Living Raw While on the Road

A number of friends and clients have asked me how to manage a raw food diet and stay healthy while traveling. I decided to create some classes and put the basic outlines on this page.

Classes:

In a one and a half to two hour class I can give a lot of pointers plus a couple of demonstrations.

A half day class includes more demonstrations, samples and recipes.

A full day's class can cover a lot of food options which will allow you to eat well with your minuscule traveling kitchen and include more long term solutions such as dorm room or whole vacation dining.

Topics covered can include:

☀Food First Aid....how to deal with traveler's headache, belly ache, fatigue, stress....without reaching for a pain drug to deal with the symptoms. Deal with the problem and re-alkalize your system.

☀Your Survival Kitchen: light and compact equipment to take with you. Several possibilities depending upon the length of your trip and your needs.

☀Breakfast: Get a great start to your day! How to make fresh raw, delicious, nutritious, sugarless, fiber filled filling breakfasts that taste better than the high carb, high sugar pastry that's served with coffee in a "Continental breakfast" and keep you energized for hours.

This raw apple crumb cake is delicious, quick to make and a great breakfast.

☀Thinking Ahead: Power bar snacks you can make for your trip plus a few pre-packaged ingredients to pack to make meals fast and easy on your trip.

☀Lunch: Away all day? Take-along snacks can save the day.

Little key lime pies can be made in a personal blender.

☀Raw and Social: Tips for surviving, thriving and enjoying business lunches or social events while staying healthy and raw.

☀Entrees: On a budget? No good restaurants around? Tired? You can make delicious dinners in your room with little fuss. Smoothies, fresh soups, puddings, zucchini "pasta" with raw marinara sauce, not a problem.

☀A few examples:

This is a hand cut wide noodle zucchini pasta with a "pesto rustica"....a hand cut pesto, everything uses only a knife.

This pesto can be made in a small travel blender.

These are zucchini hummus and a raw babaganouj, easy to make in a personal blender.

Pear and arugula salad.

Strawberry custard tart. Raw Desserts are no problem.

Soups are fast and delicious!

You can be healthy and stay raw while traveling for work or on vacation.
Contact me if you'd like more information.

I can also teach classes for home raw food kitchens, for example: how to create delicious and beautiful raw (dehydrated at 105 degrees), non gluten crackers and flat breads.

Mango Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

I'm really enjoying making pies that are hidden inside forms, so that the opening is a surprise.
This one was for James' birthday. Since we had a key lime pumpkin for Valentine's Day, only the opening part was a surprise this time.

Opening the pumpkin.

When I asked James what he wanted for his birthday, he said mangos. There are three forms of mango in this pie. The outer crust is made with dried mango, dried coconut and dried goji berries. Between layers of chocolate, there is a layer of mango and goji berry jam. In the center is a mango/coconut cream/chia pie filling with a "seed" made of chocolate covered mango jam.

The different textures, flavours and tastes made it fun to eat.

Here's how it's made. I used a form to press the two layers of crust into. To make the melted chocolate, I ran pieces of some very dark chocolate through the food processor so that it was in small uniform pieces. (This makes it melt better). I put the chocolate pieces in a small pan and put this in the dehydrator to melt. It's wonderful to use the dehydrator this way, rather than melting over simmering water, because no water can get into the chocolate and the temperature is kept constant.

Once I pressed both the outer and inner crusts into the mold, I put it in the freezer to chill. For the outer crust, blend dried mango, coconut and goji berries in the dry carafe for vitamix. The recipe for the inner crust is the same as the key lime pumpkin, found here. That's the basic recipe, anyway. I never really measure. Once the crusts have chilled and the chocolate is melted, swirl a layer of chocolate into the molds and put them in the freezer to harden.

To make the mango jam, I just added water to the extra mixture I had made for the outside layer and blended it. Let it sit for a few minutes until it is fully hydrated. This is the most wonderful, no sugar way of making jams and spreads! Remove the molds from the freezer and add the jam layer. Let this firm up in the freezer.

Add another layer of chocolate. This is why it is so great to have the chocolate in the dehydrator, because you can just leave it there between layers and it's always ready for you when you need it. At this time, make a 2 balls of the mango jam, flat on the top, and coat them with chocolate. These will be the "seeds" of your strange "fruit". These go in the freezer too.

Put some chia seeds on to soak. Blend some mango into a puree with some coconut cream or coconut milk (just a little). Then add the soaked chia seeds and blend just enough to stir. This is the mango pie filling. Remove the forms from the freezer and spoon in just enough of the pie filling so that when you add the "seed" it will not over flow. Back into the freezer they go.

Of course, with each layer, you need to be aware that the two halves need to fit together, so don't make any one layer higher than the other.

Push the two halves together gently. Add a little more of the outside coating along the seam if needed. The final step is to coat the stem of the pumpkin with chocolate. Keep in the refrigerator or freezer until you are ready to serve.

We never eat dessert at the end of a meal. For us, a dessert IS a meal. This is both filling and nutritious. Enjoy!

Valentine Surprise

February is usually a busy month of celebration for us.
Valentine's day, James' birthday and our own yearly holiday: Pumpkin Day.

Pumpkin day occurs any day of the month in February. It notes the cooking and eating of the last pumpkin from the fall harvest. Before we began eating mostly raw food, we took delight in cooking the entire pumpkin in the oven, like a turkey.
I was wondering how we would celebrate Pumpkin Day this year, with raw food. I began to think that a pumpkin cheesecake would be fun and could also be James's birthday cake.

This year, while all three of these celebrations are happening in the same week, James is also leaving one job to begin another. At long last, he will be working from home, which will change aspects of our day to day life.

Because of this, I wanted to make a dessert that we could share.

*(just as a matter of scale, the spoons and forks are tiny dessert sized, not regular size.)

So, here we are, out by the little nectarine tree which has graciously burst into flower for the big week.

But there needed to be a twist, because of the surprise of the new job, and our new life about to begin.

Green is for new beginnings, and as I was thinking about making pumpkin cheesecake I found some beautiful little ripe key limes, and a recipe for a raw key lime pie arrived in my mailbox.

So this is the Valentine Surprise....a creamy mango key lime pie, hiding inside the pumpkin like treats in a piñata.

The basic recipe for our Pumpkin Day Surprise came from here.

The outer crust for the pumpkin was made by grinding dried mango, coconut and goji berries together.

Happy Valentine's Day!

PS: I made this and took the photos the day before partly because I don't like to stop to take photos in the middle of a nice dinner but also because I was testing the structural integrity of the form: the pumpkin shape. I didn't want it to fall apart while we were looking at it or while I was bringing it to the table. It needs to be refrigerated, but the form was strong, and worked well.

When I served it for dinner, I added fresh, plump blueberries to each half before I sealed them together. I served the pumpkin with an extra dish of blueberries. (The dark blue looked wonderful in the light green of the pie).

The combination of the creaminess of the key lime pie, the two layers of crust, with their different flavours and the taste and texture of little orbs of blueberries was truly a feast for the mouth! A guilt free, nutritious treat.

The recipe made this pie plus several small lunch pies and a try of thumb print cookies. I added some water to the extra outer layer (made of dried mango, dried coconut and dried goji berries) and this made a delicious mango jam to put in the thumb print indentation of the cookie. (I didn't actually use my thumb. I had a metal tool from a small mortar and pestle that I used.)

I did not use agave in the key lime pie. I used maple syrup, but less than suggested in the recipe. Because of that, I used a little less lime juice, to keep the balance of the taste.

Our Daily Bread Part 3

Cumin Flatbread

Once again, I was so hungry that I forgot to sprinkle cayenne and add a squeeze of lime to the soup before I took the photo.
This flatbread is hearty, robust and full of flavour.
It is adapted from Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenny.
1&1/2 C walnuts, soaked overnight
2C pumpkin, chopped
1&1/2 T. ground cumin
1/4C olive oil
1/2 onion or 1 shallot, chopped
1-2 t. nutritional yeast
1-2 T. sweetener (I use maple syrup, which is not raw. Often raw chefs use agave, which is also not raw).
1/2T. salt
pepper
1C flax meal or 1&1/2 C soaked flax seed

If you are using flax meal, put that in a large bowl first, the process all other ingredients in a food processor until the mixture is quite smooth, then add the mixture to the flax and stir well. If you soak the flax seeds so that the phytates are removed, you need a high speed blender. Blend all ingredients except the flax. Cut the flax "cake" into strips that can be fed into the top of the vitamix, a little at a time, and blend in. This will give a somewhat different texture than using the food processor and flax meal.

Spread the mixture onto teflex sheets. This is a flat bread, not a cracker, so make them thicker, more than a quarter of an inch thick. Sprinkle cumin or salt or seeds of your choice on top if you feel like adding some texture. Dehydrate at 105-115 degrees until almost dry but still with a little "give" or pliability.
These are hearty and delicious with soups or spreads.

Our Daily Bread Part 2

If you like the taste of onion seed bagels but want to avoid the wheat, calories and baking that a traditional bagel brings, try these fabulous onion flatbreads.

There are two recipes today that use sunflower seeds, so the first thing to do is get about 3 cups of sunflower seeds soaking. Some chefs only soak seeds for an hour or so, but I like to sprout the seeds, so they soak overnight, I rinse them and let them grow for a day, then make these breads. Don't forget to put flax seeds on to soak.

Have I introduced you to Golubka's blog yet? I found these delicious flatbreads here.

I make these breads in a high speed blender instead of a food processor. It really doesn't matter, except for how you process the flax seeds.
2 medium onions, cut into large pieces for the blender to handle.
1 cup of sprouted sunflower seeds (you will use more later on the top of the flatbreads)
4 tablespoons tamari or nama shoyu
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup flax seeds BUT if you are making them in a high speed blender and have soaked the flax seeds first, you will have what looks like a little flax cake. Once you have blended the other ingredients, cut the flax into strips that will drop through the feed hole in the top of your blender. With the blender on high speed, gradually feed in the strips until they are blended to the consistency you like (some like to have some whole flax seeds in the bread, some don't). If you don't have a high speed blender.....don't do this!!!! Your blender will choke and die quite quickly. If a Vitamix overheats, it simply stops until it cools down (or you put it in the freezer for awhile). If a regular blender becomes overburdened, the motor can quickly burn out.
If you are making these in a food processor, pre-grind the seeds in a coffee grinder or dedicated seed grinder and add them after you have processed the other ingredients. If you are using a regular blender, you have cut the onions smaller, for sure, and you can put the blended mixture into a bowl where you have already placed the flax seeds. Be ready to stir like crazy before it clumps.
(I know I said all this in part 1 but I don't want to feel responsible for your fried blender or sad, lumpy flatbread).

It's all good. This is not brain surgery or rocket science.

Place teflex sheets on your drier shelves and spread the mixture out. Now for the fun part....find every delicious kind of seed you have in your pantry or garden and you are ready to create the topping. I found fennel and parsley seeds in the garden and poppy, hemp, sesame in the pantry. I corse ground some coriander on top and sprinkled the rest, with lots of the sprouted sunflower seeds. Chop parsley leaves and sprinkle. Golubka has a wonderful tip for the next step. Wet your hands and press the seeds and leaves into the mixture. (I used to have problems with the seeds falling off in the dehydrator or when cutting, but no more. Wet hand patting really embeds the seeds into the mixture.)
That's it!

Dehydrate at 105 degrees until they are ready to come off the teflex sheets. Turn them over, remove the sheets, dehydrate some more until they can be cut with a knife, scissors or a pizza wheel. Dehydrate a little more to dry the edges. If you want them really crispy, dehydrate longer. For a bread, leave the pieces bigger. Great for bruschettas. Crispy, they are fabulous with new cashew cheese.

I said there would be another recipe today but I'm out of time. Put those extra soaked seeds in the refrigerator until tomorrow. They will be fine.

Our Daily Bread, Part 1

Often when I tell someone I'm eating a mostly raw diet I can tell they are imagining nothing but an endless parade of salads, and it seems bleak. Nothing could be further from the truth. Raw food also includes a variety of flat breads, crackers and wraps, all dehydrated at 105 degrees, all gluten free and delicious.

Wraps are flexible squares that can be made into many different dishes. They can be made from a variety of vegetables, with the addition of flax or chia seeds for flexibility and nutrition. The green wraps at the top of the photo are adapted from a recipe by Russell James in his E-book Thai Recipes. These green wraps are based on a Russell James recipe from his E-book Thai Raw Recipes.

The wraps on the lower left, covered with hemp seeds, were made with zucchini, tomato and tomatillo.
Green Wraps:

Shred zucchini in a food processor, enough to make about 5 and a half cups.
Put into high speed blender with:
1 tablespoon lime juice
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
a pinch of salt
Blend.
Now to add some flax seed. You need about a quarter cup........it can be more if you like. My favorite way to use flax seed is to soak it, so that it wakes up its potential and almost begins to sprout. When it does this it looks almost like a cake. I cut it into strips and feed it, a little at a time into the blender. (Too much at once will cause it to overwork and shut off). Some people just grind flax sees, put them in a bowl and add the other blended ingredients to it, stirring furiously so it doesn't clump. The least nutritious option is to buy already ground flax seeds, but they tend to be so delicate once ground that it is easy for them to become rancid, so this is never an option I choose.
Pour
Pour onto teflex sheets which sit on dehydrator shelves, spread out into large squares covering the sheets. These will later be cut into 4. Dehydrate at 105 degrees for as many hours as necessary, so that they are dry but still flexible.

They can be rolled, as in the raw cannelloni above which has a pesto cashew cheese inside and a raw marinara sauce on top. Cucumbers, salad vegetables, raw hummus and raw baba ghanouj are all delicious and quick meals rolled into one of these wraps.

Envelopes:

One can also make envelopes by putting a filling in the center, wetting the edges and folding them toward the center, overlapping a little, then turning them over so that the folded corners are on the bottom. This particular mixture is made with home sprouted mung beans, shitake mushrooms, shallots, red pepper, Thai pepper, cilantro, lime juice, tamari, corriander seed, cumin, sesame oil, sesame seeds, tamarind, and some Indonesian comet tail pepper.

Place in the dehydrator until the envelope becomes somewhat crisp and the filling is warm.

Dipping Sauce:

Dipping sauces can be made from blending fruits in season, like peaches or mango, with cucumber, lime, Thai pepper, cilantro, green onion to garnish. They can also be more like a salsa or a marinera sauce, depending upon the filling you have inside the envelope. Savory or sweet, spicy or mild.

In the next post, hearty walnut cumin flat bread and chewy onion mulit-seed flatbread.

Raw Baba Ghanouj: Fast, Easy and Delicious!

It was time to harvest some eggplant.
I don't know why I forgot to photograph the nice plump vegetables.

Here is the eggplant when it was still a flower.

I had found a recipe that talked about freezing then thawing the eggplant to soften the texture and the taste of the raw eggplant. I chopped up a few of the long thin Japanese eggplants from the garden, put them in the freezer, put some cashews on to soak and went on with my day.

Here is the recipe I found which uses a food processor to make the baba ghanoush. (We spell it differently......it's the same thing).
I used a Vitamix blender.
Throw everything in together:
2-3 cloves of garlic
a half cup of previously soaked cashews
a double handful of diced, frozen and thawed eggplant
juice from half a lemon (I actually peeled it, took out the seeds and put half of the lemon in the vitamix)
2T olive oil
a couple grinds of salt
Moroccan spice blend (add whatever Mediterranean spices you like or leave it plain).
Blend until its silky fine.
Make a well in the middle to put some fine olive oil in. Add sprigs of parsley and kalamata olives around the outside add a grind of good black pepper.
Really, this is the only thing I've made this year that I haven't photographed the first time I made it, but I was too busy eating it with a variety of flatbreads that I've made to even think of photographing. Maybe next time. I love baba ghanouj and I'm excited to find that I can make it easy and raw and delicious.

Researching Cactus: Nopales drinks, salsa and jerky

Cactus, Super Food of the South

It has taken me several years of living here in California, at the same latitude as Morocco, to begin to make friends with Native plants. Its not that I never saw a cactus in Canada...they do grow....but they are stubby little things, often bent over, low growing and tiny enough to make one wish they had never worn sandals on a hike. I saw cacti every winter when I visited my parents on their winter sojourn to California, and also when I lived in Mexico for a year but somehow they had always been a part of the exotic foliage. Beautiful strangers, not friends.

Last year, when I was still making fermented drinks like kombucha and water kefir, I had read that that some people thought that some of the first "grains" for making water kefir had come from the cactus, found as little crystal like deposits on the cactus. I thought this was interesting, but couldn't find any more information about it. I asked as many Mexican Americans as I could and none had heard of his. Then I found this web page: "World's Best Water Purifier May Be The Cactus"

This is what scientists have discovered that the Mexican Natives probably knew for centuries:

"Scientists from the University of South Florida have discovered the water purifying power of the prickly pear cactus. An extract from the desert-dweller is very effective at removing sediment and bacteria from dirty H2O and, even better, it grows all around the world.

The scientists aren't the first to realize this plant's ability. Nineteenth-century Mexican communities used the cactus as a water purifier. The thick gum in the cactus that stores water is responsible for the purification. The scientists extracted the gum and then added it to water that had been dirtied up with sediment and bacteria.

The gum caused the sediment and bacteria to combine and settle to the bottom, filtering 98 percent of the bacteria from the water. The next phase is to test it on natural water.

The scientists see communities in developing countries using the cactus on daily basis. They could boil a slice of it to release the gum and then add it to water just like the scientists did. But there are hurdles to overcome. What resources would be necessary for widespread growth of the cactus for this purpose and how can people ensure the "treated" water is truly bacteria free? If these problems can be solved, cheap, clean water could be accessible for millions who are currently without. "

I was still excitedly thinking about this when I saw nopales in the supermarket, both the whole paddle and a bag of cut up pieces.

The nopales paddles have single thorns sticking out of raised parts in the paddle.

The best tools I found to remove the thorns were a strawberry huller and a small cheese knife. I'm sure there must be a dedicated tool for this somewhere, but the little strawberry nipper worked well.

The idea that nopales could be used as a water purifier intrigued me so the first thing I wanted to make was a drink. In a high speed blender I combined nopales pieces, ripe mango, fresh young coconut water, coconut kefir, lime juice and ice cubes. Ahhh...it was Heaven! Refreshing, delicious and thirst quenching.

The next experiment was a salsa with tomatillos from the garden, heritage tomatoes, cilantro, avocado, slivers of red onion, lime juice, cumin, cayenne, corriander.......all the usual salsa ingredients with this one added surprise. When I eat nopales I feel the hydrating effect throughout my body. The salsa was delicious and it was also a hydrating medicine.

Dehydrating into a cactus jerky came to mind. I sliced the cleaned nopales paddles and massaged an Asian inspired sauce onto the strips. As I was doing this I was thinking of all of the different kinds of sauces I could marinate these strips in. I mean, how many kinds of beef jerky are out there? ( I don't actually know, having never looked at the stuff, but there must be different kinds). Once the strips were marinated, I sprinkled hemp seeds on them, thinking that I could also use sesame seeds. The strips were lined up on teflex sheets on dehydrator trays and dehydrated for hours at 105. Once dried, they must be stored in lock-tight glass containers with a desccicant inside because the whole nature of the cactus is to capture and hold water. I love these chewy morsels.

So now I feel like I know this cactus a little better. She is becoming my friend. I have planted some on the South side of the garden. The next time I go to the desert, I will go to meet friends.

Nutrients:
Vitamins: A, B1, B2, B3 and C
Fibers: lignen, cellulose, hemicelluloses, mucilages, pectins, gum
Minerals: calcium, magnesium, iron, sodium, potasium
Amino acids:
17 amino acids (including 8 of the essential which must be ingested as food), in the form of easily digestible protein

Benefits:
*Helps balance blood sugar.
*Known to reduce cholesterol.
*Provides nutrients to pancreas and liver, which support digestion and maintain blood sugar balance.
*detoxifies and aids in prevention of various illnesses.
*Gentle alternative to psyllium.

Wouldn't it be great to re-introduce this wonderful plant to the Native populations and to make it available to everyone? It grows easily on land where nothing else will grow. I'm so excited about this plant.

I found a website that makes an extract of nopales.

Thick Rich Raw Sauces

When I first began to make raw food I couldn't imagine how to create that slow simmered thick goodness that one gets with cooked sauces like marinara sauce or with dips, like hummus. Even the recipe books, in the case of raw zucchini hummus, will say that it's not as thick as hummus made with cooked garbanzo beans. I thought of that cooked down juicy goodness in apple pie...surely that must be impossible with raw food. Nope, it's not. Rich goodness begins by adding dehydrated tomatoes to a marinara sauce, dehydrated zucchini chips and extra sesame seeds to hummus, dried apple chips to the sauce for apple pie and......I haven't gotten around to making a mushroom gravy, but I will.

I hadn't imagined the bonus of zucchini chips tasting sweet and delicious, or my own "sun dried" (in the dehydrator) tomatoes added to so many dishes. I'd eaten apple chips before, but when marinated in lemon juice and cinnamon then dehydrated at 105 degrees, they achieve a whole new level of flavour.

The sauce for this raw apple pie was made with apple chips, dates, goji berries (for the warm delicious colour as well as the nutrients) and some water, whipped to silky smoothness in a high speed blender. The crusts had been made before hand and refrigerated. The ingredients are simple: walnuts, dates, goji berries, a few raisins, and vanilla pulsed in a food processor. Press into a form with a removable bottom and freeze or refrigerate. The apples are quickly sliced in the food processor, so the pie goes together, with layers of sauce and layers of apples, making a delicious apple pie dessert.

Here, laying out apple slices to go into the dehydrator.

The last two blog entries cover zucchini hummus and marinara sauce.

The latest, warm from the dehydrator, item in the "dried and ready to eat or make a sauce with" are spicy crooked neck squashes which are plentiful in the garden right now. These chips are delicious! Here, laying out the slices, marinated in sauce, in the outdoor kitchen.

Marinated crook neck squash, ready to dehydrate.

In this batch, there won't be enough left to make a sauce with. These are the best chips I've ever tasted! The marinade was made with a little tamari, olive oil, garlic, some red pepper, a seeded heritage tomato, some onion, lemon, a touch of avocado honey, turmeric, cayenne, oregano....all whirled in the blender and taste as you go to balance. Hemp seeds were sprinkled on top, but they didn't stick very well.

It's exciting to be keeping up with the pounds and pounds of produce from the garden this year, making things I hadn't even tasted this time last year.