Wednesday, August 12, 2009





Breakfast:



Blueberry Banana Shake

2 cups frozen blueberries
1  sliced frozen banana
½ bottle purple seven juice
1 fresh peach, diced
4 frozen black berries




Lunch:
1/2 cantaloupe




















RAW by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein is a book I adore.
I bought it on sight as soon as I saw it in a bookstore years ago, way before raw .
The photos made it a cookbook I had to have .
The recipes looked like a good idea for special occasions, but at the time, not for my everyday life.
I just didn’t eat with such attention to fresh ingredients then.
Now I look at the book with new eyes and with new taste buds to please.
I will be working on filling my pantry with the list of things that make up the “Basic Recipes” section in the back of the book.
RAW in capital letters!
I like that- like a stand.










 Now I want better equipment.
I smirk now at myself.
I am just beginning to get some idea on how to use what I have.
Just..
Beginning !!!
My greedy instincts just want new stuff, more toys to play with.

Back to what I have…
I was inspired by this photo:


from RAW by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein


 My ordinary blender made some soup today.









 ½ cucumber, peeled and chopped
3 cups chopped heirloom tomato and juice
½ ear corn, removed from cob
6yellow raisins, chopped
Italian seasonings to taste
Himalayan pink salt to taste
Cheyenne pepper to taste

Blend until smooth.
Place serving in bowl. Garnish with fresh corn removed from cob, julienne cucumber, sliced sun dried tomato
This made two servings.






 I loved this soup!
I’m so used to having crackers with soup.
I usually have some Rawvolution’s onion bread on hand, but no more.
Now I’m doing it for myself.
Thankfully the corn gave me some great texture.
I think I will omit the cucumber as a blended ingredient and just use it for garnish.
I found the soup starting to separate near the end of the meal.









I also want dessert tonight.

Blueberry Pudding.








My first try using an avocado for dessert. I finally got the avocado to ripen in a brown bag.


1 very ripe banana diced
1 ripe avocado chopped
2 cups fresh blueberries

Blend, refrigerate, eat

I should type blend-eat.
The pudding was just the thing to hit the spot.
I'm not sure how solid it will get.
My pudding sat in the refrigerator, calling me for ten minuets before I ate it.









These are more photos from RAW that I want to make and eat.

Friday, August 7, 2009




Dinner was great.
Better than great, actually.
The sauce was better than I remember cooked sauce being.
The onions and garlic were soft and beginning to get crunchy four hours after I put them in to dehydrate.
I diced them before I added them to the sauce.
I keep wanting the zucchini to be a little drier as a pasta.
By the time I'd eaten the dish the water from the zucchini had mixed with the sauce so the last few bites were too wet. The gravy lost some of it's lovely chunky texture and the flavor was less intense.
I need to do something different until I get a spiralizer...
My aim is to see how much I can create without buying new equipment.
I need research on how to improve my skills making pasta without a spiralizer.
I wonder if some finely ground nut flower sprinkled over fully drained zucchini noodles would do the trick.
Maybe I will have to dehydrate them a little, then toss them in the nut flower to get the texture I'm thinking of.







Back to the wedding dress...hand sewing cording to the inside of the slip so that the tulle can be bustled during the reception...seems to be taking all day... Dvd's in the background... watching season one of true blood, the shining, full metal jacket and a BBC version of Jane Eyre while sewing.





Living in the Raw Desserts by Rose Lee Calabro- the desserts seem very heavy as I read the ingredients.
It was written in 2007.
Lots of dates and figs.
Raw Desserts in LA seem to be so light right now.
I watched an interview with the chef Rachel at Cru Restaurant on YouTube a while ago.
The chef mentioned her cheesecake being light and fluffy because they add the pulp from juiced apples to create the cool and light taste cheesecake should have. The apple pulp also added to a lighter finished product.

I would have included the link but I can't.
It was in interview part 7 or part 8.
Both parts of the interview have been removed from YouTube.

I have not been to Cru Restaurant.( maybe for my birthday)
I need to figure out how to divide the recipes in the raw books down so I can make one or two servings.
I can spread two servings of dessert over an entire week.
I have been eating raw for almost a year now and desserts seem to be the key for me keeping my energy up when I exercise everyday.

I finally got my hands on The Book of Tarts by Maury Rubin.
I heard about this book before raw.
The desserts look allot like raw desserts look here in LA.
No that's not right...maybe they look like the raw desserts really taste?
...funny, the book was printed in 1995 but the items in the photos look soooooo good. The desserts (not the photos or the style of the book) look so current.

When I get to make them out of ingredients I can eat ...heaven!
It wont be for some time now, but when I'm ready to start making my own desserts (with yields for one or two desserts).- the book of tarts by Mr. Rubin and the Matthew Kenney dessert recipes used in combination should send me on my way.

prep work for dinner


zucchini pasta with red sauce







For the red pasta sauce:

thinly slice 1/2 red onion
slice 2 cloves garlic big slices
splash olive oil


lay out on rack to dehydrate until ready to eat dinner.







I then combined in a large bowl :

2 cups homemade tomato paste (sun-dried tomatoes run through blender)

2 cups home canned beefsteak style tomatoes, chopped with juice
1 small can corn
1 large bay leaf
handful dried Italian seasoning
fresh basil
I am going to let the bowl of sauce marinate at room temperature until onions and garilc are ready...or dinner time.

Thinking about the wedding dress all night...not well rested but excited about this project.
I need something to get my eyes going. After so many years sewing working on black garments and white garment get to be hard to see these days.

So for breakfast:



1 banana
2 cups frozen blueberries
1 cup frozen raspberries
1 1/4 cup almond milk spiked with raw chocolate powder, chai spice
1 cup sliced peaches














4 strips eggplant bacon












3 handfuls nut dried fruit mix









Carrington is as excited about today's smoothie.
I think he loves the chai spices. When I open the container to use them he appears.
He lapped up his share and asked for seconds!

Thursday, August 6, 2009






I am working on a custom bridal gown.
I work on the dresses from the body out layer by layer.
This is the underlining.
I always request the bride purchase a bustier style bra.
(this bride didn't- only a pretty strapless bra.)
I've sewn the bra in and made the support needed for the strapless dress I'm making.
I also almost finished the slip.
I want the slip to detach because of the full tulle at the bottom.
tomorrow I will figure out how to put cording up the back of the tulle and somehow keep it invisible.
When I'm working so focused on a project I drink juice.
No cooking.
today's juice:
13 glasses spinach, carrot, watermelon, beet, apple, cucumber juice
I picked up a copy of Living in the raw desserts by Rose Lee Calabro to look through before bed.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009





I always stay with a cookbook with food porn photos.
Everyday Raw got most of my attention yesterday.
The ideas are simple and the photos ...are just beautiful.




I have two eggplants from my veggie box this week so I will worked on eggplant bacon.







I made eggplant bacon for the first time two weeks ago using a recipe online. It called for a ripe avocado, liquid smoke..etc

http:/detoxdarling.com/recipe-raw-vegan-bacon

Then I came across a recipe that used beet juice...













http:/goneraw.com/recipe/bacon

I'm allergic to soy and peppers so I needed to make some adjustments for this side dish.
I used 1 teaspoon curry powder, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, 1/4 cut olive oil from the sun-dried tomatoes, diced onion, diced garlic for a sort of chutney.
I spooned it on top of the drained eggplant, pressing it into the eggplant right before I dehydrated it.










These really shrunk.
I thought I had visitors in the night who ate the bacon! Two eggplant shrunk down to on third what I thought I would get.


I am still reading Living Cuisine.


Several recipes cook the food in some way.
...raw? Hmmmm....
Strange.
Maybe in the fall...when it's cooler.
Still working on reading the entire book.
Wish there were photos to accompany the recipes.

Yesterday:
Most of the day was spent sewing...

Breakfast:
2 Purple Seven Drinks

Mid morning:
1 glass beet juice
1 glass pear cucumber juice
2 glasses beet, apple watermelon juice


Lunch:
1 PranaBar coconut acai (not raw)


Dinner:
More juice






My first try was the recipe from detoxdarling .
Eggplant bacon with beet juice as a finished product is tougher than my first try, more like a jerky. I think the avocado is really missing.
The avocado added a fatty texture to the finished product. (This week none of my avocados seem to be ripening)
I was afraid to use the liquid smoke again because I'm not sure of the ingredients and my allergies.
I also could not use any of the pepper, cayenne or chili paste.
With as much work as I put into today's product-I preferred my first try.
The eggplant had the proper crunch and taste to replaced the light crispy crunch and salty flavor of bacon.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Dinner:
 
blueberry chi chocolate smoothie
  15 oz peaches
1 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1 cup chocolate chai rice dream
blend

zucchini noodles and leftovers

breakfast:

two handfuls of my nut and dried fruit mix
nut and dried fruit mix
1 1/3 cups raw walnuts
1 cup chopped dried black mission figs
2/3 cup yellow raisins
1/3 cup dried ginger diced into small strips
1/2 cup raw almonds
(I add walnuts during the week because I tend to grab those easiest and dried ginger because Carrington likes ginger tossed at him for a treat)


mid morning:

smoothie
1 banana
2 cups frozen blueberries
1/2 cup apple juice
1/2 cup chocolate almond milk
2 ice cubes
blend till smooth
I wanted to add avocado for the first time this morning but they are not ripe yet.

Lunch:

Last week I made some spicy walnut taco mix. I only had a small amount let and a lot of the corn tomato salsa.
I don't have a spiralizer so I sliced a zucchini into a sort of pasta, crumbled the last of the taco mix, grated some carrot for garnish.
I let it sit until it warmed up.
Spicy walnut taco mix:
1 1/2 cups walnuts
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
pinch cayenne
The recipe calls for a blending of the ingredients but my blender was not up to the job so I chopped it all by hand.
I added 4 sun dried tomato (sliced into ribbons), 6 black kalamata olive (diced).
Then I finely diced  and folded in a mixture of 1/3 a Vidalia onion,  1/8 a red onion and 1 clove garlic
Corn Tomato Salsa
2 ears corn sliced from cob
16 heirloom cherry tomatoes of various colors
1 cucumber diced
fresh cilantro
1/2 avocado diced
6 sun dried tomatoes chopped
(After a few days of eating this I will keep the cucumber separate so that I can drain the liquid easier as I assemble and use the Salsa.)
Tonight I will be reading through Matthew Kenney's every day raw and Rennee Loux Underkoffler's Living Cuisine.
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