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What’s Cookin’?

31 Jan

LJ & I at Sweat Records post waffles! : )


 When I went out to lunch with my mom last Friday, she pointed out that it had been almost a month that I’d been eating high raw. She asked what most people had been starting to ask… was I going to keep it up?!

Here’s the thing, I really did it as a detox. From the beginning, I had no set plans on how long it would last, I would just keep doing it until I didn’t feel like doing it anymore. I was also hoping I’d maybe drop a couple pounds, but after nearly a month, that didn’t end up happening. Really, I can only conclude that my body is not only excellent at maintaining homeostasis, but that it is at a normal, healthy weight, and I should just be happy about it.

Even though I look kind fat in that picture, my BMI is 21, which falls in the normal category. Want to know yours? Click here! Here’s what it says…

BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9 (Normal Weight)
People whose BMI is within 18.5 to 24.9 possess the ideal amount of body weight, associated with living longest, the lowest incidence of serious illness, as well as being perceived as more physically attractive than people with BMI in higher or lower ranges. However, it may be a good idea to check your Waist Circumference and keep it within the recommended limits.

Further, I will continue to include raw meals in our regular eating.

This morning driving into work, and watching all the ducks walking around, I had a thought. With ducks, as long as they continue to eat their normal mostly vegan diet (along with some bugs) they are normal and healthy. But when they are fed people food like bread and processed snacks, they’re life span is cut down to a fraction of what it would normally be, and they start presenting with all kinds of diseases. So yes, humans have evolved with a long history of cooked foods and grains, but we’ve also had a long recorded history of disease and cancer, so I’m going to take a cue from some other animals in nature, and try keep plenty of fresh raw foods in our diet too. And now that I’m back on green smoothies, I have no intention of quitting again. Especially since I now know for sure it wasn’t them that I was allergic too. (It seems to be mushrooms & D2!)

My transitioning back to cooked foods really started Saturday. We had a nice lunch with my mom at Juice n Java, and I ordered a salad with some [cooked] quinoa and some fresh juice. Later that night we had Taco Bell fresco bean burritos for dinner, and Sunday we met up with LJ of [the recently abandoned for tumblr]  itsveganlicious.com for the Sweat Records vegan waffle party. Here is my pretty little waffle… covered with lots of fresh fruit! image

LJ & I at Sweat Records post waffles! : )

Monday I went to the Bombay Cafe, got my [vegan] lunch special and proceeded to pig out! I was full for what seemed like forever! So good!

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I did just get two new raw books that I will be testing intermittently, but I also remembered: Hey! I’m supposed to be testing recipes for Terry Hope Romero’s new book!! With all the holidays, and traveling, and eating raw food for the last month, I have not tested one single recipe, so it will now be my purpose to start doing that immediately. My shopping list has already been made, and I’m getting off the computer and heading to Whole Foods as soon as I’m done with this post, so expect to see some of that coming this way in the following weeks, and more raw food peppered in too!

As always, thanks for reading and sharing! You have made January the best month of cpv.com yet, with nearly 3K hits! :D

<3,
Ty

Happy Friday, Green Smoothie

27 Jan

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I was way too tired to go to whole foods last night, even though I was out of greens for my morning smoothie, but I figured I’d be able to throw something together. This is that something.

Today’s smoothie includes the usual base of raisins, water, agave, flax seed, banana, mango and just a little pineapple, but added an apple, 2 small stalks of celery, mint, parsley, ginger and half a bag of frozen broccoli! Surprisingly tasty, the celery, ginger, mint, and parsley give it a little zing.

Greenwave Cafe – Plantation, Fl

24 Jan

We finally got to try Greenwave Cafe! I’ve had a friend telling me for years that I needed to go, but it was especially nice since we’ve eating mostly raw. At some point they expanded their hours too, to include dinner, making it more accessible for us.

Since we started the high raw eating during the week, weekends are our whatever we feel like eating time. After having pizza & breadsticks for dinner Friday night, and leftovers for brunch on Saturday, I was ready to eat something a little fresher. We were kind of already in the area since I made Thomas go with me to the Le Creuset outlet (I was good! didn’t buy anything!), but by the time we got there I was a little carsick and pretty famished. It was quite busy and all the tables seemed to be full when we arrived, but then some people waiting for pick-up orders got up, and we were able to get a table pretty quickly.

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I explained my “I just need to eat something, quick” situation to the gentleman that came to our table, and he said he knew just what I meant. He asked if we would like soup or salad, because he could get us those right away, and soup or salad comes with all the entrees. Once he told us the soup was curried butternut squash, we were sold.

This restaurant is all raw vegan, so I was expecting cold soup, but this soup came surprisingly warm, and was SO DELICIOUS! It was creamy and spicy and ended way too soon. We speculated that I  might be able to make a similar soup in my Vitamix and just let it get warmed to a not too high temperature like this one. (Raw food is generally food that is not cooked/warmed over 115-120*F, for those not in the know.)

PS-I read in one of my books that you can heat soups on the stove over low heat using your finger as a thermometer to not let it get too hot.

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For dinner we decided to order the burrito and vegan cheese burger, and split them. The cheese burger came with some unfortunate mushrooms on top (fortunate for Thomas), and were scraped onto a certain fungi loving boy’s plate. (But I still got a little itchy later after eating my half, but no hives!) I guess I should really remember to ask if things come with mushrooms. I always forget about them if they’re not listed because they’re so out of my conscious thoughts.

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Thomas & I thought both of the dishes were really good, but we both thought the burrito was the better dish. It was just SUPER tasty. The cheeseburger came served on their “famous” raw onion bread, which I bought a package of before we left. The burger was slighty sweet, but they assured me there weren’t any additional ‘shrooms in the patty.

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Thomas & I are admittedly pumpkin fans, so when we saw pumpkin ice cream listed on the wall of desserts, we both knew we had to order it. I also ordered a slice of chocolate banana pie, in case that wasn’t enough. ;) Of course we LOVED the pumpkin ice cream and further discussed how I could recreate it at home. It definitely tasted like pumpkin, almonds?, and spices, so I’ll be testing some ideas out. The chocolate banana pie came sprinkled with coconut flakes (which Thomas doesn’t like, so I scraped some off sections for him) but couldn’t compete with it’s icy, orange hued sister.

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After this we were pretty full. We only ate half the pie, and barely finished the ice cream. Which was surprising, because we didn’t feel that full after the dinner courses, but I guess it caught up to us. That’s been the most surprising thing all and all about eating this way… how full you can get on seemingly light meals.

Greenwave Cafe is a casual restaurant, with a well priced menu and friendly staff, and they will certainly be getting a lot more business from us. They’re open 11:00 am – 9 pm Tuesday – Saturday, and host an Organic Indoor Farmers Market 8 am – 2 pm on Mondays (Cafe Closed on Monday & Sunday). Located at 5221 West Broward Blvd Plantation, Fl 33317, and reachable by (954) 581 8377 & www.greenwavecafe.org.

High Raw, Week Two: Kale Salad & Thai Wraps

22 Jan

So this week we continued on our raw journey, though it wasn’t full raw; we added in some grains. Thomas had some grits for breakfast a few days this week, and we had that brown rice. We also ate a whole loaf of sprouted grain bread, most often toasted.

After I made the brown rice to go with the beet burgers on Monday, I ate the leftovers for lunch Tuesday with some sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast, and dijon mixed in. It was tasty and filling, but it felt heavy after all my raw food eating, and all I craved for the rest of the day was a kale salad, in the worst way! So for dinner I came home and made a BIG kale salad adapted from The 30 Minute Vegan‘s Rainbow Kale Salad, pg. 138 (amongst other things, I added a pear for some sweetness),  and a whole lot of Thai Wraps adapted from RAW FOOD real world. This made so much that we were able to eat this yumminess for days (the latter is actually an appetizer recipe for 12), a major plus.

Kale Salad

1 bunch of kale, stems removed and chopped into tiny pieces
1 half green cabbage, shredded and chopped
1 grated carrot
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped finely
1/2 yellow bell pepper, chopped finely
1 green pear, finely chopped

Dressing:

1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp. evoo
1 garlic clove, grated
1 tsp. maple syrup
1 tsp. braggs
pinch of cayenne

Directions: Combine salad ingredients in a very large bowl. Whisk dressing ingredients and massage dressing into salad with clean hands. Let it sit in the fridge or out for a little while to let the flavors absorb, and the kale soften slightly.

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I made a lot of adjustments to the  Spicy Thai Vegetable Wraps, RFRW pg. 143. I cut the oil in half for the chopped raw cashew mixture, which worked just fine. I used green instead of savoy cabbage, and for the almond butter sauce, I halved the recipe, and had more than enough sauce to coat it completely. I also used a combination of lemon and lime juice, and instead of a red chile,  a little cayenne and red pepper flakes. My bean sprouts went bad, so sadly they were also left out. Also, I ran out of basil, so I just used a little more cilantro and mint. I didn’t bother at all with the tamarind dipping sauce, since they were plenty tasty on their own. So I ended up with…

Thai Wraps

1/2 c. raw cashews, chopped
1/2 tbsp. sesame oil
couple pinches of sea salt

1/2 green cabbage, shredded

2 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbps. lime juice
2″ piece of ginger, chopped
pinch of cayenne
pinch of red pepper flakes
3/4 tbsp. braggs
1/2 c. almond butter

1 bunch of collard greens, stems removed and cut down the middle into two halves
2 small carrrots, cut into matchsticks
1 ripe mango, cut into thin strips
large handful of cilantro, finely chopped
large handful of mint, finely chopped

raw cashews, sesame oil, sea salt, mixed in a small bowl

maple syrup, lemon juice, chopped ginger, cayenne, crushed red pepper flakes, braggs, and almond butter blended in blender and tossed into green cabbage

ready to assemble

take the stem out of the collard leaf and use half for each wrap

fill and roll

I ended up with 10 beautiful wraps. 12 if you don't have any halves you don't like.

Results:

The leaves were really sturdy and thus, made these keep really well. So we were able to eat these delicious and fresh tasting wraps for days. The flavors complemented each other well, all the different textures were nice together, and provided a lot of crunch. Once they were all assembled, I thought they would’ve looked like pretty little Thai enchiladas if I had drizzled them with some tamarind dipping sauce, but I was already ready to be out of the kitchen and eating at that point, so I didn’t bother! ; )

Beet Burgers

16 Jan

This was one of the dinners that Thomas had picked out from Raw Food: A guide for every meal of the day, which has turned out to be my favorite of the raw books. The recipes are simple, easily adaptable, always work, and don’t require a lot of prep, or a dehydrator to prepare. This was also one of the two recipes he picked that involved beets.

I’ve never bought beets before, so I was kind of perplexed when I looked in the bin at WF and saw that they had small ones like these, and also big giant ones. So I bought 1 big one and 4 little ones. This recipe called for 3 beets, so I used the 4 little ones. It turns out beets are really messy, but at least they stain your hands a really nice hot, hot pink. (This made me wonder if that’s what they use for the vegetable based Manic Panic shade of the same name that once graced my tresses. The fact that it easily rinsed off of everything but my hand sort of verified it, at least for me.)

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Recipe called for beets, carrots, avocado, lemon juice, sea salt, dijon mustard and pistachios were listed as optional, so I threw in a small handful of walnuts instead. The “burgers” are served on romaine leaves and garnished with capers.

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Results: The recipe leads you to believe that it’s going to taste something like a burger, but it doesn’t. And really, that’s okay with me. It kind of grossed me out to associate the lovely beets with bloody meat. It would still taste good, or even better if you called it Beet Mash on Romaine. My hand did lose the pink fairly quickly too, which was a relief! I served these with some hot brown rice simply cooked with a pinch of sea salt. I ate the leftover rice with meals the last two days too, though, I have to tell you, today I really just wanted more raw food instead, so that’s what we’re having for dinner. It’s funny how you crave what you start eating. Raw food is addictive. Watch out! ; )

Full Raw Week

15 Jan

Monday was the kick off of our full raw week. Breakfast most days consisted of ginger tea and dried fruits & nuts. (I was hoping to lose weight this week, but I actually just fluctuated around the same exact weight range I always do, which is fine.) We had leftovers and green smoothies for lunch, and then for dinner, an assortment of raw meals. I decided that if we were going to do this for a whole week, we should probably make it more exciting. So Thomas & I went through the two raw books, and also The 30 Minute Vegan, which has some raw entries peppered in. On Tuesday we made a giant shopping list, and hit the store. We realized right away that trying to make recipes from the Pure Food & Wine Raw Food Real World cookbook was really expensive, so we’ll probably limit our use of the book in the future. The only real exceptions to the raw thing was that I bought soy milk instead of almond milk (which I figured commercially wasn’t raw anyway? not sure.) for the extra protein, and the occasional condiment, like hotsauce or nutritional yeast.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from our raw week…

One of the recipes I was excited to try out was for the Live Lemon Bars from 30 minute vegan. It called for buckwheat groats for the crust and I was glad because…

A.) it wasn’t nut based
B.). I’d never had it before
C.) it would be starch~ish.

I did some tweaking here by using a combo of raw honey (which isn’t vegan, and is not nearly as delicious as my raw agave. too flowery.) and maple syrup (which isn’t raw), because I ran out of raw agave. I used 3 frozen bananas for the 3 cups of sliced banana, and I halved the coconut oil, because I just couldn’t bring myself to put the entire  1/2 cup in there. 1/4 seemed like more than enough, and honestly, if I did it again, I’d probably press this into a pie plate, and probably omit the coconut oil altogether. I know it was to thicken the topping, but I’m okay with pressing the buckwheat into a pie plate and having a mushy topping. Consequently, I couldn’t cut these into bars, and we just ate it out of the pan with a fork. No problem, still tasted good!

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Later in the week I broke up the leftovers into pieces and ate it as a cereal with soy milk, which was pretty awesome. I got the idea from RFRW. I think they have a buckwheat cereal recipe.

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Something that I was super thrilled about was Quinoa Tabouli from RFRW. Did you know you can eat quinoa raw if you sprout it? It only takes about a day, and I was so enchanted watching the little sprouts grow out of it. You soak it over night, drain it in a colander with a towel over it, and rinse it twice, the last time still being a while before you’re going to use it. So I rinsed it in the morning in the colander, threw the towel over it, and rinsed it again when I came home for lunch. By the time I was ready to use it at dinner time, it was pretty dry. And look at all those little sprouts! At first we thought it was the little twisty part of the seed that comes out when you cook it, but no, as the day went on the little sprouts kept growing!

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I wasn’t really crazy about their recipe. I thought it was a little over seasoned for my palette, but I will admit, that was due in part to me not having as much parsley as called for. Basically, add lots of parsley and some mint, and season to taste with lemon juice, olive oil and salt. The quinoa had a nice chewy texture. I will make this again for sure, I’ll just season it as I go.

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Here’s another recipe that I did a lot of tweaking on… the raw lasagna from Raw Food Real World. This recipe calls for pine nuts for the ricotta and heirloom tomatoes. Pine nuts are just way too expensive, so I used cashews and there aren’t any heirloom tomatoes available right now, so I just used a mixture of organic & non. This recipe made A LOT. Which was super convenient because it cut down on my workload for the week and tasted even better the longer it sat marinating in the fridge. I didn’t soak the sun dried tomatoes for the two hours called for (but I did for the cashews, I just didn’t read far enough for the sun dried tomatoes) so I just blended them with additional water to make up for it. I couldn’t find raw pistachios anywhere, so I used a little bit of raw pumpkin seeds instead in the basil puree. The nuts/seeds can probably just be omitted there. Especially since there are already so many nuts in the “ricotta”.

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So overall, I feel like I learned a lot this week. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t really see any weight loss, but this always happens with me. When I went vegan, and later started drinking green smoothies, same thing. My body just likes where it’s at. Which I take to mean that I must be at my ideal weight. I suppose if I got off my butt and actually did more exercise than rollerskating twice a month I could have the slightly slimmer physique of my malnurished twenties, but I’m not going to worry about it too much. :) My aim for this week is to keep a lot of raw foods in our diet, and just add in some simply cooked grains. Weekends can be whatever vegan food we feel like.

PS- Sorry for the long pause between posts this last week! I was busy trying to get stuff done for my Seattle professional license and for my application to Dosimetry school!

Half Raw Weekend

8 Jan

We were fortunate enough to have some of our very good friends over for most of this weekend. I made Thomas, Mary and I green smoothies for breakfast Saturday morning. Later we had some of those cacao, walnut & raisin balls for a snack, and we had raw “burritos” from Raw Food for an early dinner. Unfortunately I only had 1 avocado, so I couldn’t double the recipe (serves 2) so it was a very light meal, a very tasty light meal. So tasty in fact, that I’m making it again for dinner for us tonight. :)

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After dinner I made a raw apple pie, covered it, and set it in the fridge. I made this yummy treat before, and remembered that it was way better after sitting in the fridge overnight. I didn’t have any dates so I subbed apricots and raisins instead.

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Fast forward into the wee hours of the night. Five of us are hanging out, drinking beer, and playing board games, and it occurs to me that I’m pretty hungry, and I’m sure everyone else is too. Timb had mentioned something earlier about vegan cornbread, and the seed has been planted. In a few minutes I’m in the kitchen getting cornbread muffins into the oven. (Thomas took a picture! I was dancing on a stool whilst getting out the muffin liners. Polka dots make it party pretty.)

I also figured that this would be a good time to finish off the rosemary mashed potatoes and sweet onion sauce in the fridge. Behold our lovely little starch filled snack plates! These were very well received. Timb & I also got into that not quite set yet apple pie. It was delicious. (And even more so the next day!)

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Sunday morning I decided that since I had already broke raw the night before, some “buttermilk” herb biscuits were probably the best option to offer to my three overnight guests. Those biscuits sure were warm, yummy, and comforting, but we ate raw for the rest of the day after that. I figured the weekend was a good warm up, and that it’d probably be a lot easier to eat full raw for the rest of the week. So that’s what we’ve been doing. I’ll keep you posted! ; )

Raw Friday: the rawness continues

8 Jan

Friday the raw continued. Thomas had to take the car down to Miami, but was able to pick me up for a lunch date, so we headed over to 4th Generation Organic Market in east Boca for a nice raw lunch. I had a slight headache, a busy morning at work, and had only had some ginger tea, so I was kind of hyper and cranky when he grabbed me.

I mention this also because the slight headache lasted all day and I think it was due to eating high raw for about a day, and my body was likely starting to detox. Thankfully the next day it was gone.

Consequently, I forgot I wanted to try the highly recommended raw pizza that they usually have already ready in the refrigerated case. I got a raw mock tuna wrap and he got the raw hummus & falafel wrap. I’d had both of these before so I knew they were safe bets. I also picked up a couple of cookies and some maccaroons (not pictured.) I ate one of the raw chocolate maccaroons right away (coconut and cacao nibs, amongst other things) to get my blood sugar up. These things are mad delicious in any flavor! I always pick some up whenever I go there. The cookies were just okay. The wraps were wonderful.

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After work, we picked up my lovely friend and author of the introspective Why is my cat so sad? blog and made a trip to Total Wine to stock the fridge for Friday night fun. Beer isn’t raw, but at least some of the beer I bought was organic?! ; )

For dinner I made the Broccoli Salad with Raisins from Raw Food. This awesome salad is so much more than broccoli and raisins! It also has carrots, red onion (I used a shallot), tomato, sun-dried tomatoes, an apple, raisins, sunflower seeds, lemon juice, olive oil, salt & pepper. This says two servings, but the three of us were able to each have about a bowl and a half full. So definitely enough for two people to be very full, and then some. So good!

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Later I wanted a sweeter snack, so I decided to make the Every Occasion Balls, since I had all the ingredients. The recipe called for walnuts, raisins, honey, carob powder, salt and optional coconut flakes for rolling. I subbed agave for honey and raw cacao powder for carob powder.

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I think I processed the walnuts for a little too long, because the mixture was INCREDIBLY oily. (I think I must’ve been close to making walnut butter!) I put the little dough ball into several sheets of paper towel and squeezed. It soaked through about 7 sheets of paper towel. Then I rolled them out. They were still unbelievably oily at this point, so Mary decided we should try rolling a couple in coconut flakes. This made them taste kind of like raisin bran, which is fine, but I was still freaked out about the amount of grease. We also decided that they were way too big (makes 12), so I broke them up into halves or thirds, re-rolled them and put them in a paper towel lined container in the fridge overnight. This morning they were a really great texture and the oil had either absorbed into the paper towels or back into the balls. Regardless, I would recommend proccessing less and refrigerating or freezing for sure. I know the walnuts have nice omega-3 fat, but that was just a little out of control!

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Raw Lasagna

7 Jan

Since we last spoke, we’ve been eating mostly raw with the exception of that hummus I told you about. (Oh, and those really very healthy Veganomicon cookies that had to be finished off, but now they’re gone!)

For dinner Thursday night, I decided to make raw lasagna from Raw Food: A complete guide for every meal of the day. It’s layers of zucchini, avocado, and in this case, kalamata olives instead of marinated mushrooms. (Turns out I not only detest mushrooms, but am seemingly allergic.) It uses a green sauce and a red sauce. The green sauce is simply made with spinach and water, and I used my mix of baby spinach and spring mix with good results. The red sauce is the marinara sauce recipe included. A mixture of tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, red bell pepper, olive oil, basil, oregano, salt & pepper. I also added in small handfuls of flat & curly parsley.

My one criticism of this book is that there really aren’t good serving guidelines or directions on what size dishes you need. In this case I managed to guess really well, and was able to fit it into a 7×10″ baking dish perfectly. It says that for recipes without serving sizes, to assume it’s for 1 person. This didn’t have serving sizes, but I was hoping that this would be enough for both of us for dinner, and it certainly was. I was able to cut it into 4 good size pieces, and we ate all of it, because it was so delicious. In fact we were both surprised, at just how tasty and filling it was. (We even took a little break in the middle before polishing it off!) I sprinkled nutritional yeast on the top of the finished lasagna for extra protein and nutrients, and Thomas sprinkled his with a little vegan parm too. Yum!

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High Raw & Green

4 Jan

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Guess who’s going to be eating high raw & drinking green smoothies again, for at least the rest of the week? If you answered “you are!”, you are correct. If you answered “I am!” You may be my boyfriend, or just coincidentally feeling our need for clean.

After last night’s complete starch fest made up of 4 Veganomicon recipes & a batch of biscuits, I was really feeling like we needed some serious green back in our life. All the holiday comfort foods and sweets have left me and my body feeling gross and sluggish, so it’s time for an informal detox. When I told Thomas I wanted to go back to green smoothies and raw food for the week, he was all for it. I made an impressive shopping trip to Whole Foods today after work, and found that I got a whole lot of healthy food and even some dish soap and paper towels for just under what I normally spend on a serious trip, so that was nice too.

We put all of the pots that normally frequent my counter back in the oven since it will be getting a well deserved respite.

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I also bought a bunch of hummus because they were on sale for only 99 cents each, and it’s pretty much Thomas’ fave snack. Two of them are oil free, and the other two are not bad. I figure eating them with carrot sticks makes for a pretty reasonable and healthy snack.

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I also decided to give this vegan blue cheese a try for salads. I taste tested it right out of the package as soon as I got home. It really does taste just like blue cheese. A quick look at the ingredients reveals that it’s essentially seasoned tofu, and given the texture, that makes a lot of sense. I loved it, and it’s not even bad for you.

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These are the two raw books I will be using. I have used the one on the right a bit previously, and had good results. The one on the left is written by the owners of New York’s super fancy Pure Food & Wine, (never been there!) and the recipes are a little more intricate, but I figure I’ll try a couple of those too while I’m at it.

Stay tuned! : )

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