooli to turn zucchini into noodles. the best was when one exclaimed, "so that's how you make noodles!" i excitedly showed them the inner of the zucchini that reminds me of corkscrew pasta when the rest has been spiroolied away and they all wanted to try it! even the top part (just raw zucchini!) that i cut up into wedges when one said it tasted like pizza. must have been the smell of the sauce nearby.

 after finishing the noodles, they took turns shaking nutritional yeast and hemp seeds for a "veggie parmesan" and then sat at places at their tables with real plates and forks (none of that plastic business!).

one student went around spooning the 'rawmesan' onto plates of people who wanted it and many did! and many liked it! some were calling it sugar but whatever! many asked for seconds or thirds of the pasta. so it must have been a success!

hurrah!

lunch outside!

why people hide from the sun and soak chemicals into their body to 'protect' themselves from the sun and then have to take vitamin D supplements is beyond me!

is it not that more refreshing if you step outside your place of work for your break? i LOVE taking my lunch outside when i can! fresh air and vitamin D!!!

today, i tried ani phyo's carrot angel hair with sun-dried tomatoes in cheddar cheeze sauce (p233 of ani's raw food essentials). i got tired of spiralizing carrots after 3 so i did one zucchini which quickly topped up my need for noodles. for the topping, i processed some cashews and pumpkin seeds with garlic and salt. i added nutritional yeast and some red pepper to ani's recipe for the cheddar cheeze sauce on p105. and then served the noodles with the topping (including chopped sun-dried toms) atop arugula. YES!!!

and add this to eating outside? best lunch.

though wait until you see what i made yesterday!

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!