my first video blog!

So this is my first video blog, as I say several times and we will call it a practice run. I did figure out how to sync it up so next time will be better. If you feel like watching an unsync'd video of me making raw mac and cheese, here it is! It turned out really well and exemplifies the reason I end up with days where I eat 45% of my calories from fat ;)

Here is the recipe:
1/4 c Pine Nuts (soaked 2 hours)
1/4 c Cashews (soaked 2 hours)
1/8 c Filtered Water (plus or minus)
1 T Lemon Juice
1 T Nutritional Yeast
1/2 T Tahini
3/4 t Sea Salt
1 t Onion

Blend and serve over RAW veggie pasta

Mary's Secret Garden

Had a delicious meal at Mary's in Ventura tonight. I ordered the Rawviolis which were "jicama sheets filled with itallian herbed almond cheese topped with bell pepper marinara and basil pesto garnished with baby mixed greens and cherry tomatos". The cheese was GREAT and the bell pepper marinara was smooth and rich. Here's a link to the menu if you want to check it out MARY'S SECRET GARDEN For desert I had the Special which was a Raw German Chocolate Cake with Coconut Ice Cream. I attempted to take a picure, see above, but my camera phone wasn't great. It is SO good, especialy the coconut ice cram and chocolate ganache. The cake was great too but considering I am allergic to walnuts and it was packed full of them it was a little pain with my pleasure. I bought a pint of the coconut ice cream I will have to finish by tomorrow night. Alex said he would help ;)

Santa Monica

Yesterday I had the BEST day with Stacey (pictured above). She is my long time friend, one of my best friends, and we even have 4 matching tattoos together. We went to Real Food Daily in Santa Monica on Wednesday night. They had just opened up the other side of the restaurant, which was a remodel to include a take out/tapas type section you can grab to go or small items from. Well the wait was about 20 minutes so we went to the take out side to wait. It was their first night and they were very disorganized and we didn't get our food(snacks) until the table in the restaurant was ready and then they wouldn't let us take it to our table. Not even our tea. I'm sure they will work the system out but it was annoying. As far as raw food goes they didn't have a whole lot to offer at this location. I remember the Hollywood location having more options. It's a good thing I ordered before I remembered their NACHOS or I might have caved.

The next day we went to take our friend to the airport and we stopped at the co-op which had an overwhelming amount of packaged raw food, including fresh food from local businesses. Then we did some shopping, and went to Euphoria loves RAWvolution on Main. I got a smoothie, strawberry with young coconut. It was good but I felt it was not 8$ good. Certainly not as good as my smoothie from Juliano's Raw pictured above. We went to the beach after that and then I went and got my hair cut by Stacey's friend Eric. He did a really grest job turning it into a much better version of what it was supposed to be before. Yay! After that we went to Juliano's.

We started with an AMAZING Chocolate Shake for Stacey and a "Iced Coffee" Smoothie for me. Next we moved onto soups. Our Avocado and Warm Totilla Soups (pictured above) were SO great, and even better mixed together!

Then they brought our entres. I was already getting full as the soup and smoothie were rich and delicious and I have been eating mostly fruit and salad on this trip. I was overwhelmed by the size and beauty of our plates.
Stace got the Lasagna with creamy cashew cheese and sundried tomato sauce. It came with a cabbage slaw and some "steamed" veggies.

I got the "Western Bacon Burger" which came with slaw, "steamed" veggies, and Zucchini fries.
I was warned previously that Juliano's wasn't very good because the food was over processed and hard to digest. I found that the soup and smoothie were very digestable and delicious. The fries were a little over done, the burger was good but I can see were they were coming from. However as a treat, especialy if you are new to raw foods or on a vacation, you should definetly go for it because of the novelty alone and the experience.

Everyday Raw...

So someone on goneraw was talking up this cookbook and I thought, hey that sounds great. The title really did it for me, since I know I can make fancy raw food, but what does one eat day to day??? I ordered it on amazon, it came the next day, I didn't even order 1 day, all good omens so far. So happily I read the book. All you other food nerds who get a cookbook and proceed to read it cover to cover the first day, you are in good company. This is what I thought:

• Pretty pictures (sounds funny but it helps)
• A few recipes that could be staples
• Many recipes that call for young Thai coconut
• Many nut heavy recipes
• Many recipes I will never make

Buuuut... let's be honest, most of the time I don't use recipes anyway. I just learn HOW to make stuff and through it together on my own. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. I think overall $13 whatever that I paid for this book was worth it. If the corn chips rule it will be worth the money just for that. 

Today I made a recipe almost entirely from the book, minus parsley, which I didn't have and I think it's gonna be great. 

Quinoa Tabbouleh

1 C soaked and sprouted Quinoa

1 C Tomato (diced)

1 C Cucumber (diced)

1/4 C minced Red Onion

1/2 C Flat Leaf Parsley

1/4 cup Olive Oil

3 T Lemon Juice

1 t Salt

Drain Quinoa, transfer to a medium bowl and let marinate in olive oil, lemon juice and salt for 30 min- 1 hour. Add remaining ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

I used way less dressing, I don't need that much Oil! I also just mixed it all together and let it marinate as one. It is marinating right now and I can wait to eat it! Oh and I threw some Avo on top. Guess I am getting that oil anyway ;)

So in the picture I think you can see all the cute little sprouts from my quinoa. Some people say they can't eat sprouted (uncooked) quinoa, this will be my first time eating a large quantity, we will see if it hurts my tummy.

If you cheat to win, you still won...

So over the past few days I have had some successes and failures in raw food land. I made a DELICIOUS Kale Avocado salad, courtesy of Nicole, my once and future boss. And I made DISGUSTING cauliflower mashed potatoes and mushroom almond gravy (no thanks to you GONERAW!!!). Well I still love gone raw but this should really teach me to make SMALL batches of new recipes instead of just diving in and wasting a WHOLE head of cauliflower and bag of scrumptious little mushrooms. I got a new raw food cookbook called Everyday Raw... I will write a review of it under a whole separate blog. Anyway, I have had a few lightly cooked dinners (come on guys, 4 in 20 days isn't so bad) but today I kinda blew it. I am not mad at myself I am just going to keep going which is great. I ate an ENTIRE BLUEBERRY DONUT at work today (don't worry! vegan of course). I was just going to have a little taste, since today was the first day of the seasonal donut, and it IS my favorite donut, well I started "tasting" and what do you know? I was half way through the donut. At that point I was like "fuck it" and finished it. It is funny because after I ate it I started having coffee cravings and I have not craved coffee once this whole time. I know it has to be because I used to always have coffee and a donut for breakfast in the mornings on the first break, and I am sure my body was saying, "hey a donut! better get ready for that coffee" and stared producing whatever it produces to break down coffee. Which made me crave it. It was my first wheat product and processed sugar in 20 days and I am a little bummed I did that to my body, but it's ok, part of my little raw food experiment is learning about my food addictions and bad little eating patterns and I feel like I can let this mistake go and not falter, which is kinda big for me. I think I may have followed the donut with another and a cup of coffee with soymilk in the past. So good for me.

A little nervous about california eating, but I think it will be alright. If I eat a little crappy food I will just recover and keep on going.

Kale Avocado Salad

1 Bunch of Kale (washed and torn)

1 Avocado (diced)

1 Lg Tomato (chopped)

2 T Olive oil

1 T Lemon Juice

1/2-1 t Sea Salt (depending on taste)

Put it all in a bowl together and smush it all up in your fingers, massage the salt, oil, and lemon juice into the kale. Eat right away or let it marinate a while. Such a good way to eat your kale!

food of valhalla

Seriously. Blanche thinks so too... She's been trying to lick the jar the entire time I was trying to take this picture so I let her have a staring role.

I just made a new pudding for desert, and while it is setting I just wanted to share how glorious this product Artisana "raw coconut butter" is. Go get some.

So the new pudding recipe, which I think would make a good "whip cream" as well is:

2 Dates

1/2 Banana

2 T Coconut Butter

1 T Raw Cashew Butter

1 t Vanilla 

And about 1/4 cup water to smooth it out.

I blended it all up and let it go awhile gradually increasing the speed and I watched it GROW, which guess what? means it was WHIPPING... you know what that means? WHIP FUCKING CREAM. I am going to save a Tablespoon or two to have on my raw oatmeal breakfast tomorrow morning. More on that tomorrow.

A failure?

I've been eating (almost- nutritional yeast, miso, and vinegar being my exceptions) entirely raw for about 2 weeks now and yesterday I decided to have some popcorn. I feel pretty guilty about it. I am trying not to feel like I failed as I haven't commited to anything or made any kind of resolution or anything concerning my rawness. I just said I would do it as long as I felt like it. I have a hard time not making everything so black or white. 

I didn't really WANT to eat it... I just started feeling depressed about all the things I wouldn't be able to eat again if I stayed on raw foods and I decided I didn't want to be 100% and I ate something cooked to finalize it. Then I had acid reflux. And I felt upset that I broke my good streak. I need to just take it day by day and not think about next winter and how I'm going to want hot soup. I got right back on my raw regime after I fucked up... I think I kinda need to do that to remind myself why I am eating this way. Next week when I go on vacation I am not yet sure what I will do. I guess I should plan on not staying raw so that I won't be so disappointed in myself if I end up eating cooked food, and just do my best... I can always go back if I get off track.