summer food adventures

Claire's birthday dinner table.

This summer (and spring), I tried lots of foods for the first time.  Here is a fairly comprehensive list:

• Duck
• Lobster
• Sushi 
• Kohlrabi
• Lamb
• Ghee
• Dragonfruit
• Mussels
• Squid seviche
• Venison
• Rambutan
• Sheep's milk cheese
• Smoked bluefish
• Breadfruit
• Passionfruit
• Guava
• Grilled calamari
• Mung bean pasta

And more, I'm sure, that I'm not remembering.  This has been an expansive year for me, food-wise and beyond.  Before July, I had been a strict vegetarian for 5 years.  Clearly times have changed!  Here are some recent food pictures:

Lobster.

My pizza - buckwheat/coconut crust, sauteed onions and leeks, steamed summer squash, black olives and goat chevre.

Claire's pizza - the same except +steamed beets and -black olives.

The king of fruit!  Durian leftovers headed for the compost.

goodbye july

July was chock full.  Not a moment to spare.  And mostly hazy in my memory already.  Luckily, I have these photos (and many pages of journal entries).  

And now August!  I am positively thrumming with change.  For those of you who are familiar with tarot, my Tower is majorly falling right now.  For those of you who are familiar with astrology, I'm really feeling the mercury retrograde.  Just when I think I'm definitely at my limit now, another intense situation comes rolling on in.  Life is crazy.  Life is good.  The intensity helps me not take things for granted.  It clears away the unimportant stuff so I can be grateful for all these experiences.  And that's what I'm carrying with me into this month; gratitude.

In gratitude,

Mada

Pictures:

1. Claire on the beach in Charlestown, Rhode Island.  My father and his girlfriend rented a house right on the water for a week.
2. My beautiful sister Camille in RI.
3. Claire follows my dad's strict (and highly effective) sand removal regime.
4. Wildflowers for my love.
5. Claire at the kitchen table.
6. Our other cat, Sherlock, gets a closer look at the mechanics of my camera.
7. Amazing fresh burrito fixings- homemade buckwheat tortillas, local pork sausage, homemade salsa fresca, red leaf lettuce and perfectly ripe avocados.
8. And the final burrito!  
9. One of my favorite ways to spend an early morning; taking a quiet swim in the beautiful lake, then air-drying while I drink a mug of tea.
10. Wild carrot, wild grape and staghorn sumac at the dam.
11. Gorgeous kale from the farm.  I've been living on green smoothies.
12. Summer salad- salad greens and cukes from the farm, avocado, olive oil, salt.

Summer in March...

Raw lasagna, kale salad and carob truffles.

and I'm eating outside!  BLISS!  Nothing better than dinner in the warm, breezy backyard at 6pm.  Claire and I took full advantage of the warmth yesterday evening and made a gorgeous, Spring-y meal.  Raw lasagna, kale salad and carob truffles.  I'm so busy doing things most of the time that I rarely sit for a consciously-prepared meal.  It's usually a salad thrown together on the fly, or a hastily blended smoothie, so it was a real treat to slow down and prepare something like this!

Oddly enough, this was my first attempt to make raw lasagna.  I think it turned out pretty well, especially considering I wasn't following a recipe.

Raw Lasagna recipe

• 1 zucchini, sliced horizontally into this strips
• 1/2 cup of tomato sauce (recipe below)
• 1/4 cup 'rawcotta' cheese (recipe below)
• a large handful of spinach leaves
• 1/2 avocado, thinly sliced
• chopped fresh dill or basil to garnish (optional)

To begin, make a square layer of zucchini strips.  Cover with a layer of spinach, then a layer of tomato sauce, then a layer of cheese, then another layer of zucchini... etcetera, etcetera.  You can really layer the ingredients in any order you like.  Don't feel oppressed by instructions.  Stick it to the man.  Break free!  :)  When it's all layered up, stick it in the dehydrator for 10 minutes at 145℉, just to warm it up.  Enjoy!

***

Tomato Sauce recipe

• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 1 tbs. olive oil
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3-5 drops liquid stevia
• 2 tsp. dried basil, or about 10 large fresh basil leaves

Combine in blender and blend until smooth.

***

'Rawcotta' recipe
Disclaimer: this is almost nothing like ricotta cheese, but it is delicious!

•  1/2 cup macadamia nuts
• 2 tbs. hemp seeds
• 1 large clove of garlic, pressed
• 1 tbs. olive oil
• 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1-2 tsp. salt
• dash of black pepper

Put macadamia nuts in a food processor and process until crumbly.  Add other ingredients and process to a paste.

***

Carob Truffle recipe

• 1/2 cup carob powder
• 1/4 cup almond butter
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 15-25 drops liquid stevia
• 1 tsp. salt

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until doughy, then form into balls.  A note on carob: IT IS DELICIOUS.  I love chocolate/cacao, but it's really hard on my body and drives me completely bonkers, prevents me from sleeping and one time, memorably, caused me to lose consciousness in the shower.  Good times.  I almost never eat chocolate now, and I actually prefer carob!

Claire made the kale salad, and it was beautiful. 

Yummmm.

All in all, a wonderful meal.  I can't wait to have more in the future!

In love and gratitude,
Mada

(Happy Spring!)

Roffle-offle

Otherwise known as Raw Falafel!

This is one of my favorite recipes- quick, easy, satisfying, delicious.

  Raw Falafel Recipe 

  - 2 cups soaked sunseeds
  - 1 tbs. tahini
  - 3 cloves garlic
  - 1/4 cup chopped red onion
  - 1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley
  - 1 tbs. ground coriander seed
  - 1 tbs. cumin
  - salt to taste

Soak the sunseeds for at least 8 hours, or overnight.  Once they're done soaking, rinse well and drain.  Combine all ingredients in the food processor and process until well combined, but still fairly chunky.  Form into balls and place on a dehydrator tray covered by parchment paper (or a Teflex sheet).

 

Dehydrate 4-6 hours, and ENJOY!

These are awesome because of their amazing texture- crisp on the outside, soft and warm on the inside.  I like to eat them crumbled up on salad wraps or just plain.  They keep in the fridge for about a week, and they travel well!

In other news, spring is coming here in CT!  Claire and I had a picnic at the Mansfield Hollow Dam today- salad, etc. on a blanket in the grass.  I took pictures, but they were film and I haven't developed them yet.  I got some old film developed, though!  Check it out here.

In love and gratitude-

Mada

Wrap-ture

Good title, right?

Oftentimes when people find out about how I eat, they say something to the effect of, "... so you eat, like, salad?"

Usually that's the point at which I try to convince our hypothetical person that I'm not a salad-crazed lunatic by talking about more complex dishes; nuts, seeds, dehydrated treats, pizzas, pates, cakes, cookies, etcetera.   But I have to say, deep in my heart of raw hearts, SALADS ARE MY FAVORITE.  And wraps?  Wraps are just another way to bask in the green glory.  (Shimmy shimmy.)

The past few days I have been living off the most simple, satisfying salad wraps you could possibly imagine.  Here's the basic recipe:

• Salad.  This can, obviously, mean a number of things.  Greens, dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, whatevah.  Be creative!
• Sprouts.  Alfalfa, chickpea, sunseed, pea shoots, etc.
• Avocado, slice-y or dice-y.
• Optional: a nut/seed pate of some sort.

Then you basically just throw it all in a wrapper of some sort.  I've been using either collard greens or sheets of nori (or one on top of the other!).  Delicious, nutritious as all get out, physically gorgeous; what more do you want?

Wrap party.  (I'm hilarious.)

Camille gettin' down with a wrap-to-be.

So wrappable.

KALE PESTO!  (With a few changes, of course.  I can't help but personalize.)

Spreading the wrap-ture.

Avocado nirvana.

Camille taking a closer look.

Oh, isn't it beautiful?

Mia mamma creating her collard-nori wrap.

My lunch-wrap today.  Oh my god.

Featuring: Claire's red pepper pate.

Ahhhhhhh.  Highly recommended. 

In other news, as of last night I can officially hold a headstand!  YES!  After taking a long walk with the lovely Claire this morning, we both spent about half-an-hour experimenting with upside-down-ness in the family room.  I have videos.  And this picture of Claire:

I love this girl.

In love, gratitude and yogic excitement-
Mada

Pizza party, a la live!

On May 2nd, I fly to Italy with my mother, three siblings, Claire and her sister Grace, and my friend Joe (to help support our vision, click here!).  We'll be staying for two weeks, traipsing around the Italian countryside, taking Roma and Firenze by force, flailing with delight at the Adriatic Sea and otherwise having a blast.  After the two weeks are over, everyone will fly home to old CT except for Claire and me; we'll be heading to France for a week to stay in a flat in Paris and a chateau south of Bordeaux (it even rhymes!).  In preparation for the Italian section of the trip, all the travelers have been meeting once a week to learn the language and discuss logistics and, yesterday, to truly immerse ourselves in the Italian experience via pizza!  My brother (Declan, 12) created a masterpiece of risen dough and melted cheese:

Holy red sauce, Batman.

But I didn't want to eat that because I knew the consequences would be horrific.  So I planned ahead, and made a raw pizza!  The recipe is as follows:

• 2 cups sprouted buckwheat, blended
• 2 tbs ground flax seed
• 2 large carrots, grated
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 tbs. olive oil
• 2 tbs. italian seasoning
• 2 tsp. Celtic sea salt
• 1 tsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. black pepper
• water if needed

Combine everything in the food processor:

Process until smooth:

Spread on a dehydrator tray covered by a sheet of parchment paper (or a Teflex sheet) until round and no more than a 1/4 inch thick:

Dehydrate for 8 hours or overnight, until the crust looks like this:

Made extra yummy by sunlight!

And your crust is all set!  While I was making the crust, Claire created a beautiful sampling of raw 'roasted' veggies- zucchini, portobello mushrooms, broccolette- and an amazing raw cheese spread.  I sliced some tomatoes and she sliced up some olives and we layered it all on!

Juicy!

Claire diligently spreading.

Zucchini...

Portobello strips...

Olives...

Then I created a raw parmesan-type sprinkle.  The recipe:

• 1/4 cup hemp seeds
• 1/4 cup brazil nuts
• 1 clove of garlic
• salt to taste

Process in the food processor until sprinkle-able:

Sprinkle on the pizza:

SO

BEAUTIFUL

And enjoy!

It was very delicious, but so filling that I'm still feeling it the next day!  Definitely an occasional meal, not an everyday affair.  Phew.  I'm really glad I made it- it's been three years since I got into raw food and I've never once made a pizza! 

Today I'll be eating a lot lighter than yesterday, hopefully utilizing some of the many items sprouting in the kitchen!  Sprouting is kind of an addiction- pictured below we have garbanzo beans, sunseeds, pepitas, red lentils and sesame seeds.

It's getting a little out of control!

Love and light-
Mada