More garden gifts

It has now been many years since I have tasted my first fresh juicy honey sweet fig. It was many many years ago, while on our first ever holiday together with the Cooked Husband, then boyfriend, and while we were driving all around and accross Malta and Gozo, he was often asked to stop the car so that I could climb out and collect ripe lush figs from trees that were all around without anyone tending to them.

It's also been a few years since I realised that people actually grow them here in UK and get to harvest their own figs. And so a dream was born, a small one, you could say, to one day have my own fig tree and to be able to eat figs directly from it, still warm from the sunshine. This summer saw me fulfilling this dream.

When we moved to this house, I knew that there was a perfect place to plant a fig tree. Our terrace is south facing, and we have a lovely corner sun trap, just above the indoor staircase, so I can see the beautiful leaves stroke the window when I walk up to the kitchen in the morning in our upside-down house.

After a huge disappointment of last year, when all the fruit dropped of the tree with rusty spots, I have had a feast like no else during the last month or so. Watching this beautiful tree grow from a small 'stick' into a large lovely and proud tree was a huge pleasure and then, finally, see the fruit ripen made the feeling even better. The figs start very small, smaller then the nail on your pinkie, cosily attached to the branch. As summer gets nearer, they slowly grow bigger but stay hard and green.

Being me, I bought a lovely fig in the market one day in early July, and brough it home to 'show it' to the tree. I mean, this tree was born in a garden centre in the UK, how could he possibly know what to do? You can think I am crazy but all I care about is that it worked!

A few weeks after this 'tree education' we noticed one of the figs getting bigger and darkening. Then it swelled massively almost overnight and became plump and soft and sweet smelling, and then it got plucked of the tree and ended up being my breakfast. The best breakfast ever. Sweet as honey, full of crunchy yummy seeds, deep red colour inside while purply yellow in the outside, just perfect. Many more followed over the next three or four weeks, ripenning one, two or even five at a time, every one of them enjoyed to one hundred percent. I played with the idea of creating something from them but have abandoned it at the end as this fruit is simply so perfect as it is, I had no desire to waste any of it in some recipe disaster ;-)

As I write there are still small green figs on the branches and I hope we will have a second harvest time in late September, which is the time we went to Malta all those years ago. I am the greedy one!

And so for me, it is time for a new dream, I think... A fig tree orchard, perhaps? But maybe I shall be more ambicious this time, as with the Living Magically program beginning this week I have to learn to dream big and allow magic into my life, here and now.

What are you dreaming about? And it does not have to be food related!

Uncooked dinner for Cooked Husband

Once upon a time, there was a Cooked Husband. He could not imagine a meal without a cooked heavy-feel part to it, and so he was not very impressed when I suggested I would serve him some kale and avocado massaged salad as a side dish with his chicken tonight; we run out of potatoes and my wife-y duties will only push me so far... I was not going to go to the supermarket just so he could stuff his face with mashed potatoes... He was given some choices of what else could be for dinner - and though the green smoothie did not make it by far, it was a raw choice - raw vegan sushi!!

I make my 'rice' from cauliflower, cashew and pine nuts, dash of apple cider vinegar for tartness, some white miso for saltiness and a tiny bit of agave to balance it all with little bit of sweetness... Process till grany and pliable - and there you go. For proper measurements and recipes, please subscribe to Russell James's eZine at http://therawchefblog.com/ - that is where my ideas come from, and I have the best results with his recipes. Quick, easy and delicious. He is the master of raw kitchen, at least for me, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Next step is to fill the nori sheets: spread some 'rice' on and then layer what you like on top - my choices were avocado, marinated mushrooms, julienned peppers, spring onions and some watercress. Roll it tightly using a sushi mat or clever fingers, cut with serated knife, and serve with a small dish of soya sauce, small pile of pickled ginger and a little bit of wasabi on the side. The result? One very happy Husband, no potatoes needed!

Oh, and my dinner, apart from sharing a little bit of sushi, was a green smoothie:

1 courgette

handful of strawberries

1 banana

2 handfulls of spinach

blend with some water to reach the consistency you like

Delicioso! You can see the tiny pink strawberry bits in the picture above, and I could taste them as I enjoyed this lovely concoction earlier this evening.

The International Green Smoothie day

Yes, there actually is such a day. You cannot buy a card for it, although you could make one if you wanted to, and not everybody knows about it just yet. But what with all these raw girlies blogging away about it, who knows next year? And maybe the year after Halmark will print some juicy cards, you just never know. But this is your chance to join in the green smoothie revolution ahead of everybody else.

If you remember my humble blogging beginning, you will remember all those green smoothie pictures also. Decorated with blueberries and bee polen and other lovely yummies, I have been having them more or less every day ever since, even if you have not seen a 'green stuff in a glass' for a while. I do need a green juice or a green smoothie a day to keep me happy, balanced and radiand, just as a cat needs her little chin stroked to start purring!

I have two great news for you. One is that I will be so lucky and fortunate as to have a super duper sparkly VitaMix for the next three weeks, borrowed from my beloved Green Queen Denise of The Raw Brides. She is getting married this coming Saturdayand then she will disappear into the sunset for her honeymoon... and lo and behold - I am not only allowed to go round her house and play with her most adorable cats, I have also been given the permission to 'steal' her super blender and make it mine for the time she won't need it. This is absolutely excellent and my intention is to create not only many yummy things to make me feel like I live in a raw food heaven but mostly my number one creations will be green smoothies. When I make them in my blender I end up chewing them quite a bit, especially when I use rocket and parsley, and after reading about this amazing machine and the results all the raw foodists all around have been getting, I simply can't wait to get started. (For those who are not sure what the fuss is about, this blender will blend absolutelly anything to a complete smoothness, even raw asparagus and such fibrous things.)

The second great news is that this is the perfect timing for the International Green Smoothie Day as started by The Raw Divas and The Green Smoothie Queen over on the other side of the Atlantic. If you haven't seen their website, click the link, as they have a ton of info and lots of great articles, should you ever feel that you are lacking either motivation or inspiration. As the Green Smoothie Day falls on Denise's aka Green Queen's wedding day I will be very fortunate to feast on a raw food wedding garden picnic followed by a gournet raw food wedding dinner. But I will start the day with a green smoothie to be sure, and may even follow up with a complete green smoothie week when we come back from the wedding.

What will be in your glass on Saturday?

Another amazing free teleseminar with my favourite Raw Food Coach

Soon after I have first started playing and experimenting with raw food, I have come accross the Raw Food Coach, Karen Knowler. I joined her programme 30 days to raw and discovered, as many people did before me, that this is not only about raw food; raw food is just the beginning. Tomorrow I am joining her new teleseminar where she will share with us how to take this lifestyle to a completely new level. Whether you are experienced raw foodist looking for ways to progress with not only your diet but your life and your life fullfillment or you are completely new to raw food ways, check out the following info. If it sounds good to you, join me tomorrow evening at 9.00 pm UK time for her completely free teleclass. It is going to be amazing! Sign in here or read on for more info.

The 7 Must-Know Steps To Take Your Raw Food Journey To The Stars – And Beyond!

Have you ever felt dazed and confused over the conflicting opinions raging among the raw food teachers and “gurus” out there? I know I have, and it really doesn’t help us does it?

With so many different approaches, coaches, classes and courses out there, all giving conflicting or confusing advice, even if you really want to step into the raw food world with all the best intentions and will in the world, you end up having no idea where to start!

Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach, has been in the raw food community for over 17 years and has seen how crazy it can get. In a previous life Karen used to host many of the world’s leading raw food educators year-after-year in London (she used to run The Fresh Network and created Get Fresh! magazine), but she saw that as much as people became inspired and fascinated by the raw food journey, they also became increasingly confused, lost and... disempowered.

As a result of witnessing this and creating an approach to raw food that was much more fluid, fun and realistic than what was generally being taught, Karen vowed many years ago to put each person back into the driving seat of their own diet and destiny - and that’s what she’s been doing for over a decade.

And now she’s taking it to a whole new level.

Over the past year especially, Karen’s name has become synonymous with a whole new way of approaching raw food that anyone can do. Karen believes passionately that there is not “one way” to do raw food and that by being honest and intuitive around our food choices we can find a way of eating raw that works for us and our life on every level – one that’s juicy, compelling and rewarding for us.

But more than that, Karen has been teaching that raw food is “all about the food and yet nothing about the food” – and as ironic as that sounds, I have to agree, she’s right! Raw food opens us up to so much more than we think food can ever do, but it does for sure, and Karen has a wonderful what of explaining and articulating this than perhaps anyone else in the raw food arena.

Over the past few months Karen has been perfecting all the key facets of the work she’s been sharing for years. She’s preparing to go big with her message and I don’t doubt that she will make it happen.

And what she’s doing this coming Wednesday, before she starts working hard on her forthcoming book, is to share with us – for FREE – her latest discoveries, namely “The 7 Must-Know Steps to Take Your Raw Food Journey to the Stars – And Beyond”

In what promises to be her most compelling free seminar to date (you just need a phone or internet connection to attend), Karen is about to share, for the first time, what these seven steps are, and I for one can’t wait!

Tomorrow, on Wednesday August 5th, Karen will reveal what these 7 Steps and much more.

And, while it is an exciting preview of her Raw Transformation Experience LIVE Event happening this August 27-29, 2009 and her brand new life-changing Living Magically on Raw coaching program, she promises you'll also get 3 POTENT ideas that you can use right away to start your journey to “raw heaven” from this free call.

You can find out all about it and register here. I’ll be there for sure and I hope to hear you on the call.

I can’t wait to hear what she shares! Let me know if you enjoy it.