Hawai'i or Bust

So.. big changes. so big it's hard to believe.
My boyfriend and i are moving to Oahu. we have less than two weeks to do this, but we just got a place last night and he will be a kiteboarding instructor in Kailua.

i have been wondering how this will effect my raw food diet. i know food will be even more expensive there. and i have read a few places that locally grown food is sometimes priced higher than imported! (whaa??) well i'll just have to deal with what i find when i get there.

but on the upside, when i think of the staples of a raw diet (avocados, coconuts, nuts, bananas) i think tropical! some of these items grow along the streets in hawaii! so it should be easier to get these items fresh and local. :D

I'll bring along my sprouting lid and maybe my blender. don't know if taking the dehydrator will be doable :( there is a co-op in our new town and a vegetarian organic restaurant. i'm sure i will have a lot to discover and share.

bummer is a cant bring Anything from my kitchen except a sprouting jar lid :( this means no dehydrator, knife set, mandolin, juicer, blender, food processor. all key raw food tools. :(

Invaders, from the frozen depths of Space.

for a long while i've wanted to recreate the Happy Day Foods raw popsicles. i didn't have a good icetray to use as the freezing mold. but i now have a silicon mold in the shape of Space Invaders. :D

they will still be small and i can't put a stick in them or anything (well maybe i could with toothpicks), but i want to try.

now, i am aware that the coconut milk i have is most likely not raw, since it has been canned.



to get real raw milk, i wold need to open a coconut, and shred and press the meat myself. every time i buy a coconut, i always leave it for too long and it is rotten inside. i just don't seem to have the willpower to do it right away for some reason.

since i'll be making some red curry for my sweetheart tonight, i will use some of the can of coconut milk for his dish, and some for freezing into delicious treats.

so the ingredients of the original bars are:
raw coconut milk,coconut oil, coconut sugar, lucuma powder, vanilla bean.


but here's what i did.
i have some finely shredded coconut( third of a cup? half?), so i put that in a bowl, poured in almost all of the agave syrup i had left (1/4 cup).

then a few spoons of coconut butter, and just a bit of coconut oil after that (not pictured).




plus, a few drops of vanilla extract. then i mixed those together to break up the stiff coconut butter. at that point it looked like that delicious topping on german chocolate cake. mmmm...



by the way, i went with
so then i poured in half a can of coconut milk. so i ended up with four different sources of coconut in there!


i figured i would pour the liquid from the mixing bowl, but i think i made a good choice with just using a spoon to fill the mold.


i have it on a small plate to stabilize the floppy silicon mold, and i can just put the whole thing right into the little icetray area in my freezer.


i had about a third of it left after filling the mold. it would have been great to fill up a small yogurt cup and freeze it with a stick in it.


the whole thing took less than ten minutes to add ingredients, mix, and pour. then the only thing to do is wait, while it freezes... "quiesently"
and then Voila,


they never really hardened up like ice cubes, and melt really quickly after they leave the freezer. i think adding at least some water would make them more icey and likable. the taste is good, but could be a little sweeter. i once had a homemade chai popsicle and this would be good to try in this recipe, adding cinnamon, cardamom, and chopped almonds :)





i think one of the great things about raw cooking (or "uncooking") is the experimentation. you can get a bunch of ingredients that are yummy, throw them together, and result is usually yummy as well!like, throwing a bunch of different fruits in a blender. or making a raw cracker with seeds and nuts and vegetables and spices. the exact proportions, amounts, or exact food species are usually critical. not like in say, a souffle, or some other baked item where the chemistry and timing have to be correct to produce the desired result. anyway, i think you all know what i mean, don't be afraid to play with your food! and if it all goes terribly wrong, just feed it to the worms and we won't mention it to anyone. ;D more later on the box of worms that lives in my kitchen..


P.s. the Chaokoh brand of coconut milk is manufactured by THEPPADUNGPORN Coconut co. ltd. *snark*

hmm, so what do i think of this?

right now i am eating this raw cookie.


it is made from Almonds (sprouted), raisins, agave and caradmom. the cardamom was an interesting choice, usually you see sinnamon in a raisin cookie, but the cardamom gives it and interesting Indian Food/Chai flavor. i had wondered about the ethnicity of the owner(s) of this company since "Gopal" does sound like an Indian name. ah, plus this label has a seal that says "Prasadam" and the proceeds go toward Cow Protection. :D

it also mentions that you should drink a lot of water when eating dehydrated foods, which i hadn't really thought of before, but of course it makes sense.

anyway, this cookie is chewy and tastes mostly like raisin and cardamom(which is strong in the first bite, but calms down and blends together later), and is nicely sweetened. I definitely like it better than the rawma bar and power wraps i've tried from this same company.
looks like they also make something called "Raw Alchemy Brownie" which sounds metallic, but exciting. heheh

Edit: i happened to try this because i received it for free at work, but i checked on the price today and it was 3.05 for one cookie! i think for 5 bucks you could get enough ingredients to make ten cookies. in fact i'm pretty sure i have all the ingredients in my house already.

Real Life Raw ignorance!

So i used to work at a café that had a new of raw items on the menu. that business shut down late last year and the owner is now on the cusp of opening a similar establishment. she's a raw food enthusiast, and even holds get-togethers that are raw potlucks. anyway, she had this facebook status recently, which shows how little the public knows about this diet lifesytle:


"I handed in my menu to the health department...when they saw the raw food portion they freaked...

Now I'm writing a long letter to them, explaining vegetarian raw food. They think I'm serving raw meat, eggs and god knows what else..
I'll offer them a free class I guess..We will figure it out..It's sort of funny they said I need to put ...the health dangers of eating raw meats and eggs in my menu..."


..and these are the people in charge of restaurants. :/ well anyway i'm glad she'll be educating them. her cafe will be one of the only places in town with a raw emphasis (besides the store where i work!) some how i landed in the only raw epicenters.

someone did reply to her post that the uninformed health department people ought to be talking to their peers in King County because there are two raw restaurants in Seattle, namely Chaco Canyon, and Thrive.

Seeds to Sprouts to Plants

So i mentioned the amaranth i sprouted a little while ago. i put it under a thin layer of dirt and five days after the pictures i showed in the other post, they looked like this!


they are too thickly packed to really grow up that way, the individuals would compete for space and nutrients.

so if i want them to mature to real large plants i'll have to thin them out and put them in a bunch of other containers. i think at this point i could still eat them if i wanted to. they even look a little like alfalfa or clover sprouts, which i what most people think of when they hear "sprouts", the kind that come on a sandwich!
i guess technically what i am doing with the amaranth is called "greening". it is one step beyond sprouting ans is pretty much just planting the seeds. here's an excerpt from the big cookbook, The Complete Book of Raw Food:

Sprouts, if grown long enough will start to grow into plants with leaves. The major difference between sprouts and greens is that sprouts are eaten roots and all, whereas we generally discard the roots of greens and and harvest and eat only the leaves. Also, greens are generally grown in soil.


they also mention elsewhere that putting a jar of sprouts in some place with sunlight for 15 minutes before eating them will boost their chlorophyll content.

speaking of sprouts, here are some beansprouts (from mung beans.)





definately some leaves going on there!

Hanas don't know it's not bacon!

I'd been hesitant about trying the eggplant bacon idea, but i finally got another free eggplant and acted quickly to make it before the eggplant was too old. i searched online for this recipe and there are a lot of different versions:


http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/1790919
http://goneraw.com/recipe/eggplant-bacon
http://www.rawsimple.com/2009/05/everydayraw/
http://www.foodbuzz.com/recipes/1033474-eggplant-bacon-raw-vegan-
http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?t=5762
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfood/message/28760
http://thesunnyrawkitchen.blogspot.com/2007/03/ode-to-raw-sammies-and-wraps-too.html



but i could see that they all had similar flavor elements (and of course they all had the eggplant.)
so they had some:
something oily (olive oil, sunflower..)
something salty (seasalt, soy sauce, bragg's liquid aminos..)
something sweet (honey, agave, maple syrup)
something spicy (black pepper, paprika, chilipowder)
maybe something tart (apple cider vinegar)

so whatever you choose will have a slight effect on the finished taste, but i think it's sorta mix and match. So i built my own recipe based on what i had in the kitchen.

2 tablespoons soysauce
2 Tbs. Apple cider vinegar (i used my home-brew kombucha, it tastes the same)
1/2 tsp. black pepper (used up the last at the bottom of the jar.)
chilipowder ( a teaspoon or so)
taco seasoning (optional. i like that it has cumin, which gives a "meaty" flavor)
2 tbls. honey
i had to add some water to feel like i had enough marinade to cover all the eggplant.
3 tbls oil i used sunflower


here's my marinade in the mixing bowl.





to make all the bacon slices i just cut the eggplant in half lengthwise. then i put the cut side face-down on my mandolin slicer and sliced away! it went so fast. (thanks goes to my sister who gave me this handy kitchen dealy. the blade is so sharp i can make a whole carrot into thin rounds in a snap. cuts through it like butter. )


i put all the slices in a large ziploc bag and poured in the marinade. i added a little extra water until i felt like i had enough to get all the slices drenched in it. i had this bag in the fridge for 24 hours, but it probably didn't have too be that long. it seemed like some of the slices soaked up more than others, and became darker and translucent. i would guess the difference was due to being from different areas on the eggplant?

i laid out the slices on my trays in the evening, and rotated the order of the stack the next morning. i'm not sure how long it took them all to dry, but i think less than one day. they are very thin.






so the end result was a crispy, spicy chip! it reminded me a bit of BBQ flavor potato chips (except these were better.) with the oil on them, they didn't stick to the trays at all. i should have moved them to airtight packaging right away, but i just sorta stored them in the trays. the downside to this was that a few days later, they had reabsorbed some moisture from the air (probably from the hygroscopic nature of the honey) so they had lost the crispiness. that was easy to fix though, i just turned the dehydrator back on for a few hours and they dried out again!




here is some bacon acting as crispy croutons on some salad. ( the white stuff is the raw cheese i mentioned earlier, which makes a yummy dressing)

surprises, good and otherwise

i was trying to sprout some amaranth as an experiment. i kept it moist for 3 days an nothing was happening so gave up and was just gonna let it dry up and brush it out of my sprouting jar. so i came back to it a day or more later and was surprised to see some pink dots in the tan colored grain. it was sprouting after all! i happened to look at a sprouting chart and it says amaranth should be sprouted in 24 hours. so either they mean you soak it without actually getting to the germinating stage, or my seeds where really slow. anyway, i think i'll just plant them rather than eat them.










i tried some jocalat bars and didn't really care for them. i got the chocolate cherry and chocolate hazelnut flavors. i found both jars to be pretty sour tasting. i think they don't sweeten the chocolate. i also tried the larabar chocolate chip brownie which is almost the extra same ingredients as the jocalot hazelnut bar (dates, chocolate, nuts, except that they add sugar and salt, and the larabar was better. but my fav ones are still the coconut and the peanut butter chocolate chip that i bought before.

yee-ha, Arkansas.

this is a variety of apple called Black Arkansas. it is a lovely dark color and seems to come with an oily,waxy covering. i've only ever seen them in the produce department at my co-op.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/feffy88/raw%20foods/IMG_1158.jpg

it was very popular, and customers would come back and by bags of them. i didn't find them too miraculous, but they were good. not too tart but not supersweet. i noticed the inner flesh had a greenish tint to it.

smooth smoothie

tropical!

mango, banana, coconut honey smoothie. the high powered blender made the ice vaporize and it is creamy and airy even with shredded coconut in it.




nummy.