Raw Gifts for Christmas!

i got some raw food gifts this christmas.
two raw cookbooks


knife set with block from grandma



mandolin slicer from my sister



Thanks so much everyone!

good no good?

we had a great day in seattle last saturday. and the evenings meal was at a nice seafood restaurant on the waterfront. i ate too much of the delicious crab dip, calamari, crabcakes, rolls.. it was all very rich ans delicious. but i did notice the next day i had a little headache and i was noticeably clumsy, like discombobulated.

oh food, you were yummy but you did me wrong.

i bought some apples so i can have fresh raw juice.

this is what it's like sometimes in a fancy heatlh food store : http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=121210

completely raw cereal

goatmilk from st.john's creamery:




Local Raw Honey:




completely raw and sprouted breakfast!:

right under my nose

i was looking online for more raw recipes as inspirartion to help me stay on this diet. i wanted a snack and i realized that right on my desk was this bag that my boyfriends mom had sent us. "Chantrelle Jerky."



i know these look scary, but they taste like flavorful salty jerky. dried mushroom like this would usually be pricey, except that she gathers them in the forest for free.
i got to ask her for the recipe to this, the seasonings would also be great on thicker slices of dried zucchini.

here a goat, there a goat...

last saturday, a coworker, boyfriend and I visited a local raw goat milk dairy, St.John's Creamery. http://stjohncreamery.com/index.html it took only ten minutes to get there. and it was at the end of a normal looking neighborhood street. Marcia St.JOhn, the owner was very nice and showed us all around and introduced us to her animals. the goats where very quietly and friendly. she calls them all by name and they come running.



i took a lot of pictures, which you can see at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062124&id=27500177&l=88b955acc3

i shot a little video:





i missed the part where marcia was talking about a clinic in the 20s and 30s that took patients that had TB and such, and put them on an all raw milk diet, and they all improved, even after medicine hadn't done anything for these people. the doctor was then convinced that food is the key to health.

there has been a mutation in Holstein cows, in australia i think she said, in the casein protein has started to cause autism and diabetes in children, both rising helth issues. so when it was found, the changed the genetic stock of their cows. this was 3 years ago, and most of the USA has never heard of this.

info tidbits:
the currently USDA leader thinks that raw milk is a human pathogen. it's a shame that the government is so overprotective of the people's health that it usually ends up hurting them.

I didn't know that goat milk burns alkaline in the body, but cow milk,even raw, becomes an acid. goat milk also doesn't cause phlegm in the human body like cow milk does.

the udders on the goat are separate, closed systems. milk doesn't flow from one side to the other.

you can keep milking a goat doe for a long time after she has a kid, years even. of course the milk will slow down in the winter, but it can come back in the spring ,even without a new kidding.



i asked marcia why there is no raw butter and yogurt. selling them is illegal right now. the yogurt is probably because it's harder to control the bacterial growth when you don't start from a pasturized clean slate. butter on the other hand.. marcia said when you separate out the cream, you are taking out the milk sugars (which bacteria feed on) and you are using the milkfat. so it should be pretty safe since you've removed the part the bacteria feed on.


she gave us free samples of milk. i can taste the similiarities between goat butter that i had in the past. i know tht when people hear "goat milk" they think os something stinky, gooey, or maybe even chunky! but it's very much like cows milk, but with a slightly different taste.

"Taste these eggs"

i edited this clip cause it is two of my interests in one! Seinfeld, and chicken welfare/egg quality.

enjoy!

Excelsior!

I opened my new blender/foodprocessor! they incstructions make it even more intimidating that the new chrome. "do not do this or the razor sharp blades WILL jump out and kill you."



Shiny shredder blade of doom


so i washed it and used the food processor part to make last nights dinner. even more scary is the noise! it's like it's powered by jet engine.

but it had amazing results! i don't know if you can tell from this picture..

but the shreds were, like, still solid. it was sliced so fast it didn't even have time to fall apart. reminds me of warner brothers cartoons. like sylvester chases Tweety through a screen door, stops, and then falls to pieces. you know what i mean?

i also made pesto with pinenuts, basil, salt, peper, and garlic.
And here is an extreme close-up of my dinner! (my new camera makes everything look so good!)



the pesto would have been smoother. but it is so loud i hated to let it run for more than a few seconds. i hope it's loudness doesn't deter me from using it, i'll try to me brave. i can't see any difference between the low and high settings. low is still extremely fast!
i haven't used the blender yet. but it is huge compared to my old one.

the comeback tour...again

well, it happens, it's tough to go cold turkey on a lifestyle change, and practice makes...better.
there are a few things that have happened in the last week that indicate to me that it's time to jump into raw food again.
~travel(convenient food choices on the road) and thanksgiving gorging led to eating barely any raw foods except a fruit here or there.
~i turned 25 and should take better care of myself.
~i gained a few pounds and would rather lose a few
~birthday gifts! i received a 2 in 1 blender and food processor from my parents, which will make some recipes a lot easier now. my sister gave me a booklet about food dehydrating (as well as an awesome book about homesteading and gardening.) and i have a new, fully functioning camera, which means better pictures for this blog.
~ portland raw. now, i had wanted to go to a raw restaurant in portland while i was there. my man and i went on a trip to powells books and i did see the section of raw (un)cook books. i found one that looked great (unpretentious, simple recipes) but i cringed at paying 20 dollars for a book.( i know, i'm too cheap) anyway, i thought, i don't really need a new copy, i'd be just as happy with a used one. also, when we got back to my sisters place we discovered we only been a few blocks from an eatery with raw options. i had already looked at their menu, which is mostly vegan, with a few raw things, and found the one item i wanted( a 9$ tacosalad kind thing). well i felt disappointed that i'd missed the opportunity. but i turned it around and made the decision that i would take the 9 dollars that i would have spent on just one raw meal, and use it to buy the first edition of the cookbook i wanted off of amazon and get the recipes for 300 meals! i feel i can make the food just as good as a restaurant. i'll tell you all about the book when i get it.
~on the way home from the oregon trip, we were listening to ian Fleming's Thunderball, at the beginning of which, M sends james bond to a health spa and explains how raw food makes you feel better. this was written almost 50 years ago, and i'll try and get the text on this blog sometime, even if i have to transcribe it myself from the audiobook.
~Nanowrimo is over now (i made it to 50,000 words today!) and so i now have more time since i'm not writing everyday, and picking food just cuz they are fast and easy.

i've already started soaking my buckwheat and almonds for cereal. :D the other thing i have to get started, sprouts! it's been too long.

chocolate, nuts and seeds

thought i'd mention some commercially available things i've tried lately.




i dont think the bumble bar is actually raw, but it's pretty darn close. it has whole flax and seasame seeds with agave, cocoa, nuts, and other things. i'm not sure if they cook it or not. it's not cake like, more chewy, and sticky like the raw bar i tried. it comes in a lot of flavors. i tried the chocolate cherry and it was yummy.

the cocoa nibs and cashews were good too. i like the nibs, they were the softest i'd ever had, with no hard stem or shell parts. maybe they aren't even dehydrated. the palm nectar on them made it sweet enough to cover the bitterness a little.



i've been putting sprouted almonds in my buckwheat cereal. i acutally just soak and srpuit them together, so it's super easy. my store sells sprouted raw almonds for 15 dollars a pound, but i just have a bag of raw almonds from costco in my freezer and puull out what i need.


sprouted almonds are hollow, since they've started the growing process, and the water made them swell.

Fuzzy brown balls.

The story of the kiwis.

the box of overipe fruit i bought for three or four dollars.

i think there was like 30 kiwis in there.

i just sliced off the top and bottom, and cut in half

i love the bright jade color


time to JUICE!
( i tried to turn the sound way down on this, since it's just loud juicing motor noise. I feel like this is some kind of fetish porn for people who REALLY like juicing.)


after all those kiwis, i ended up with a lot of juice



and a lot of the rest.(seeds, skins, fiber..)



which i made into a crucnhy fruit leather right away



it turned a brown color as it oxidizes, but still good of ,course.

the rest went into the freezer until i could find another use for it.


so i've been thinking about moving soon, and thus cleaning out the freezer. so i looked for kiwi heavy recipes. and there were some for fruit leather. since i don't really want to drink all this sour juice, i thought i'd try dehydrating it. it's not entirely liquid, more slushy. we'll see what happens. maybe it'll all evaporate away and i'll be left with nothing. i added about two tablespoons of sugar to that middle size container of juice (thawed) and put it on plastic wrap in the dehydrator.

science!

juice on the plastic wrap



dried leather. it was sweet enough and sticky and tasty. even my boyfriend said it was yummy.


when i tried it a little too long, it became brittle.
it loks like stained glass.

SongCroft

This post is way overdue since this event was on 10/10/10. SongCroft is a very small family farm. more like a house with a large garden, lots of pets, and a forested field. the couple teaches small groups of people to be more self-suffient, with gardening, canning, bee keeping, and animal care.
this event at song croft was part of 350.org, to raise awareness of greenhouses gases, and they celebrated withe a barter fair to encourage local trading and reusing, and a cider pressing of the fall apple harvests.
http://songcroft.com/
i really liked the place (wish it was my house!)

Ducks in a row


little boy at the cider mill. Raw apple cider for all!



broccoli


chard , i didn't realize until now that their dog, Willow, is in this picture.



Sweetie Dairy goats. Raw milk right in their back yard!









Chickens! i think they have 43!






Bunny that lives in the greenhouse

the nano approacheth

If my entries in this blog slack off in november, i have a good excuse. This will eb the third year that i am participating in National Novel Writing Month a.k.a. Nanowrimo. If you don't know about it check out the website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/
but the gist of it, i'll be writing a 50,00 word novel in the 30 days of November.

Tonight i prepared my workspace by cleaning off my very messy desk. now my keyboard is front and center and ready to create a story. i still have some blog entries planned, but the noveling will come first for the month.

Don't Blame the Bran

well, i found out it wasn't the rice bran clogging our sink. after waiting a week for the maintenance guy to come, i tackled the problem myself and looked up online how to disconnect the stopper so i'd have access to the drain. after a little poking, i pulled out a nasty plug of hair and who knows what else, but it definitely wasn't a sink trap stuffed with rice bran.

but my face has been just as painful and spotty as ever, so i have decided to go chemical warfare on it and got some facewash and anti-pimple cream. so i'll try to be regimented with that for a while to see if i can get improved skin. hopefully i look less spotty in time for thanksgiving and my birthday(one month away!)

yesterday we visited a pumpkin patch!

Produce Freakshow

Since i have been a little behind on posting about food i've been making, here's some unusual flora eye candy.


In honor of Halloween this week, THE GREAT PUMPKIN!
175 pounds, and 87 inch circumference, this beast is sitting outside my store, to be raffled off in two days. I'd have joined the raffle, but what the hell would i do with it if i won?



next up, a dragonfruit! i guess my produce department bought two of them and opened up one to sample. and sold the other to a customer for 16$ ( this guy also wants to buy a case of starfruit. tropical fruit fetish?)
anyway, the dragonfruit is shockingly bright inside. like it is filled with florescent purple highlighter dye. it taste was surprisingly watery and not really very sweet or sour.



another case of gigantism. this is my coworker, holding a giant zucchini that we brought back from the cow farm.


that was the largest of three huge zucchinis just sitting on the ground. and farmer Don was like, "oh, do you want those? just take em." i was gonna take home one of the smaller ones, but i realized it was likely too woody to be edible, and a hassle to butcher it up.

and the anticolorful, a ghost tomato. i got this for free from work, it was a little over the hill. it's just a type of heirloom tomato, which in my experience are less acidic that conventional tomatoes.

i tried saving the seeds, there weren't too many. maybe someday i can grow some ghosties of my own.

A tale of two eggs

i fried an egg from Safeway next to an egg from Bates Farm.let's compare and contrast!

age:I've heard that an eggs from a supermarket can be laid up to 40 days before you buy it! i'd guess the big brown eggs from Bates' Rhode Island Reds were maybe a week old?

purity: i'm sure bates' eggs are organic, but i have no idea what could have been fed to the other hens.

size: the farm eggs are bigger than the white store eggs.


awesome chopstick basket made by Jamie Kertay.



( the left eggs is from the farm, if you can't tell from my clues.)
yolk: the farm eggs is darker. backyard chickens get more greens, and thus more beta carotene, than factory chickens (who are usually fed corn and soy). the extra nutrients result in a deeper, orangey yolk color, and are better for you.

viscosity: older egg whites tend to become more runny. this is why the store egg spread out in the pan more, even though the egg shell itself was smaller. in the newer egg, the white just "holds together" more. the proteins are stronger. the white stays thick and even the yolk stands up a little higher.

fyi: the only time you might prefer older eggs is if you are hard boiling them. if they are older, they will be easier to peel. something about the inner membrane letting go of the egg white easier.

taste: the farm eggs yolk has flavor! it's hard to describe, but it's just the flavor of real eggs.

cost: of course, eggs from big companies cost less, but it's really a trade off in quality. small egg producers have to charge more to cover their costs because they don't have thousands of chickens stacked on top of eachother in a barn.

If i hadn't mentioned it before, i really want to have pet chickens of my own. i've wanted chickens for about two years (somewhat to the chagrin of my boyfriend who is tired of hearing about them.)
It may be years before i am settled in a place and have enough yard and money to make my chicken dream come true. *le sigh*. someday this raw blog may be overrun by picture and post about chickens, but until then...


a few days ago i found a link to a hen cam in Massachusetts, so know i can watch some hens, and their goat and bunny friends. so at least i have that to curb, or intensify? , my poultry longings. because of the time difference, the chickens go to bed at 3pm my time.
http://www.hencam.com/

oh yeah, i have a little anecdote to mention. back in highschool,. i think around the time they had us do the PSAT, we took career placement test things. you answer specific questions about your skills and what you enjoy doing. and you follow the charts to find what the test believes is your ideal career. and i was informed that my destiny was "chicken co-op designer". at the time i thought it was a bizarrely specific job area, and took it to mean "design, animals, architecture".. which is all good. and then i forgot about it for several years, recalling it very occaisionally. but now since falling in love with chickens. and now i think back to that test result and marvel "Oh god! they were right!" i had no idea at the time, but this destiny will come to pass. :)

return of the cashew cream

after enjoying the Onion Cashew cream on my meal at Thrive, i found a recipe online and tried making it myself. i don't know if this is the exact recipe they used, but my attempt turned out alright.

http://hi-rawkus.com/recipe/onion-and-herbs-cashew-cream/
2 cups raw cashews (preferably soaked for one hour)
1/2 cup pure water
3 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon raw apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Vidalia onion, chopped small
1 level teaspoon Herbes de Provence
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

i made a few changes, i just used as much flesh and juice that i could get out of one medium lemon, it was probably 3 tablespoons or less. i used a pinch of rosemary and two dried basil leaves for the herbs. and i used my homemade kombucha in lieu of apple cider vinegar (they taste very similar), and a plain yellow onion. i had to use a blender, which is probably why mine was a little less creamy(more granulated) than the restaurant version.

i used it as a dip with some of my dried zucchini chips(flavored with taco seasoning)



i still have plenty left over so it will go on more meals.

this is another recipe from this website that i'd like to try.
http://hi-rawkus.com/recipe/superfood-chocolate-banana-pudding/


i watned some juice tonight. i haven't used the juicer for a few weeks, but i was especially inspiried after seeing this!:



:D

i remember that juiceman's eyebrows from all the infomercials i watched as a child.


i wonder if there is any truth to this Eugene college students story of his:

Food Party!

i know there will be good food when a grocery store throws a party. Tonight was my co-op's annual party and each department brought food. i did get to try some of our raw products that i hadn't gotten to taste yet. i had a little bit of a raw chocolate cheesecake by Earth Cafe Living foods.(https://earthcafetogo.com/ their website seems a tad self righteous for making cake..."GENIOUS DEFINES POWER!") it may have been a bit to warm, but the taste was like cinnamony butter. it was too soft i think. The treat i really liked was the vanilla popsicle by Happy Day Raw foods,handmade in AShland Oregon. They are almost entirely frozen coconut, so that is most was it tastes like, but that's good with me. it can be a a little grainy, but it still tastes great.
ingredients!
raw coconut milk,coconut oil, coconut sugar, lucuma powder, vanilla bean.

sounds easy enough to make in a home freezer.

i guess the coconut sugar is like coconut crystals : http://lesliesorganics.com/crystals.html

i also had the chocolate one, which was super chocolately and not too sweet. but i think i prefer the vanilla/coconut one. nom nom nom


i even have coconut milk lid earrings :D

raw butter!

I let my raw milk sit still over night in hopes that i could see the cream one top. i could see a clear line, but i just assumed that the cream was on top and poured off about two inches into a little plastic tub. then all i knew was you had to shake the hell out of it.



after that i poured some more from the carton onto my breakfast.



it's very simple, buckwheat from the ground, milk from the cows, honey from the bees, all uncooked.


soon i started shaking the cream (after i put a tiny bit of seasalt in it). and i did that for about ten minutes before looking up an online tutorial. you have to make whipped cream before it becomes butter, and i don't think i was ever gonna get whipped cream the way i was doing it, so i brought it to the blender.



i ended up with butter bits everywhere, even on my glasses. but i did end up with this fluffy airy butter. i poured all the contents through cheesecloth. the liquid part was buttermilk, of course. it didn't taste drinkable with the salt i'd put it :P.

i knew you have to rinse the butter with cold water to wash away the buttermilk. so i kept filling the tub until the water was clear. but i didn't press the butter for fear that it would fall apart. it seemed so delicate. (edit: it did harden up more after an hour or so in the fridge. tradionally, there are tools like butter paddles and mold, and crocks, so clearly it can take a beating.)

i didn't get much butter in the end, but i really didn't start with much cream.

it's waiting in the fridge. i may have to eat it on some Dave's killer bread, because i dont think i have anything raw to put it on. i can't resist buttered toast!.

i convinced my boyfriend to try some on a bagel"pretty good butter! It's great , i mean, wonderful butter. you win" :D but not before he said "if i die, i'm blaming it on you and your butter! :D

edit:
later in the day i saw a coworker who took me to the farm yesterday. she said her husband made butter too. and it only took him about 6 minutes of shaking it in a mason jar. so it sounds like i just didn't have enough air space in the container i was shaking. i would have used a jar, but mine all smelled like pickles or curry :P

Bates Farm

I'm drinking raw milk right now, that came out of a jersey cow, either Anabelle or her daughter Sophie, less than two days ago. It's whole milk, un pasteurized, unhomogenized. it feels velvety smooth and tastes like, well, milk, but a little more buttery since it has the cream left in (which makes it a creamy color also.) the aftertaste is, like cheese? but not bad.



But let me tell you about the farm! Today i tagged along with my coworkers Beth and Teresa to visit Bates farm outside of Arlington, WA. We met the owner, Don Bates, who also has a chiropractic office there. first we went to the room where the milk it brought to be bottled and stored. it's really just a little kitchen in a cabin with a big sink for washing tools and a fridge for the milk.


then we saw the milking station, which is vacuum pumped, he doesn't do it by hand. he said from the whole process takes about 40 minutes, from fetching the cows to bottling. he milks the two cows twice a day and right now he is getting 4.5 gallons ( i can't remember if that is from the cows combined or not, from each milking) but he sometimes gets twice as much. right now the cows are "drying off" before they "freshen" again , that is, have another calf and start making milk again.

(From right to left: Ferdinand, Anabelle, Pearl and Sophie)

then we met the cows. there is the mother cow, Anabelle. don started with her three years ago just as the family cow that he kept in the neighbors yard. the elderly meighbor has fond bovine memories and gave him use of the land to pasture the cow(s). Annabelle's first calf is named Sophie. then this year Sophie had a steer named Ferdinand, and Anabelle has another heifer, named Pearl.
Here they are!




They graze on about 10 acres of land and eat grass and alfalfa pellets. they have a forest area with trails they can wander and they hide under trees when the weather gets bad. we got to pet them all (except Pearl, who is very shy) and i even got headbutted in the leg by Sophie. the cows were friendly and followed us around.






Don gave us each a half gallon of milk, 6 eggs, a giant zucchini, a glove of "chinese pink " garlic, and some salmon.! he said he used to have about 40 chickens but now he only has 7. he has production Rhode Island reds, and a banny cross? which i guess is a bantam of some kind. we didn't look at the chickens because this was really a cow event :)

I will try to let the cream rise to the top of my milk and use it to make raw butter! i know whole milk has a lot of fat in it, but i heard something about when it is raw, your body uses the fat differently. i can't quite remember what that was about.

we didn't talk very much about raw vs. conventional milk, but Don said something interesting.. he is pulling out of another seller, partial because they are trying to force him to put expiration dates on the milk he sells. "people that are familiar with raw milk look for the production date, they check that, and they smell it. if it smells off, they bake it in a cake or make it into yogurt. milk doesn't expire, it just changes."


more cow pictures available here: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v713/feffy88/Bates%20Farm/