Raw Week, RawR!

Ani Phyo-style goji coconut almond cookies

I'm almost done my raw week.  It's been easy in a lot of ways (the food is just as delicious as any "normal" food), and in other ways a bit of a challenge (detox symptoms, having to throw out lots of food that spoiled unexpectedly fast, the whole nut soaking thing, the whole raw food extremism thing)...

It's actually going to be bittersweet easing back into regular food, I think.  I don't feel any huge inclination towards it at the moment, even though I know that someone as flighty and spacey as me really does flourish better on the standard vegan fare.  But that said... I should get onto the food of this week, more or less a meal by meal replay of all the lego-bright dishes I got to have the time of my life constructing.

Okay, so this is technically a pre-raw warm-up (haha, warm up, is that a pun?).  I made a carrot/tomato/miso soup to see how I'd feel about it all, thick with pumpkin seeds and bowl-licking good, and so....

I jumped in headfirst.  Would you look at that?  It looks like a deep-sea fish it's so pretty.  A lot of green, but worth it.  The sprouted chickpea hummous in those wraps kept me going for snack times for the first few days, and the minty cucumber dressing from Vegan World Fusion doubled as a salad topper and a soup, before spoiling way too fast as these enzymic dishes are wont to do.  Alas, alas!

Avocado was also a life-saver, as I never felt warmer or more satisfied than after a meal that incorporated it.  I mashed this one up with rice vinegar, soy sauce and ginger, and made showy crunchy (astoundingly good) sushi rolls.  And a fruit salad with loquat and date syrup beside it.

Breakfast of day 2: the incarnation of my oatmeal habit!

Raw oats ground up in a spice grinder, with a heavy pinch of ground flaxseed, half a mashed banana, berries and lots of salt and cinnamon, left to soak overnight.  I'm keeping this one!  I'd been getting tired of regular oatmeal and this is perfect for summer and very laid back.  You have to choose fairly soft fruit for best results, but again - peaches, berries, tropical things - all available right now!  It's very nutty and satisfying to have for breakfast.

Lunch day 2: Zucchini bites with spicy hummous, a salad of shredded carrot, red pepper, soaked walnuts and red wine vinegar (yum!!), and broccoli tossed with cucumber dressing.

Dinner that night was my first green smoothie.  I will admit I thought it the concept very strange at first, at least before I took my first sip.  Is it totally an unabashedly weird that I love the taste of green things in my smoothie now?  It adds a neat texture and a resonant kind of garden note that makes it more of a meal to me.  Especially wonderful with banana and pomegranate juice, I might add.

I'm skipping breakfast reports because they're all variations on the raw oat groat thing, but...

Lunch day 3: A curried miso carrot dressing on spinach with avocado chunks and dried pineapple pieces - ZOMG.  Genius.  And some cucumber dressing in a bowl trying to be soup as I attempt to slurp it all up before it goes bad.  

Dinner 3: My attempt at flatbread without a dehydrator resulted in (of course) a lot of prematurely fuzzy food, but there was a small grace period where it was semi-firm enough to eat as bread and I made little sandwiches with homemade sumac tahini cheese, and some green beans tossed with organic stone-ground mustard and lemon.

Dinner day 4: pizza!

(lunch seems to be missing from the record)

The pizza is topped with sage-y sundried tomato marinara, green pepper, onions, pineapple, almond cheese, and artichoke hearts.

Lunch day 5: Possibly in the top 5 sandwiches I've ever eaten, is this Haiku Wrap from Juliano's contribution to The Complete Book of Raw Food.  It has avocado mashed with garlic, ginger and lemon topped with wakame, mustard, pickle, burdock, bell pepper, onion, corn and shoyu - and it's a magical, magical combination.  (carrot slaw with sprouted peanuts keeping the sammiches upright on either side).

Dinner 5: Another one of those raw standbys I never understood (like the green smoothie), was the zucchini pasta thing, but you know what?  It's pasta-like, and not salad-like as I thought it would be!  Really good, actually, enough to repeat it later.  And the things that look like eggs are crunchy turnip slices topped with nut cheese.

Lunch 6: Cabbage burrito-wraps with cumin and chili sunflower pate inside (along with corn and tomatoes and green onions and things).  With a side of Pringle lookalikes (but really it's delicious turnip) and nut cheese again for my new favourite take on nachos.  Soaking the slices in cold water gives them the perfect chip shape and makes them sweeter, too!

And that's not to say there were no sweets!  I made some tahini-geranium cookies, that I could upload but they look pretty much like little brown discs.  The brownies are gorgeous, though!  I ground up some sprouted and dried buckwheat into flour and combined it with dates, ground almonds, walnuts, carob powder, salt and vanilla and proceeded to nom NOM NOM them up because they were so amazing!!  I highly recommend the buckwheat flour thing, I have a container of the sprouts in my freezer right now and it gives things a more cake-like texture than the usual wodgy raw dessert texture.

And here's a plate full of desserts I took to a raw potluck last night.  Clockwise from the top left are salty sunflower seed cookies, then those buckwheat brownies with a banana-fudge frosting, then coconut-cashew-agave crusted pear tarts with gojis on top, and finally like orange & clove oatmeal raisin cookies!  So much fun, and so easy to just make a few servings of anything, and experiment all over the place!  I definitely got into the habit of whizzing up just a single cookie for after lunch sometimes when I needed something for my sweet tooth.

Potluck food itself was possibly the BEST vegan thing any non-vegan has ever made for when I came to dinner.  It was a sundried tomato-cashew romesco sauce over marinated eggplant and it was mindblowingly good.  I think it was from a book by the same people who did Raw Food/Real World, if you wanted to try it, and you might want to add extra orange juice like my friend did and eat every indulgence-soaked aubergine triangle with additional gusto for having done so.  :)

Day 7....

....   it's day 7?  It's the end of the week?

Do you realize I didn't realize that until about halfway through writing this post and counting up the dates?  Oh my goodness, I suppose that means I'm done and I should ground myself now.  Part of me wants to keep going, and in fact... *goes off to buy bananas for a few minutes*

* a few minutes later *

Well... on the way down the stairs to the market, oh what do I smell but buttery wafts of rice and faint hints of curry? and whoa-p, there goes MY 100% raw convinction!  That, and charred hot dogs on the street as I walked... and I'd like to feel like myself again, I think. :D

A few things I noticed, though, to sum up the week...

* it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive at all to eat raw.  I stuck mostly to almonds and sunflower seeds for nut protein, which can be relatively cheap.  And I didn't indulge in the condiments like nama shoyu and special apple cider vinegar or anything.  If anything it might have been cheaper due to me not buying coffee all the time.  OH YEAH I QUIT COFFEE FOR A WEEK.  !  Craziness.

* nut soaking liquid is super mucilagous and gross, and I'll probably soak most things now if I think of it beforehand.

* white wine was okay to drink, as was whiskey (although I'm pretty used to whiskey).  Red wine on the other hand, made me terribly achey for a whole day after drinking it, and then the ache turned into a kinda "detox ache" that I've still got in my calves when I bend over too far.  

* a couple drying racks set in front of a sunny window was my dehydrator, and it worked pretty well for cookies and buckwheat sprouts.  Terrible for bread though, and I wouldn't even try crackers.  Oh yeah, and sun tea!  Tasty stuff!  And not even that long to make, maybe a few hours in the sun for amber-steeped liquid.

* I caved once, for a bunch of artichokes I got for free, but wouldn't you?  All succulent and dipped in lime & olive oil???  I'd never tried artichokes before and it was my chance right there, so I don't feel bad.  And they are, by the way, not nearly as hard to make and eat as advertised and mysteriously sweet and I ate the stems too, YUM.

* Guess that's it!  And I'm so making pizza, man, like, soon.

raw! mocha chia pudding, green soup, and tahini

It's taken me enough time, but I think I might pursue some serious explorations into raw food this summer.  It's probably because of this festival in the woods that my friends organize each year... this year I'm a part of the kitchen crew, and that means providing raw options on top of the fully vegan menu.  Which I'm actually pretty excited about!  The way it's set up we each get about one full day of leading the kitchen, and I have no clue what I'm going to make... but I am collecting ideas, and I figure I should start practicing my skills now.

I took out a book from the library - Nettie Cronish's New Vegetarian Basics - and figured I would actually cook something from it instead of just flip pages.  Well... it's a mint and tahini sauce up there and it seems like it would be great on paper (and I'm not exactly sure how one messes up tahini sauce!) but there was like, no flavour in it whatsoever, so I had to double the tahini and add some ume vinegar and then it was pretty good.  (I should mention that I like how she uses a lot of pumpkin seeds and seaweeds in creative ways in her book, though!)

To ease into Rawville I approached my blender with a lot of vigor and an open mind (and about 3 open recipe books!).  I think I did okay for a try... I would never ever EVER call those thin bits of celery "pasta", but the tomato sauce was a sort of marinara and actually quite delicious!  I used both red wine and balsamic vinegar with some fresh basil and it definitely wasn't salad-y, in fact surprisingly sweet and piquant and actually went pretty well with crispy celery.  The soup was hella fun!!  It involved.... (I wrote this down)..... 

a full stalk of broccoli

3" of zucchini

1/2 cup of corn

1 kale leaf ---- THE CULPRIT!!

knob of ginger

3 cloves garlic

lemon juice

apple c vinegar

olive oil

flax oil

juice of 2 grapes

tamari

regular soy sauce

sunflower seeds

1/2 a green apple

cumin, coriander, cayenne, paprika, salt, pepper

whole corn niblets

Good and good for you... but I read only afterwards that adding leafy greens to raw soups make them characteristically bitter, and this definitely needed those two grapes to balance things out.  I felt really energized afterwards, but next time I think I'll keep my kale on the side.  I do love making food like this, though - I feel like a scientist, cutting off bits and bobs of things to create a harmonious liquid whole. 

Last and the sweetest!  Mocha chia pudding, as per Swell Vegan's recipe, made with some probably unraw ingredients (cocoa, instant coffee certainly isn't), but in principle sure.  Really quite good!  Like tapioca pudding with the texture of strawberry seeds and the flavour of chocolate, and intriguingly... gloopy.  In a good way!  Like you can stir it up and much as you like and it will reconstitute back together immediately, which I think is a huge bonus, not liking runny pudding all that much.  Plus this fills you up, so I hear, being hydroscopic and thus able to soak up all your drinking water... so it's the dessert that could save your life in a desert, aha!  

swell cookzine est arrive!

apple sprout!

Every so often (in fact, very often), on those days I have left my apartment with a slog in my step or even just no specific inspiration for the day to come except possibly another coffee and another ride on the bus... I will check my little metal mailbox and see personal mail inside.  And instantly I'm five and it's my birthday and I'm grinning cheekily and cracking open a pretty envelope and the day is, so to speak, saved.  Needless to say I was happy to see my copy of Swell Vegan's cookzine last week!  It's beautiful, first of all - the covers are home-silkscreened in a burnished gold on creamy green card - and inside are 15 absolutely enticing recipes.  I've already tested a spare few (the Maple Mustard Chili Tofu, Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers, and OH the Sweet Potato-Cranberry Scones with that gooey maple glaze!) and been really impressed each time.  The recipes are easy and vibrant, definitely on the healthy side and did I mention delicious?  The only thing I've made since getting my copy is Sarah's Savory Baked Tofu, but of course that was perfect too, even when I just eyeballed the measurements to make a 1/3 recipe.  I actually really like the way A-K's food tastes, there's something really great about it.  

some past swell food...

Sweet Potato-Cranberry Scones - as WannabeVegan mentioned, these are worth the price of admission, I'm 100% serious about this.  Consider the price of a huge batch of the best scones you've ever eaten, then factor in being able to make them again and again each fall (or anytime), plus a few tempeh recipes and that just makes sense, doesn't it?

Maple-Mustard-Chili Tofu - this recipe keeps wanting to be made and then I remember I don't have maple syrup and then I am sad, because the maple flavour is vital and really delicious.  The salad underneath it was weird (artichokes and grapes, huh past self?  WEIRD!!) but that tofu was addictive.

And the first thing I tested were the Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers, which are a combination of some of my favourite things ever (almond butter, leeks, millet and sweet patats), in a more-ish kind of spicy burger.  You gotta eat these fresh, they crumble in the freezer (unless the recipe has changed, and A-K you can correct me if I'm steering anyone wrong here?), but they then turn into taco salad crumbles.  So not bad!

The latest dish!  Sarah's Baked Tofu on some rice & millet, steamed vegetables, and a lemon-y sesame-thai dressing from the Millenium Cookbook that livened up broccoli like crazy. (It's the dressing from the Chilled Soba Salad if anyone's wondering).  Straightforward looking, but take a bite from this and it's got zingy depth.  Serve it to omnis.  Mention whole grains and steamed veg and lean protein and then let them try it and giggle when they go all "ohhhh.  Wait, this is good!"  At least, that's my secret plan.  Swell will be my secret recipe weapon, I've got the Mole Roasted Cauliflower on the mind to make next. 

Oh, and I made the Lemon Zucchini Bread and the batter was great and then the most disastrous thing happened ever.  My oven had the audacity that afternoon to turn into a dehydrator, resulting in the most depressing baked thing I've ever had the misfortune of creating.  It turned this beautiful lemony-sweet cake batter into a block of chewy (albeit tasty) crust with raw lukewarm uncooked battergoo inside.  I weep tears.  No, actually, I threw it out.  And I NEVER do that.  So um... word to the wise, before risking a lemon zucchini bread make sure your oven works, or else microwave yourself an end piece and put enough Earth Balance on it so you don't notice you're eating liquid cake... errr. yeah.

That's a horrible way to end a supportive post!  But it happened.  It's my funny story.  :)

PS: A-K you rock!

east meets my belly

This is just the shot of the leftovers - stuff put into tupperware doesn't win any beauty points.  But the point of this lunch was that it was a bento-ish kind of meal that randomly came together after I poo-pooed the idea of a peanut butter sandwich and started to boil potatoes.  Which I never do, and made me feel festive enough to remember the wasabi tube I had in the fridge, thus wasabi mashed potatoes.  So obviously then I had to try those panko & daikon stuffed mushrooms from the Veganomicon.  Except... I didn't feel like firing up the oven for 6 mushrooms so I made them raw and used bulgur wheat instead of bread crumbs, and added some sweet peppers and Sambal Olek for fun.  

Clearly the asian tofu from Vcon was the third logical step!  Grill pans are great stuff.

It was special because I was taking it to an all-day drawing performance with rather zen-like properties, so it felt very appropriate (albeit not-even-slightly-traditional) to have a cute little themed lunch like this.

I even had one matcha & goji berry scone leftover from the night before!  Double cute.  Not to mention how it looks amazingly like an anatomical heart, which I only noticed after I uploaded the photo!

See?  Awwww.

pastanoodles, cakex2

It's been a while, it's been a while... ooooooh, I'm doing the It's Been A While Dance. All of this food is like, over a week old (oh no!)

But that's okay. I'll just go through it real fast and label it. And pretend I'm gushing over everything, because it was all real worthy of gush. Onwards! --->

Soba All'Arrabiata! Or, "angry soba" if your Italian is good. Spicy marinara with sundried tomatoes and roasted vegetables just seems all that much more delicious when it's on elegant and super-slippy noodles.

Vcon basil-cilantro pesto on corkscrewy pastas, with Eat Drink & Be Vegan tamari chickpeas, AND garlic bread. Because I am woman, hear me roar, I deserve carbs when I want 'em. And olive-oily lips!

A sugarless carrot cake, adapted from the Vwav recipe. Note all the changes to accomodate a sugar/soy-free diet:

- halved the recipe
- used w.w. pastry flour instead of white
- replaced sugar with date paste
- used walnuts instead of macadamias
- pureed pineapple instead of orange juice
- no coconut (not my decision, but mehn)
- no candied ginger ('cause there's sugar on it. MEHN.)
- used cultured cashew cream instead of coconut icing

..........it was good, I kind of loved it (especially the cashew cream), but it was dense, and I would never serve it to omnis. I'm definitely noticing that cakes are especially tricky to adapt to special diets, as opposed to cookies/pies/things that don't require fluffiness. But I'll keep at it...

And when Pomme left town for a few days / I found a lb. of cherries for $1.59, I couldn't resist diving into a modest flurry of sugar and flour to make (duh duh duh) a clafoutis! For the unhealthiness, but also for the vague french associations and a chance to use my mysterious chia seeds. I went from Hannah's awesome strawberry clafoutis recipe, and it worked perfectly -- gelled up into a pretty summer pudding that would be perfect with ice cream. Oh, I do love white sugar...

Oh, and leave the pits in the cherries! It's traditional, and it infuses the cake with this haunting almond flavour. Plus, so much lazier. :D

Birthday #5: raw rosewater cheesecake

Pomme's birthday, precious Pomme deserves a precious cake! A cake that faeries might design if they were into that sort of thing. Something deviously healthy and yet richer than sin, delicate like tea-time but exotic, too. Something refreshing that can still be cut into a nice solid "wodge" of nutty pink cream... something like a pistachio rosewater cheesecake!

I think I've outdone myself this time.

I'm saving this recipe for the zine, but I *can* tell you that there's cardamom in the cream, cocoa and orange in the crust, and it's really really impossibly easy to make (and makes a cake like no other!). Amazing straight from the freezer, like ice cream except completely unlike ice cream...

There was birthday dinner, too, which was almost equally as special as the cake, at least if you like guacamole as much as we do (which is with undue passion). A spicy papaya salsa on red leaf lettuce with a nice tender-browned brick of cumin-lime tofu, with guac on the side... heaven! (and credit where credit is due, totally inspired by susanv's recent post).

Master Cleanse: MASTERED!

It's funny when you don't eat during the day, how certain activities grow in fascination to replace the habit of cooking. Case in point: cat watching. Oh, Satchmo... curled up with the collected works of Lewis Carroll... so peaceful. I spent a lot of time reading over those ten days (a LOT), drawing, walking around late at night with legs that felt oddly leaden but powered by this strange eternal sense of energy. I even went to a party on the weekend stone-cold sobre, swizzled my lemonade and had a blast. Near the end there was a definite natural high going on, and I could see how people could continue for 14, 20, 40 days....

Not that I was going to. I'd have to take out real estate to manage all the recycling!

P (hereby referred to as "Pomme") came off the fast one day before me, so we went to work together making a pottage of soup with about half a garden in it, it was the most nourishing amazing thing I'd ever seen... (turnip, celery, carrot, zucchini, sweet potato, leek, onion, cabbage, mushrooms, broccoli, tomato, green beans, wakame, brown rice and barley). It was so tempting, in fact... that 3 AM of day 11.... I crept out of bed.............. and had a bowl of it!

I know you're supposed to wait and spend a whole day drinking orange juice to break the fast.... but I am not patient! And my trusty guts of steel worked like a charm! It was delicious, and sat perfectly. (I'm not recommending this to anyone, though - I almost ate it in the spirit of science, to see if I doubled over in crippling cramps or something equally bad, and that might still happen if your stomach is sensitive)

This is my first real meal! On day 2 of breaking the fast, I woke up to the most enticing smell ever, and Pomme had made the most perfect and delicious (and spicy!) dhal, which we had for dinner with brown rice, steamed veggies, salad, and this very cool sesame coleslaw I made weeks ago that magically started fermenting all on it's own. I'll have to see if I can recreate that...

And then, after dinner, because we are daredevils after all.... we made a raw pie, and (oh dear) ate the whole thing between us! Okay, I had most of it. ;)

It had a walnut/almond/cinnamon crust, and the filling was a blend of banana, cashews, mango, blueberries and maple syrup, and it was pretty amazing. Raw pies are especially fun to make because they involve using the blender a lot! And they're easier on the post-fasting tummy, too.

So that's pretty much it! There's loads of other things I could talk about the fast, but it's already kind of fading in my memory... it really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be at all. I was positive I'd give up somewhere around Day 3. I did spend Day 3 reading every dissenting opinion on the cleanse that I could find, and almost thought of stopping. But I didn't, and I'm so glad, because the real treasure I got from it was I SUCCESSFULLY QUIT SMOKING, I'm free! There was no craving, no coughing, no weight gain, no insomnia, no irritability... it's basically the most perfect way to quit, ever. I hope anyone who wants to quit tries this method, I can't recommend it highly enough! And little things like pickles and curry taste like absolute heaven afterwards. :P~~~~~

(next post: my veganversary and I finally get to try tempeh!)

Dee Om(mmmmm!) Festival

Well, I'm back! I've scrubbed the dirt out of all my crevices, uploaded a billion gorgeous pictures of natural beauty and human wackiness, rubbed my belly after meal upon meal of delicious vegan forest food, and now I'm finally ready to get back to city life... and update my blog!

So this is the humble kitchen, rather unassuming by day (though inviting), and positively radiant by tiki torch at night. There was always fresh fruit and whole grain breads around, and a steaming gigantic decanter of yerba mate for the lacking-in-energy camper to drink copious amounts of (4 mugs a day, anyone?)

One afternoon Star and I even discovered sushi being made! Forest sushi! It took all of 3 seconds for her to jump into the kitch and start showing off her fantastic rolling skills. There was even apparently onigiri with pickled plum being made later, which I unfortunately missed, but still... that's damn cool.

Here's me (on the right), grabbing some killer miso soup from The Great-Smelling Pot of Giganticness. I always had to stand on tiptoes to see what was inside!

And here's the bounty of fresh herbs and vegetation at the right of the kitchen, which gave the food this wonderful vitality. (note to self: donate something that is green and growing in a pot next year)

The tea tent! It was this dear little spot, glowing white and smelling of herbs/the always-lit iron stove that kept the kettle boiling outside. There were teas for everything -- lung cleansing, ephedra-energizing if you wanted it, lucid dreaming, even getting in a sexy mood! With agave nectar, fresh citrus to cut, ginger, books on herbs, and just a great atmosphere all around.

The fact that I could stumble down to the kitchen area, grab my colourful breakfast and realize I was munching in front of killer art like this was all part of the fun.

And E-balls! E for energy, of course. Yum, yum, yum, and I have a new appreciation for hempseeds now. Especially the crunchy black unhulled ones, they're SO much fun to eat!

Okay, onto the plates. (every attempt I made to take night photos got thwarted, so none of the dinners got photographed, but rest assured they were pretty involved and distinctive and delicious, even moreso than the first two meals of the day. ah well.)

This was my first breakfast - note the conservative portions, before I realized I could totally take my fill from the table - morning quinoa with hempseeds, soaked/raw whole wheat granola, and spicy applesauce.

First lunch - creamy coleslaw with fresh herbs, split pea dhal, bannock, and fruit salad.

Yay, oatmeal! I loved the announcement of breakfast that morning - the whole kitchen in unison shouting "Gruuuuuuuuel!!!!!"

Oops - this is the one standout meal that sucked for me. 1 out of 21 ain't too shabby at all, though! Another split pea dhal with much much less flavour, and saltless dry millet. Still - totally healthy.

This was way (way!) better! Quinoa with fresh oregano, vegan caesar salad, and a beautiful hearty bean and vegetable stew, with beets, wakame, squash and barley.

Most colourfullest breakfast EVER, and it tasted even better than it looked! Tahini-dressed salad, quinoa with star anise and clove, apple chutney, pickled carrots, fruit salad with papaya, pineapple, watermelon, pear, orange and honeydew, and one of those awesome E-Balls.

Maybe my favourite lunch, too - miso soup with gorgeous huge pieces of seaweed, whole juicy shitake mushrooms, roasted squash seeds and my new cracker obsession, rye Wasa.

And the last brekky - creamy rice pudding with apricots and sunflower seeds, sugarless (yet sweet) cocoa apple crumble/granola, a citrus-y salad, and a slice of dense rye with apple butter. Plus a view to totally die for...

More often than not, I skipped the smoky campfire scene and hiked a few minutes away to a secluded sunny rock with my meal to listen to mild ripples and rustling trees instead. You could have given me a half-eaten Boca burger in that setting and I would have been in foodie bliss anyway... but really, in conclusion, I got totally inspired by the spices and innovation that I saw at Om, and the dedication that the kitchen organizers had to keeping 500+ people fed and nourished all day, every day, for a whole week! For one - I'm gonna start respecting the "mere" salad a heck of a lot more, play with grains and seeds more, put tahini in more stuff (because tahini = AWESOME), and basically just focus on health and colour instead of rigidly following silly things like recipes all the time. I've even put it into practice at home, but that'll have to wait for the next post. ;)

( Oh, and I wish I could have taken a picture of the meal that I helped prepare, it was my favourite of all the dinners (maybe I'm biased, but it WAS amazing). Just imagine saffron-coconut apple soup, fried bananas, truly spicy aloo gobi, and cardamom-almond rice. OMG. I weep for the lack of picture! :O )