No Monday Morning Blues Here!

The title of todays blog comes from my mum, I imagine she thought it was suitable while watching me happy dance around the house looking forward to this raw pizza which was todays lunch..

On Friday night I went to a screening of 'Simply Raw, Reversing Diabetes in 30 days'. Its a really inspirational documentary of a group of 6 people of different backgrounds who all have diabetes and are challenged to be 100% raw for 30 days to see if the disease can be cured. The screening was at Soul Tree Cafe in Glenforrest and I had a really delicious dinner before hand, there were too many awesome choices so i decided on a taster plate. Good choice! Since the movie Ive been feeling even more enthusiastic and inspired. So many people are healing their bodies and their lives on this stuff! Yay, what an awesome time space reality we are in and how blessed I feel to have found this lifestyle.

The following pictures are recipes or slight variations on recipes from 'Raw Food Reawakening' by Karen Bartz. Its a seriously cool book with recipes for all occasions and loads of information on transitioning to raw and staying raw. Karen also does various classes and retreats. Find out more about Karen here

Pictured below are mushrooms stuffed with cashew and ruby chard cheese!! On a bed of cos lettuce without slugs for a change. (recently Ive had heaps of close calls with slugs on their way from my bowl to my mouth, yesterday i even found one marinating in my 'satay sauce')



Now for a prima piece of raw pizza!



And to finish up, cheery chunk of 'christmas cake'. This ones a real winner. Its got the main cake part made of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and spices in the middle with a layer of 'marzipan icing' in between and cashew icing on top. I decorated mine with strawberries, walnuts and violets.




You'll have to buy the book for the recipes!

stRAWberry and mango Icecream

Need i say more?

This is Bliss in a glass. I made the strawberry one first, just blended up heaps of organic strawberries and poured it in the icecream maker, then when it was ready I scooped her into a container and left her in the freezer to wait for her other half. I did the same with the mango, blended it and poured into the icecream maker.
You could make this without an icecream maker by just freezing the fruit first then blending or processing it.



Here's my little friend resigned to the fact she wasn't getting any of my icecream curled up inside some yellow 'green' bags next to my desk. She makes my heart sing.

Quiche and a bit of Bliss

I made the base for this raw quiche a while ago and had it in the freezer. This week i needed to make room the freezer and I found the quiche base so decided to use it. I made a filling of mushrooms, baby spinach, nutritional yeast, tamari, and cashews. Then I topped it with sliced mushrooms and tomato, and dehydrated it for about an hour. It was unbelieveable!

Here are some bliss balls I made for a recent raw food picnic. I usually just throw ingredients in the food processor so i dont really have a recipe. But I find the best ones are made using dates or sultanas to sweeten.

This picture is more about my blueberry plant. Im so proud of it! Its still quite small but has quite afew berries on it this year and I'm waiting eagerly for them to ripen.

We found another huge box of advocados at the markets the other week, so Ive been experimenting with guacamole. Making it in a food processor makes it so creamy, I add a squeeze of lemon juice, a pinch of sea salt and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

And heres a nice celery, apple and carrot juice, so refreshing in the warming weather. These glasses are so cool, they are made from recycled glass.

Sensational Seaweed

An exciting few days on the food front for me! Id been wanting to try Kelp noodles for such a long time and this week I decided was the week to spoil myself. So on Wednesday I brought home my package of Kelp noodles, and excitedly thought of ways to eat them. Alot of the recipes make a kind of satay sauce so i decided to make my own version, just using tahini, tamari, garlic, ginger and a splash of water. I used my hands to rub the sauce through half the package of noodles then set it aside while I chopped up some vegetables. The first day I added grated carrot, broccoli, capsicum and spring onion.

The second day I used the same satay sauce but added green beans, capsicum, tomato and spring onion.
Both were delicious!

Thursday morning I went to the beach quite early and managed to find some red algae. Someone from the Perth raw food picnics had used some recently and a recipe had been included in the recent newsletter. you can find the newsletter here So I was pretty eager to find some and to my delight I recognised it right away.

I made the chocolate mousse but without the lecithin so it separated a bit. Was still very mousse like and tasted fantastic. But I couldnt get a good picture of it so you'll have to try and make it yourself!

Whoz dat??!!

"Whoz dat?" my littlest friend wondered as she parted the blinds with her nose and peered through. It was the postman and he was delivering a very exciting box. Well the box wasnt so exciting, but the thing in it was!!! It was my new icecream maker! I opened it up eagerly and got straight to work making my first batch of raw icecream. I can't remember the exact recipe because I just threw stuff in the blender, but it was a banana base with carob, cacao, dates, spirulina ( i couldnt resist) and i cant remember what else, but it tasted just like a chocolate milkshake. And into the icecream maker it went. Very fascinating, watching it go around and around and around and around... And about half an hour later there was icecream!!! It was still a bit soft but i couldnt wait to try it.

Mmmmm Delicious!! However after I had frozen it for a few hours it became super hard and unscoopable but I have a few ideas of how that occured so I'll try some things and let you know how it goes!
Meanwhile here are some other random pictures. It's been a while since my last post, partly because of problems with the good camera (it's a bit frustrating when everything turns out blurry!), partly because I've started a new course and finally because I havent been preparing much food lately (GASP!).
Here's a 'custard' that I made a few weeks ago, its made of oranges, cashews and vanilla pod. I just think it looks lovely with the flowers on top!

My body has been asking for simpler foods lately. So my meals have been plates of plain vegetables and fresh fruits and a few nuts and seeds. And it feels great!

And heres something random i came up with today but it was so delicious and easy to make I decided to share it. They are apple sandwiches. Just slices of apple with homemade sunflower seed butter, sultanas and dried coconut! yum

Oh My, its Pancakes and Lime Pie!

One day last week I felt particularly pancakey. So I blended up the flesh of 2 young coconuts, an apple, an orange and a 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed, spread them on a dehydrator sheet and set the timer to finish during the night so that next morning I would have delicious pancakes for breakfast. In the morning I briefly turned the dehydrator back on to warm them gently, while I made some banana icecream and chocolate sauce to go with them. Then i assembled it all and topped with a few chopped nuts. What a treat!



Last weekend I went to a wholesale fruit and veg market and got some real bargains. A big box of advocados (62 of them!!) for only $15! and 7 kgs of bananas for $12.50. I managed to fit most of the bananas in the freezer to make more banana icecream.
So the next question was, what to do with all those advocados?! Well I'd seen a recipe for raw advocado lime pie that I wanted to try and I still had a lime in the fridge so i decided to give it a try. I didnt have all of the other ingredients in the recipe so i made my own variation. The filling was simply made of advocado, lime juice, agave and a small amount of coconut oil, oh and also a tiny bit of spirulina for some extra green. The base was made of dates, walnuts and activated almonds. Although the filling ended up a little too runny it was pretty delicious.

Ostara

Last night I created a bit of a feast to celebrate the Spring Equinox with my parents. They didnt know what we were going to be celebrating, but any excuse for nice food will do for them. So I made cooked Hot Cross Buns, Lemon Meringue Pie and Asparagus soup for them, as well as Raw chocolate eggs (pictured below in the nests). Id been looking for chocolate moulds ever since easter but just about given up until last week I went into a cake decorating shop and there were all sorts of easter themed moulds. It was so exciting.

And then I made my variation of one of shannonmarie's recipes which is a bit like raw shepherds pie. And I decorated it to look a bit spring like. The stalk of asparagus was an extra special treat for spring!



And heres something really delicious I made one day last week. I had heaps of zucchini that needed eating and theres only so much zucchini fettuccini one can eat. So I blended up some zucchini with some herbs and flax meal and spread it out on a dehydrator sheet, dehydrated for about 4 hours on one side, the 1 hour on the other. Then filled it with heaps of vegies and wrapped it up! It tasted so good, and held together well. The greens are chickory from the garden, which is growing very nicely.