Consider... the medlar.

I've been meaning to mention the medlar for some time now. i got to try one and i am not sure i had ever heard of one before. It is a tree-grown fruit. Temperate zone, well at least not tropical. I think it was more popular long ago, like a 100 years ago or more. before we could have apples delivered everywhere all year round.




i can sorta see why this fruit fell out of fashion. like persimmons, it is meant to be eaten it is pretty overripe and mushy. there is a special word for this term...ah, "bletting" decaying and fermenting.
anyway, despite its possible decaying or fermenting, i didn't think the medlar was particularly sweet or sour. I described it as bland applesauce. so it was a leather outside, mushy inside with a few large flat seeds (kind like curved wooden dimes).

so i don't know what people used this fruit for traditionally? just plain? in a pie? it would be a pain to prepare a bunch as an ingredient, unless you just smashed a bunch in a bucket and put it through a sieve to get the mush away from the seeds and skins.

so that is the medlar, plucked from history.

raw? hidden out in the open?

this week at my store, Larabars are on sale. i'd never tried one before and decided to get a few after a customer bought ten of the coconut cream pie flavor and told me that it tastes like macaroon cookes, only good for you. so i got one of those, peanut butter chocolate chip, and something like chocolate coconut cream. i noticed that ingredients were very simple. just things like cocoa, nuts, and dates. i thought, that sounds like raw cookies recipes! the the PBchoclate chip had only dates, chocolate, and peanuts, and it tasted great! the bars are soft and chewy, (if a little on the petite side.) coconut cream pie bar contains dates, coconut, almonds, cashews, and coconut oil and was very good! i applaud this company for their whole food simplicity. in fact, there website says that none of the flavors has more than 8 ingredients.

i also found the answer to my suspicions that these were in fact raw:

"You may have noticed we removed "raw" from our packaging. This is because we have found no universal definition or guidelines for raw food products."
"Lärabar is made by what we consider to be a simple process: by which fruit, nuts, and spices are mixed and pressed together. They are not cooked, baked, or otherwise ‘processed’ and we use whole ingredients, as close to their natural state as possible. "
"LÄRABAR firmly believes that the foundation of a sound mind, body and spirit is derived from what you eat. And what you eat is healthiest and most satisfying when it's in a whole, natural state. "


i was going to come on this blog and say, "these are good and natural, too bad they aren't raw, but i think they in fact are! i also didn't realize they are gluten free and vegan. what a pleasant surprise. right now i can get the bars for 80 cents each, about a third of the price of other raw brand food bars. i'm sure i could make my own for cheaper, but they can make a lot more flavors than me. (19!)

sounds like their Jocalot bars are more like a candy bar, or at least have more chocolate. they say they don't use raw cocoa for that one, but i'd still like to try it.



in other news, i bought about a half pound of coconut flakes on tuesday and i've almost eaten the whole bag already! somebody keep this stuff away from me! at least it was cheap, so i can get some more :D

Amen, Jack!

Jack knew what's what! Rest in Peace.

condiments and beverage

I visited my parents house and was surprised to see a few items that i am used to seeing at work. and there was even raw sunflower butter in the fridge. http://www.rejuvenative.com/catalog_sb.htm i hadn't tried it before so i had a taste. I think it was a little bitter. sunflower seeds can get that way, especially if they are over-sprouted. I'm finding out that sunflower seeds aren't my favorite thing, and i think I'll used them in moderation from now on, rather than making them the base of things like crackers. (just tonight I've been dreaming up an oatmeal cracker with flax and almond. like Scottish oatcakes)
anyway, i don't think I'll be buying a jar of the sunflower butter. My dad said he usually has it with jam or something to sweeten it up.
I'd definitely like to try their hazelnut or Brazil nut butter.

I also tried Inka (a coffee substitute made from roasted and ground barely and rye.) now this isn't raw, but it is very naturala nd simple and i thought i'd give it a try since we sell it at my work and it is good to be knowledgeable about the products on peddles. www.inkacoffee.com
you just take a spoonful of the brown grounds and top off the cup with boiling water. as i stirred it, i was reminded of crispy bacon! there was a definite roasty smell. the taste was similar, very roasted. it wasn't a "full bodied taste though. it wasn't quite like coffee, but if for some reason a person had to quit drinking coffee, they might wants to switch to this. adding milk turned it a grayish brown. :?
but it went fine with breakfast.

The last taste test was something i scored free from work. A raw milk horseradish cheese spread made by Brunkow of Wisconsin. http://www.pcmli.com/cw_bk.htm.




it is uncolored, so it's white and the look of it is alike a tub of the Laughing Cow cheese. But it is very spreadable, almost like very thick mayonnaise when the cheese gets warmed up a tad. the first taste is a little surprising because of the horseradish taste, but it is very tasty and creamy. i'm sure it'll be great as a dip for vegetables to add a punch of flavor. because it is a raw product, the cheese must be aged for at least three months. at least i am fairly sure that's the time frame. I suppose that is long enough to be sure that the "good bacteria" in the cheese has conquered any bad nasties that shouldn't be in there.

oatmeal with real oats!

I don't know why i hadn't thought of this before. for some reason i thought you wren't supposed to eat raw oats, or i thought that oats weren't really raw, like they'd been steamed or something. which could be the case for rolled oats, but i guess steel cut oats are just cut and dried. and then of course you can get oat groatts which are intact except with the seed coat removed.

anyway, i'd been having "raw oatmeal", which i talked about here. now it is good in it's own way, but it is an approximation of oatmeal made with apple, banana, and flax.
while browsing my new cookbook, the "Complete Book of Raw food" i found this recipe:



It was so good that i made it again the next day. i add in a banana just for some added creaminess and more nutrients, and i don't bother grinding up the flax ( and maybe i cheat and add a dash of soymilk). i don't have any berries, but if you like the idea, go ahead. but this oatmeal is very good! it's delicious! just like normal oatmeal, but room temperature.

The Merliton a.k.a. chayote a.k.a "frowny fruit"

this is the Merliton, also known as chayote, and about a dozen other names. it's eaten both fresh and cooked. i looked for a few minutes for some recipes, and glanced over some phrase like "peeling a whole chayote is hard on the hands." but i took that to mean it was a hard skin to peel off.
but when i took my peel to it, i discovered what they meant. after you take off a piece of the skin, the flesh exudes some droplets of liquid like a carved pumpkin might. a little slimy, but i just washed it off in the sink. anyway, by the time i was done making the salad, my fingers that had touched the liquid were very dry, peely even.so there must be some skin irritating compounds as a defense against predators.




tastes like a cucumber without the bitterness, center seed thing seemed edible, like a big flat almond.
I made a salad with with carrot, chayote, and golden delicious apples (half of each). then dressed with a little olive oil, grind of seasalt and a squeeze of lemon for brightness.
it was very fresh and light. :D

mock tuna salad

Loosely inspired by recipes like this( see links), but basically my own version of imitation tuna salad.

http://www.livestrong.com/recipes/raw-mock-tuna-salad/
http://goneraw.com/recipe/amazing-tuna-sushi
http://therawtarian.com/raw-tuna-salad-recipe/
http://www.adventuresinrawfood.com/raw-recipe-for-vegan-raw-fake-tuna-fish-salad-yum-its-so-good


1/2 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/5 cup soaked almonds
1/2 a green onion stalk
teaspoon or so of minced garlic
cup of cauliflower (1/4 head?)
i used wakame since i already packed up my dulse, a pinch bloomed in warm water
a little salt or soy sauce.
i added some curly parsley since i discovered i like it. (they make a raw tabouleh at work that is basic just curly parsley with hemp seeds.)
a tablespoon of oil
a squirt of mustard.
black pepper would be good.
and a small pickle.
a squeeze or two of lemon.


eat with avocado it you like it






when i close my eyes and think about it, it really does taste like restaurant tuna salad with parsley and that little hint of pickle. yum!

Chips and dip

this is very chunk guaamole with dried sweet potato chips. i just used my mandolin slicer to cut the sweet potato into a bowl of saltwater and then laid them out in the dehydrator for about a day.

Tabouleh

I made my first recipe from The Raw Truth cookbook i received for christmas. I made the sprouted quinoa tabouleh aka, Tabouli (which is a middle easterned dish that is usually made with Bulgur wheat) i was surprised at how quickly the quinoa sprouted. i followed the recipe and soaked it overnight and then left it sprouting until dinner times. it was soft enough to eat by then. i didn't have all the items for the recipe but i put in carrot, cherry tomato, olive oil, salt, parsely and a little yellow onion.


it was pretty good. although i don't think i ought to have raw onion in the future. the flavor just sticks in the back of my throat too long, even the next day. i seem to be safe with green onions though.

but this recipe was easy enough and i might do it again sometime. but when i tried the little bit of left overs the next day, i didn't like it so much, so maybe just make enough to eat for one meal.

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