Winter in the Raw

Ooooh, it is so cold outside, we actually have some frost on the ground today - and this is UK, the country of mild winters. Having said that, it is pretty humid here a lot of time, the cold just crawling right beneath your clothes and making you shiver. This, if not another time of the year, is the time of struggle for any raw foodist not quite anchored in the un-cooked way of living, as our body, and mostly our mind, keeps reaching for the warmth and comfort of old cooked favourites - you all know what these are for you, right?

To help myself stay motivated during these cold times and also during the festive season that is upon us, I went to a wonderful workshop a week or so ago called 'Winter in the Raw'. Twenty people plus have gathered in Karen Knowler'shouse to listen, smell, watch and taste Nina Dench's creations that will help us stay raw during winter with a bang. Her food was so scrumptious and delicious, most of it easy to prepare as well, I came home full of hope and ideas. I am not always very good with making my own recipes but I find that I can adapt other people's recipes to my taste quite well, and having suddenly over 20 new recipes gave me a lot to play with.

We got a little taste of everything Nina made and also were treated to a lovely lunch (see above) of Rosemary and Vegetable Tartlet with a trio of salads - Red Cabbage one, Curly Cabbage and Carrot Ribbons - and a small lump of Sage and Onion Pate on the side. It was amazing and so filling that I had to go for a little walk around Karen's farmhouse to help me digest, or else I would have wanted to sleep for the rest of the day and would have missed on the best part to come - the deserts! The Orange and Apricot Sauce was to die (or live!) for, and I have made it for myself for breakfast a few times since then. It is so yummy, zesty and light, a real treasure; you can see it resting happily on top of the Christmas pudding on the picture, but it is yummy enough on its own by a bowlful, perhaps with some raw muesli sprinkled on top.

I often find that I fall back from the grace of raw food into the trap of cooked because I become lazy and begin to think that raw is just too much effort and I 'could not be asked'. And so it was great for me to see Nina whip through 22 (!!!) recipes in the space of six hours, some of them pretty easy (Red Cabbage, Beetroot, Apple and Pecan Salad or Date Sweets), some of them more time consuming but so much more impressive for it (Savoury Stars; Banoffee Pie or Christmas Pudding). It was fun to be tempted into making my own chocolate again and playing with the recipe; I am not very fond of Mint Chocolate and so I changed things around and made a ginger one - WOW! That one has a kick!

It is not really possible to re-print somebody else's recipes but you can go to Karen's website and purchase the whole 'Winter in the Raw' e-book for yourself. I can definitely guarantee that it will be money well spent.

Self expression through un-cooking

I realise how long it has been since I have posted anything, but somehow I am going through a writers blog.... and so finally I came to realisation that I might as well post a picture, so that you get to see where else have I found a creative expression. And you have guessed correctly - it was through making FOOD!

Breakfast a little bit diffrently: Apple slices with nut butter topped with raspberries, strawberries, lots of cinnamon and a little vanilla agave drizzle. AMAZING!

My latest creation - spicy crackers - became the base for a raw pizza, which became the best raw food I have so far made and eaten!

And so thus nurtured I will endeavour to be back in top form very very soon. That a promise!

Uncooking for Cooked parents

I believe that one of the challenges of being succesfully raw and living in peace with all other people never mind what they want to eat is in not pushing your raw ideas on them. When I first 'discovered' raw 15 months ago I could, as every raw fooder there will know for themselves, not believe that not everybody out there didn't want to hear what I learned and how much sense it made. So I talked to people, gently, but still, letting them know about this wonder that simple unheated and unprocessed food is.

I am not so new to eating well. I have been an avid healthy eating / nutrition / alternative almost anything reader for over two decades now and have acuired some knowledge in the field. And yet even for me the journey to raw food took a long time. I have read Norman Walker's books first time 18 years ago, and although they resonated deeply with me I have totally missed the point that he was a raw foodist! It just was not a concept I was ready (or perhaps willing) to understand. I have also met several raw foodists a few years ago while living in Canada and working in a lovely yoga centre Rama Lotus. Back then I have began to understand what it meant to eat only raw food, but I was not yet ready to believe that it was the perfect way. Especially not in Ottawa where the temperature in winter regularly drop 3o degrees Celsius below zero. It simply did not make sense to me. Not yet. I must confess that even Luke's amazing raw chocolate truffles left me rather clueless... What a shame!

Anyway; when things fell in place and I was finally ready to start eating this way, I have remembered my own slow process and I did my best not to impose on people by only sharing my diet habits when asked about it. When told I looked amazing, I would mention that it must be the  benefit of my raw food diet and smile. Lots of people found this interesting, some people said to be careful and not to make myself ill, and a few probably thought I was crazy, but this is not a new concept to me and left me unchallenged.

One of the more gentle sceptics are my dear Cooked Parents in-law. They do their best to be supportive and even stock their house with lots fruits and veggies when we are visitting. I could not be more lucky,really,  I could not have a more loving Mum in-law. But I think sometimes she is worried about what it is I am doing.... It seems so strange to them, strangely, to eat only stuff that has not been cooked. We are all such creatures of habit, we do not question why we do what we do, but we will question when we see something new, unexpected, radical even. 

With myself, I find that the more raw I eat, the less I am actually willing to cook certain things, and mostly I do not want to work, touch or eat meat. And so when my cooked in-laws came to visit last time, I have given up my role as an exclusive chef for the evening and asked Cooked Husband to prepare the main meal, as he wanted somthing cooked. I have, as usual, prepared a raw starter, which you can see above. Cooked husband named it 'The Trafic Lights Salad' and it was created from red, orange, yellow and brownish tomato, yummy ripe avocado, basil and pinenuts based pesto and extra splash of olive oil. It was delicious, everyone loved it, and we even had a 'which tomato do you like best' contest.

One more way to bring more raw food onto people's plates are the side veggies. You can steam carrots, green beans, mange touts and brocoli for just a minute to warm them up very very gently, or you can even steam a half and then leave the second half raw, letting people to help themselfs from whichever bowl they prefer. Presentation is the key, and dressing the veggies in a bit of olive oil, lemon juice and a dash of pink himalaian salt will help as well. Also I find that during a dinner party the focus in as much on a conversation and having fun as it is on food, so your guests  might not notice so much that the carrots are a bit crunchier then they would make them at home.

After Cooked Husband spent a sleepless night last time I made a raw chocolate cake, I was a bit worried to make it again, and as I found my raw larder a bit empty, I ended up making a regular non raw desert. I was surpriced to not like it as much as I used to, finding it clogging and overly sweet, so it is my plan that from this moment onwards, in this house, there will be raw starters and raw deserts at every dinner party. This might also mean Cooked Husband's bigger participation in preparing the meal, which I found left me strangely unstressed and collected, having all (t)his help. So now I have two reasons. And who knows, as I get more confident and practice and play more with my raw recipes, I might one day serve a completely raw meal to a definitely cooked unsuspecting people and have them coming for seconds, perhaps even without knowing how much good this is doing to their bodies!

Daily bread

While I have not been writing very much in the last many days, I have been busy in the kitchen and in the garden. The weather in London was amazing, sunny and almost hot, and as everyone living in the UK knows, this is to be savoured and enjoyed, because we never know how long it will last. And so instead of sitting in front of my laptop typing away I have been planting lettuces and beans, reading in the sun Evie's Kitchen: Raising an Ecstatic Child and creating some lovely summery raw foods in between, when I needed a rest from all that sunshine.

As I mentioned before, I don't have a dehydrator, as the space in our kitchen is quite limited and Cooked Husband gets stressed about me overcrowding the kitchen with my 'raw gadgets', but since I had my first positive outcome using very low oven for my Easter feast I have been playing with dehydrator based recipes quite succesfully. I am lucky, I suppose, as the lovest setting on my oven is somewhere around 35-40 C - this basically means that the trays feel just warm, not hot, when handled with my bare hands. Please be careful the first time you experiment, as every oven is different and I would not like it if you burned your fingers! I have also, through trial and error, learned that it is very important to leave the oven door open a little bit to let the moisture out, as some of my first attempts went sour and ended up on the compost heap. I just stick a wooden spoon in the door so it stays open a crack. When you make something like coconut maccaroons this way, the whole house smells of sweet coconut and you are, at least mentally, transported to a lovely caribean island...

 My raw bread and the marinated mushrooms are from Russell James' eZine recipe. You can subscribe on the page where this link takes you, it is free, and I urge you, if you do not yet receive his eZine, sign up now. He is such an inspiration! The bread is based on sprouted buckwheat, zuccini and avocado, and it tastes rather nice. I found it a bit off an acquired taste at first, quite savoury, but it made a perfect base for several different open sanwiches and raw pizzas during the last week or so. On that note I would recommend to make only a half of the recipe if you are a single raw foodist in your household, as, even after I shared some with The Green Queen, I have been eating the bread every day and still have a few slices left in the fridge!

What you can see on the picture is my lunch one day last week; the base is the already mentioned bread, spread with home-made almond/cashew nut butter, drizzled with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, then topped with alternate slices of avocado and marinated and dehydrated mushrooms, decorated with a few vibrant radish slices and microgreens. It was delicious and filling, and another day, when I had a similar version of this for dinner, I gave Cooked Husband a taste ... and he liked it! Never say never!

Un-cooked Easter

Last week, specifically on Easter Monday, something very special happened in the world of Raw Wife and Cooked Husband. I have prepared my first time ever raw food feast for other people, some of them raw, and some of them not.

My dear friend Denise aka Green Queen and her boyfriend Mark brought the starters - gorgeous vietnamiese rice wraps with mango, avocado and corriander and some beautiful raw sushi with cauliflower rice. I made marinated portabela mushrooms with satay sauce from my new Thai e-book from Russell James, who is always an amazing inspiration.

Main meal was all in the oriental mood; here are the veggies mixed with spices and ready to go into my low oven as no dehydrator to warm up and soften a bit.

Pineapple rice in the making. I pulsed some cauliflower, salsify, pinenuts and maccadamia nuts in a food processor with sesami oil and salt, then added finely chopped chilli, corriander and pineapple into the mix. Delicious....

To have something simple with all these gourmet choices, I have created some yellow zuccini 'noodles' on my new spiraliser toy thing machine. I love this thing. It is the best! I have never had so much fun with vegetables before!

And lunch is served. Eating with chopsticks might not be very 'thai', but it is fun, so we did it anyway...

And a chocolate surprice at the end. Tart is from Raw Food Real World, ice cream is frozen bananas and frozen almond milk blended together with a raspberry swirl. Yum. I am sorry the true chocoholics who could not resist a second helping and then could not sleep that night, but that's raw chocolate for you. Powerful stuff. But then again, when else would you eat a lot of chocolate if not at Easter!?

Visiting Raw Bar

I cannot believe how fast time flies! It has now been almost a week since I started this post. But here I am now to tell you all about this new exciting place that recently opened its doors to us, raw foodies, here in London.

I met my 'rawfriend' Marianne for late lunch at the Raw Bar at Noting Hill. We both subscribe to the amazing quarterly magazine GetFresh, and so we both read the review of this place and could not get there fast enough to experience it for ourselves. It is effectively a shop run by an English organic farm and apart from being able to buy here anything from fresh produce through books and clothes you can also sit down to a lovely meal, cooked or not, vegan or otherwise. For us, the raw enthusiasts, the best part in here is the already mentioned Raw Bar. Not all meals are vegan, but I see that as almost a good thing as you can come with your non-raw friends and they will feel like they have an interesting choice of dishes as well.

We were not allowed to take pictures of the place, which I find strange because I was only going to use them to lure more people into visiting, but I will tell you what it looks like and you can check it out for yourself, if you are in London, or follow this link for a nice picture. The whole place is created in natural materials, every surface covered in wood or wicker, and through middle of the long lovely smooth wooden tables runs a narrow grass 'meadow'. You can touch it or stroke it and feel its juicy green softness; it is rather cool, actually, and makes you smile! You can almost imagine you are having a picnic in a park...

The food is competing with the environment for your attention. You can sit at the bar, as we did, and watch your food being prepared, and even ask a question or two from the two handsome chefs. They might let you into a secret or two if you become a regular customer here, or you can come to one of the open days they run once a months and actually learn hands-on how to create some of the yummy creations we ate.

Although they do have a lovely wine list, we chose a juice each. Drinking before 5pm and all that, you know. Mine was a 'Lemonade' shake from pears, apples, lemon and ginger, and it was a delicately tasting pale green cloud. I had to guard it from Marianne, who ordered a straight green detox juice but fell in love with my sweet creation instead. She has since been experimenting busily at home, attempting to recreate this delicious drink. It was very refreshing and will be great in summer poured over some ice cubes.

To start with we shared a selection of raw crackers with dips and pickles The dips were avocado cream and almond hummus, both of them dreamily creamy and yummy, the crackers fluffy and light, full of chopped almonds and pumpkin seeds. Marianne could not get enough of the onion rings pickled in red wine vinegar, too.

We both got very excited about the Pad Thai, which was reviewed in the magazine, and we both ended up ordering it. This could be seen as a bad thing to do as you cannot taste different dishes from each other. Well, obviously, you can, but there is no point, right. But it was SOOO good, we were both more then happy with our choice. The bottom layer was made of spiralised carrots (of which you will soon see and hear more, because I ordered spiraliser as soon as I got home), mixed with a mild, perhaps macadamia nut based sauce, topped with finely julienned veggies - red and white cabbage, spring onions, red peppers - with almond butter based spicy Thai sauce. All this was topped again with a pyramid of mixed baby salad leaves drizzled with the most fiery chili oil and sprinkled with some honeyed spicy cashew nuts for extra crunch and flavour. It was SOOOOOO GOOD, and it looked beautiful! Marianne's hand was shaky and so the picture above is not very sharp, but you can just see this yummy pretty meal, and how excited I am about it!

Although we talked about the intriguing sounding deserts and saw some of them being prepared, we ended up too full to have room for anything else! We decided on sharing the main meal next time and sampling them then, as we will definitely be back!

The total bill came to £17 each, which seems a bit pricey for a plate of vegetables, but let me assure you - a plate of vegetables this was NOT! It was a lovely creation, put together with enthusiasm and skill, and compared to a cooked dish of pasta I imagine it took as much or more work and surely involved a bit more careful flavour balancing. Creating from raw ingredients is at least as much fun as it is a challenge. I personally left with not only a full and content belly but also with my head spinning with ideas about want I want to make and create. As I said earlier, I ordered a spiraliser as soon as I got home and also bought a Thai inspired collection of raw recipes from Russel James. I have since played with some of them, but I will leave that for another post.

Tickle your taste buds

Purple sprouting brocoli, red cabbage and marinated mushrooms with Thai inspired dressing with tahini, chilli pepper and lime juice.