Horizons Visit with Sue

Unfortunately, many of the pictures of the great meal I shared with Sue did not come out great; they were all taken with a camera phone.

I got my usual, the green salad as an appetizer and spinach salad (Yucatan salad) as my entree.  Not all raw but mostly raw.

Sue got the vegetable sampler tasting menu, which was really cool.  It came with a beet salad to start, then a tomato soup with spinach and asparagus, then a heart of palm cake with horseradish sauce and guacamole, an exotic mushroom dish with a parsnip ravioli, and then a dessert sampler with brulee, cheesecake, and biscotti.  Sue said everything was great except for the biscotti. 

Pictures are of the heart of palm cake, the spinach salad, and the beet salad.

Fiesta Salad

Mixed greens with cilantro, kale, jicama, mango, carrots, corn, avocado, clover sprouts, a green pea-adzuki-lentil sprout blend, and a spicy Liquid Gold nutritional yeast dressing (with hemp).

Daikon w/ Bok Choy & Curry Sauce

The curry sauce has orange juice, carrot, water, nutritional yeast, garam masala, and curry powder.  This was really good - a crunchy salad!

My Favorite Salad

Kale with avocado, bok choy, dulse, carrots, and a nutritional yeast dressing adapted from Becoming Vegan.

Dessert!

Nutritional Yeast Dressing

3 T. virgin coconut oil

3 T. flax oil

1 T. hempseed butter

1 T. extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 c. water

1/3 c. lemon juice

1-2 T. balsamic vinegar

1/4 c. Bragg’s or nama shoyu

1/2 c. nutritional yeast

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. ground cumin

Lemongrass & Greens Soup w/ Raw Garnishes

I got some lemongrass stalks and Thai basil from my friend Sara, so I thought I’d try to put them to good use and also eat plenty of raw in the process.

I made a broth with pureed coconut shreds, broccoli stalks, and kale, coconut water and homemade vegetable broth, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, a green chile, salt, and a small amount of the basil.  Then I cooked the broccoli florets in the broth but still found something was missing…..roasted peanuts!  They really changed the flavor of the soup for the better.  The garnish is carrots, bok choy, kale, avocado, and Thai basil. 

 It was really tasty but I think in the future I may just keep things more simple and start eating more raw broccoli.  I had previously thought I didn’t like it raw, but I had a few bites of a stalk and liked it.  Of course a sauce with the lemongrass would be excellent even raw!

Collards Rolls w/ Sun-dried Tomato Balls & Cheese

 

The Raw 50 (for cheese & mango flan)

I know that raw collard leaves, to some, may not sound like their idea of food, and I’ll admit that I was skeptical myself, but I got some organic leaves, marinated them in salt and lemon juice, and made some accompaniments for wraps.

The cheese is excellent, with pine nuts, macadamias, nutritional yeast, extra-virgin olive oil, and garlic.  I could eat it by the spoonful.

I love raw preparation of food, as it seems to inspire more creativity in me than cooked prep does.  I wanted sun-dried tomato and basil balls, so I merely threw some sunflower seeds, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil in the processor, ground it up, decided I need more liquid, and added garlic, carrots, and raw tahini.  What resulted was exactly what I wanted and paired perfectly with the cheese and collards.

The mango flan, however sweet and coconuty, did not turn out.  You are supposed to chill it for 30 min. in the freezer and then release it from the container.  This didn’t work, at least for me, but the flan tastes just as good using a spoon, and I got to use young coconut meat for the first time and drank the coconut water.  I’m thinking that my skin loves coconut oils and anything coconut, really, so I’m embracing all things coconut right now and finding that I like fresh coconut flavor more than I realized, just not dried shreds.

The flan can be seen in the background here:

Another Kale Admonishment

Even if you don’t like cooked kale, you may find that you like the green vegetable juiced!  I have had three of these so far today:

5-6 kale stalks with leaves

3/4 lb. carrots

1/2 to 1 orange

Place in the juicer in that order.  The orange will add some sweetness; mix it up and find a combination you like.  I also had blueberry-pineapple today.

Raw Food Recipes, No Meat/No Heat Book

A sampling of a few of the recipes from this book:

Pistachio, Celery, and Cucumber Salad with Dates and Orange-Lemon Dressing

Celery & Red Apple Salad with Creamy Pine Nut Dressing (with lemon and parsley)

Recipe for Belgian Endive with Gremolata and Vegetables using Radicchio and Additional Vegetables, bell peppers, cucumber, carrots, Belgian endive, radicchio, and mixed sprouts.  Gremolata has lemon juice, garlic, parsley, and oil (see note below).

 

I was very intrigued by this one.  It’s Swiss Chard, Pine Nuts, and Currants Stuffed in Vine Leaves.  Of course the vine leaves, being jarred, are not raw, but the filling is completely raw.

In the pistachio salad, apple salad, and “dolmas,” I did not add any oil, due to there already being fat content and plenty of flavor from the nuts, herbs, and citrus juices.  The gremolata has merely a tablespoon of oil, much less than called for.  My favorite of these four is a toss-up between the apple salad (the dressing is amazing) and the dolmas with the perfect filling mixture.  Where’s Mr. Marcus when you need him to swoop in and eat some dolmas?  These are better than Costco.

Kale Salad & Cucumber Boats (raw)

Kale salad has red and green bell pepper, carrots, and a creamy raw cashew-cilantro-orange dressing with garlic.

The cucumber boats are stuffed with an avocado, onion, garlic, tomato, lime, cilantro, and celery mixture.

Both are excellent!  The cashew dressing with some sweetness from the fresh orange juice pairs well with the kale.

More Greens

Not including the peanuts, mung bean sprouts, cilantro, and green onions, this salad, for a medium-size bowl, has 22 grams of protein, 1,067% RDA of Vitamin A, 76% of the RDA of calcium, 401% of the RDA for Vitamin C, and 59% of the RDA for iron.  The dressing I used was simply lime juice, sambal oelek (the chili paste I’m bonkers over), and soy sauce (I always use gluten-free soy sauce).

The tofu is marinated with cilantro.