Tis the Season for...Zucchini!

Yesterday I did my bi-weekly grocery shopping at the farmer's market. (In case any locals haven't heard, it's pretty awesome. Every Saturday from 9-2pm at Pioneer Park in Provo. Tons of vendors!) It's granola-y to say this, but I really do love talking to the growers and asking about where the food is from and how it's grown etc. Plus, REAL food is sold there. No two cucumbers look the same. Peaches are bumpy and apples have knots and dents in them. Carrots are short and fat with the stringy root still attached. Heirloom tomatoes come in every shape and color from purple to yellow to red to orange. It's the complete opposite of shopping in the produce section where everything looks identical.

Upon my stroll through the farming vendors, I came across a zucchini that I just could not pass up.

For $1 I bought that massive squash that will feed Michael and I for the next two days. I went to work this morning on making one of my favorite raw meals: Rawtsa! aka Pasta! I don't have a spiralizer yet (it's on my wish list) but I do have a mandolin slicer  so I sliced up the zucchini into thin but wide shaped "noodles." Pasta sauce is so easy and quick to make, and you can easily experiment with the portions of  ingredients without going wrong. I used:

leftover zucchini slives

3-4 small cloves of garlic

salt (to taste)

splash of lemon juice

3 handfulls of cherry tomatoes

1 handfull of fresh basil

2-3 dates

I've made pasta sauce quite a few times, and every time dates really make the difference. (You could substitute agave if you wanted). The sweet counteracts the salty and really compliments the flavor. You could also add onion, pepper, celery, cucumber, shallots, spices, whatever you want! Olive oil is optional; I personally prefer it without. You really can't go wrong though with all fresh ingredients. I love knowing exactly what is in my meal!

Pumpkin seeds goes nicely with this meal and they add a nice chewy texture. I also put pea sprouts on mine to add flavor and texture. The thinly sliced zucchini picks up whatever flavor is around it, making it perfect for this dish. Also, the slimey-ness makes it feel just like pasta...minus the bloat. Zucchini is in season now, so it's easy to find and cheap to buy, but I probably won't be making this dish  again for a little while. We don't want to get sick of it! An alternative is to take the sauce and pour it over the zucchini slices, dehydrate it, and it makes the perfect chip. Any other ideas for using this awesome vegetable???

Spicy Kale Salad

As promised...the Kale Salad Recipe that made even Michael appreciate kale. It's a miracle!

Ingredients:

Kale (stripped from stem and ripped into small pieces)
1 avacado (or 2 if your name is Dot)
Salt
Cayenne
Lemon juice (from one lemon)
Basil
Tomatoes
Mung bean sprouts (optional)

Squish all ingredients together, massaging in. Add tomatoes and mung beans last. Amount of cayenne used determines degree of hotness.
Sprouts really add to the salad, although they are not necessary. For the salad in the picture I had just gotten some fresh cherry tomatoes from an organic farmstand....mmmm. so good. I've brought this salad to both raw and non-raw events, and it's always a hit.

Karma

I never got to share this before due to the choatic pre-wedding-ness, but I want to now. Raw food really is getting a name for itself. Restaurants are popping up everywhere, juice bars, going "green," health food stores/organic sales are going up, along with the popularity of farmer's markets. I was thrilled when I went home to Massachusetts for the wedding and discovered a new Raw/Vegan Restaurant named Karma in the neighboring town of Northampton! A few days before we were wed I convinced Michael to come with me and check it out...

He had the buternut squash soup and I had the Raw-Zagna! Made with cashew cheeze and strips of zucchini and other spiralized vegetables. It was yuuuuuummy. We finished with a raw brownie/vanilla ice cream dessert

Of all the places to first adopt a Raw Food Restaurant, Northampton would have been my first guess.

This makes me homesick, but I will share some snapshots I took anyways. Northampton is a pretty hippie, liberal, gay-rights town, always an adventure waiting to happen. It has a lot of history (like any part of New England) and neighbors where I went to high school, so I used to visit Noho a lot as a teen. Harrel's has unbeatable ice-cream, Faces has the weirdest gifts and coolest clothes, Turn it Up has the cheapest used music, Thorn's has anything and everything you could ever want, including but not limited to Tibetan garb, the most expensive handbags, and the world's best mac n cheese, Sweet's is like walking  back in time to an old fashioned candy store, Raven's musty flavor of used books just makes you want to read forever, among hundreds of other stores and restuarants. It's a great town. 

One of my favorite memories in Northampton is with one of my oldest friends and Noho-native, Liz. As newly licensed sophmores, we were driving around one day through town and decided to hit up the McDonald's drive-thru. I just wanted a diet coke, but the lady handed me a full meal, complete with burger and fries, AND a large soda. Hmm. I was too rebelious to hand it back, but we had just eaten and weren't the slightest big hungry. Liz suggested we take it to a homeless lady that she sees constantly crouched behind the old Hotel Northampton.That seemed charitable enough, so we did just that. This lady was pretty sorry looking, wrapped in rags and obviously filthy. You couldn't help but wonder when was the last time she had a real shower. I awkwardly approached her saying, "excuse me, ma'am. We just got this meal for free by mistake and didn't want to waste it. Would you care for it?" The lady looked suspiciously at us and poked inside the bag. "Is that a hamburger?" She asked, almost accusingly. "Uh, yeah, pretty sure..." With that she tisked, shook her head no, and without hesitation said, "No. Thanks. I'm a vegetarian." Liz offered her the fries at least, which she took, and we both walked away in amazement, waiting til we were around the corner and burst into laughter. Only in Northampton. It's just that kind of town. 

Everything Grows in Cali

We had a wonderful time two weekends ago in California. I was ecstatic about seeing Gma and Gpa Wren's garden and was very impressed. They kept on saying how this was the worst month, harvest-wise, to come see them, as they were getting everything planted for the winter garden and the summer garden was sparse...but not to me! It is a wonderful hobby that I can see they take very seriously and definitely reap the benefits of it. Our visit was short and sweet; Michael and I are looking forward to another California road trip come Thanksgiving.

They didn't let us go without filling up on Nature's Bounty. We brought back two huge bags of ripe tomatoes, 2 cans of beets, 1 can of strawberry jam, 1 can of salsa, an acorn squash and butternut squash, as well as 1 honeydew and 1 crinshaw melons! The salsa was gone within the first 2 days of being back. The melons in the first three days. I dehydrated most of the tomatoes and those were gone in the first week. We made a dent on the jam as well. WOW. You can really taste the difference between fresh and fake. Yeah yeah, I'll take an apple over applesauce any day, but I would also take organically grown over inorganic without hesitation. Some foods I'm not as picky about, some I'm 100% organic 100% of the time, but regardless, homegrown trumps both, handsdown. 

The whole 24 hours we were in Cali, I couldn't help but notice how EVERYTHING just grew! Once we got over the Sierra Nevadas, we started seeing signs everywhere to pull over, fresh fruits and veggies, farmer's markets etc. I was salivating just looking out the window at the vineyards and acres upon acres of farmland. I've driven cross-country many times, and I've seen the beautiful wheat, cotton, corn, and sunflower fields of the midwest, but the colors of California were unbeatable! Gpa Wren was bragging in his own right about how his neighbors grapefruit and lemon trees on opposing sides of his yard, drop dozens upon dozens of ripe fruit onto his yard. They then gather the extra fruit and use it for fresh-squeezed lemonade among other things. It all seemed too good to be true! Needless to say, I am plugging for California when it comes time for us to move.

The last two weeks have been wonderful in that I have found support beyond which I thought was available to me. Most people that I have talked to or read about find out about raw foods through a traumatic diagnosis or health concern, usually cancer, diabetes, candida, allergies, or an auto-immune disorder. The majority of these ailments plague older generations, and so it has been difficult for me, a healthy 21-year old, to find common ground with my peers when it comes to food. My sister's mother-in-law referred me to her friend, Lara, who holds support group meetings once/week here in Provo! I already go to a once/month potluck at Kathrines, but was very excited to learn about a meet up that was more local to me, and on a weekly basis. I've gone the last two weeks and it has been immensely helpful to share my story and hear about other people's journeys. I know it sounds cliche, but it has made all the difference. I recently contributed to Agi's Recipe Book as well, which gave me the oppertunity to attend a dehydrating class of hers yesterday! It was inspirational to learn about Agi and her healing through foods. She is really the source for me of where I first heard about raw food. She sparked my interest before anyone or anything else. As my mentor, Agi really made a difference in my life, more than she knows. I filled my dehydrator to capacity this morning making her recipes.

A recipe for fruitleather that she gave us yesterday:

1 cup any fruit

2 T ground chia

2 T ground flax

2 drops lime essential oil

1/4 t cardomon 

splash of water

a little agave

Blend and dehydrate overnight. Yummy!

Kale Chips

Make these...and Lays will never taste the same. Promise.

I owe Katherine Scott for giving me her recipe for these chips. You can find hundreds of recipe combinations online, but this one is definitely my favorite.

I can remember the first time I bought kale. It wasn't that long ago. I had been reading about it randomly for a while, and never really thought about trying it until I saw a picture of it in a magazine. "So THAT'S what it looks like" I thought to myself as I thumbed through Women's Health. Hmm. I passed it a few times in the produce section as I grocery shopped, consciously looking out for different dark leafy greens. I wanted to try something other than spinach or romaine in my salads so one day I braved it, picked it up, put it in my cart, and never looked back. 

Plain kale is bitter, curly, and tough to chew. I've grown accustomed to it in my salads, but it's not the most popular green to eat by itself. It is, to say the least, a powerhouse of nutrients. (It is most famous for it's abundance of vitamin K, but it also has crazy amounts of vitamins B2, B3, B6, B12, C, E, beta-carotene, folic acid, lutien, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, silica, zinc, falvonoids, glucosinolates, and fiber. If you really needed more of a reason to eat kale, there ya go!) Kale is very versitile and can be made in dozens of different ways, other than just salads. I have a special recipe for kale salad (I'll share it later) that has become a favorite of me and Mike's. It used to be that I couldn't pay Michael to eat kale salad, but this recipe I found worked miracles. I love putting kale in green smoothies; there is nothing easier than 2 bananas, a bunch of kale leaves, 2 cups water, and 1 cup ice. Ta da! Breakfast.

 An absolute FAVORITE way for us to prepare kale though, has become kale chips. It started before I became raw. I simply washed and broke up the kale into bite size pieces, put in on a pan, sprayed with cooking oil, sprinkled with salt, and put in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Simple, crunchy, delicious. I have since tried other ways of making them and by FAR this is my favorite. Best. Kale. Chips. Every time. I have to distract myself or else I'll be tempted to pull them out of the dehydrator before they're done, they're THAT good. (At a health food store, you would pay $5+ for a few ounces of these kind of chips.) This does require a dehydrator, you could probably make them in the oven just fine, but they're SO good when dehydrated. 

Start out by blending the following ingredients til smooth:

3 T nutritional yeast (not necessary, but gives a lot of flavor)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup raw cashews

1 bunch cilantro

1 T lemon juice

1 red, orange, or yellow pepper

1 jalapeno

1 t salt

In a separate bowl, have ready 2 bunches of kale, washed, and torn into bite size pieces 

Pour over the kale, massaging sauce so it covers every leaf. Put in the dehydrator for 8-10 hours at 110 degrees. Enjoy!

(before dehydrated)

(after)

Michael and I are taking a roadtrip tomorrow to California to visit his grandparents. I made a batch of this for the car ride. Sure, Michael has his potato chips but we will both be snacking on these the whole way down. They crunch the same, taste fresh, and my favorite thing about them: you know exactly what went into them. I am excited to show pictures here next week of California. Grandpa Wren keeps an impeccable garden and I am looking forward to learning about what he does and enjoying what he's grown! More to come...

Get your Wheaties!

If there was one thing I took away from the Sprouting Bootcamp a few weeks ago, it was the power of wheat. Unfortunately, when most people think "wheat" they probably think bread, bread that has most likely been overproccessed and contains little to none of the nutritional value of the original wheat kernel. Bread remains to be one of my "comfort foods" but now I have found a way to enjoy it guilt free, nutrients intact, along with wheat it its other various forms. Once again, I can do it all out of my own kitchen and feel good knowing exactly what process the wheat goes through, from a hard wheat kernel, to food in my stomach. Just a quick rundown on why wheat is so awesome: its the most nutritious sprout, and also the most versitle. Very high in fiber (fills you up), protein, amino acids, vitamin A, C, B complex, E, niacin, and pantothenic acid.

You can buy red spring wheat anywhere (usually) that sells in bulk. Soak the kernels overnight, rinse in the morning, and keep in a dark, damp area. (I usually keep mine in the strainer, as I will rinse the kernels 2-3x a day to keep them moist and then put a towel over the top.) In 2-3 days, they will sprout!
Once they are sprouted you can put 1 c of wheat in your blender with 5-6 cups of water and put on high.  Pour the drink into jars and stir 2x/day for 2-3 days for a fermented, probiotic drink called Rejuvelac. Michael won't touch this stuff because it looks funky (admittingly, the cloudy-ness doesn't do much for the drink aesthetically) but I know this stuff works! It can easily replace a soda habit and makes drinking water less boring, and its so cheap and easy to make! My first time having it, I was a bit repulsed by the fermentation. I gulped down a few more sips, and gradually I actually started liking it! I put some lemon juice in it for flavor, but now I can enjoy it plain. Give it a try, if you hate it, you hate it. Sometimes it takes some getting used to, but its great for digestion. (Toss the wheat "scraps" down at the bottom of the  jar once its made.)

I haven't started doing this...yet, but I intend to start once I have the resources. Taking sprouted wheat (shown above) to growing wheatgrass is not hard, simply take the sprouts and put them in soil on trays, water, cover, and grow! Wheatgrass drinks are known as the most nutritious drinks available, and aren't cheap to buy straight from the store (jamba juice sells wheatgrass shots for $3.50/ounce!). They also have a bad rep for being gross. I actually kind of like them, they aren't disgusting, but mostly I enjoy them for the health benefits. There is a lot of information out there about wheatgrass, if you are interested I would reference "Wheatgrass" the book by Ann Wigmore. 

Onto breads! I love the texture that this bread offers, although it lacks in the familiar "fluffyness" of enriched wheat flour that I was all too used to, it makes up for it when I add other ingredients to supplement it. For example, one of my favorite breads is made with sprouted wheat, apple, cinnamon, and raisins. Simply process and dehydrate! It is definately worth watching in the dehydrator, making sure it doesn't over dry to keep it moist and pliable.

Just a quick shout out to my hubby: Michael is a real sport when it comes to my obsession with raw foods. We do not, and never have had the same tastes. I knew he was probably going to propose to me the night that he did because he offered to take me to an upscale sushi restaraunt, my favorite, his least favorite. He's all-american, burgers, pizza etc. and I'm all about the spices and exotic flavors. I'm always trying to assimilate our tastes and make things that we both can enjoy, and it's not easy. I usually become a slave to my dehydrator for a few hours each weekend, trying to fill all nine trays desperately while he sits back and watches (our kitchen is WAY too small to fit two people in it.) I savor everything I make, and offer him the final result that he accepts, looks at skeptically, and swallows. Granted, he loves being healthier and eating more fruits and vegetables, but not because he necessarily loves them, like me. The other day, I made him a guacamole dip which I left innocently in the fridge for him to discover while at home.  A few hours later, he texted me, "the guacamole is EXCELLENT." That really made my day. We will find common ground on some things; on most things we differ, but that's ok. I am learning to bridge the gap more and more everyday.

Sprout me!

I have been learning so much about raw foods over the last few weeks I have hardly had time to absorb all of the information, let alone write about it! I am excited to get my thoughts semi-organized on my blog though, as I begin to share all of the valuable information I have acquired.
Nearly two weeks ago I went on an overnight stay to Katherine Scott's house, a local raw foodist and life coach. (She hosts the monthly potlucks that I go to as well.) It was for a "Sprouting Bootcamp." We learned all about raw food and made all of our meals together (it was fun being in a real size kitchen with other people helping out) in addition to learning about all sorts of sprouts, primarily wheatgrass and sunflower. All the the recipes we made had sprouts and we were given a sprouting jar which I immediately brought home and put to good use! I now have my alfalfa jar that I am constantly growing in, a few mason jars with sprouting lids, and the plastic container I got from the bootcamp, all simultaneously growing sprouts of all shapes and sizes! I love it! It really gives you a sense of accomplishment like, "I did this! And I'm benefiting from this!" which is irreplaceable.

 Oh, and did I mention it is SO EASY. Basic concept: soak, rinse, eat. The only thing that varies between sprouts is the soaking time, how often you rinse, and where you store them. Anyone can do this though. Really. Sprouts are powerhouses of nutrients as well, most packed with all of your B vitamins, as well as a slew of other vitamins and minerals. I also learned that a tablespoon of sesame has more than 3x the amount of calcium than in a glass of cows milk, without the leaching protein that steals from your bones in order to get digested. I have started putting sesame in my green smoothies; you can't even taste the difference. Another one of my new favorite things to do is wraps made from collard and chard leaves. It is the perfect edible wrap and provides you with more of your daily chorophyll!

Speaking of chorophyll, the more I get into raw foods, the more the sun really amazes me. If it weren't for the sun, life would not exist. We thrive off the sun; heck people pay good money to sit for 10 minutes in a gross bed to get their concentrated UV rays just for the sake of looking peachy! Seriously though, I am probably the most anti-tanning, pro-sunblock person in the entire world, and I cannot even deny the love I have for pure rays of light (not the fake bake kind either). Our bodies crave the vitamin D. We expose as much of our bodies as we can (without feeling indecent) for the sake of being tan. The sun is also the reason plants are able to grow, therefore eating plants is (stay with me here) like eating pure energy! Clean, pure, simple, yet uncomprehendable phytonutrients. Somehow, and I really do consider it a miracle, the sun transfers  itself into the ground, feeding the plant, causing it to grow and develop and thereby providing us with inner sunshine! So cheesy I know. But one green smoothie a day is all you need to feel the power that I'm referring to. If you have a blender (preferably a high speed blender, but anything will do) I challenge you to make a green smoothie everyday. Especially with so many fresh fruits in season right now, there really is no reason not to try it.