Raw

Our dear friend, Diane, is on a very successful health kick and came down from Wisconsin to see us this weekend. Miss Healthypants, Iwanski, and I always love our “Diane” weekends.

Pure, unalloyed pleasure.

Like I said, Diane has been on a healthy endeavor (and she looks incredible.) She knew that there were a couple of 'raw food' restaurants here in Chicago and wanted to try them. I knew of them as well, but they’re awfully expensive. For example, one offers a ‘raw food’ buffet, but it’ll run you close to fifty bucks.

Having recently experimented with the ‘raw food’ thing, I offered to make a complete raw-food meal for our dear friend. She was so excited about it -- and when someone is that happy about me preparing a meal, then that’s all I need.

I had ‘done’ a lot of the raw food recipes, but frankly, they were sort of utilitarian. Nutritious, yes, but not that appealing. This time, I wanted to ‘do’ a complete raw food meal and also have it be one of those ‘wow’ meals; raw food notwithstanding.

End result:

I was really happy with the meal and the way it turned out. (Most of all, I was just happy to have my friends around.)

If anyone might be suspicious that a 'raw food' meal might be nothing more than munching on organic broccoli, (preferably with dirt clinging to the root hairs) well, I've got news for you;

and some photos.

First courses:

1. Stuffed mushrooms:
Baby Portobello mushrooms stuffed with a mixture of chopped macadamia nuts, a puree of dried tomatoes, dates, garlic, basil and parsley, then dehydrated for six hours. *

(Lots of work, but they were really scrum-mum-tious.)

2. Tomato cups:
Organic tomatoes stuffed with chopped raw peanuts (that had been soaked in lemon-water for 12 hours) parsley, spearmint, cucumber and shallot.

Meh. Tasty, but won’t do it again.

3. Lettuce wraps:
Romaine lettuce stuffed with raw corn, avocado, dates, cilantro, and minced chipotle peppers.

It was a variation on guacamole, but I oomphed the raw corn component and added dates to the mixture.

Fantastic.

Entrée:

4. Salsa Finta and Almond Polpetta
This is, basically, a 'raw food' form of pasta and meatballs.

The meatballs are made from ground almonds, cashews, reconstituted dried tomatoes, lots of fresh basil, garlic, then they're dehydrated for 8 hours. *

The sauce is a really rich conconction of pureed grape tomatoes, dried tomatoes, dates, lots of fresh basil, oregano, garlic, and olive oil.

The 'pasta' is shaved yellow squash, marinated in olive oil and lemon juice.

It's all served on a bed of baby spinach.

Click here.

(This is really a fantastic recipe.)

Here are Miss Healthypants and Diane, in much mirth and glee over their dinners.

Smiles and laughter from my friends are, hands down, what I enjoy most about any gathering.

Here is Iwanski.

Mirth and glee is subtle, but it's there.

5. Dessert: Maca-Mango Ice Cream

A puree of frozen macadamia-nut butter and fresh mango, topped with pomegranate and raspberries.

(My own creation -- thank-you-very-much.)

I'll have to admit that the 'raw food' meal really was a success and I'm glad I did it. (This was not a cuisine upon which I was raised; and when embarking on unfamiliar culinary territory, you just never know.) This would be a meal that I would love to serve again. Not only because everything was uniquely and creatively made from 'raw food' -- but because everything was so incredibly tasty and appealing.

I can honestly say that I would love to be able to eat this way for the rest of my life, for it is extremely healthy. After all, when it comes to raw food, every item in every recipe is something you should be eating.

That’s pretty impressive.

* Note: About food dehydrating.

I don't have a food dehydrator and I'm not about to go out and buy one.

(After all -- Is anyone's monthly beef jerky bill really that high?)

Anyway, set your oven on the lowest possible temp.; make sure it doesn't actually stay on anything above 200 F (100 C) -- some older ovens simply heat up to 300 F (150 C) and stay there.

Leave the door open with a fan blowing in.

Boom.

There's your food dehydrator. Works great.

Thank you.

The Bacon Explosion

In recent posts, I’ve been writing about eating healthy.

First, there was vegetarian fare. Then, I got healthier and it became vegan. Then, I went even further and was all into raw-vegan.

I really enjoy eating raw-vegan but admit that I’ve allowed about 20 to 50 percent of my diet to be cooked vegan. Each day I manage to have a big glass of my cilantro smoothie (it contains cilantro, cucumber, grapefruit, spinach, an apple, and pineapple) and I also eat a bunch of dates and prunes.

Tonight, I’m meeting Miss Healthypants and our friend, Liane, for Thai food. If a chicken or beef dish is ordered, I certainly won’t pass it up. That’s silly.

I love to write about food and since I’ve spent quite a bit of blog-space writing about an extremely healthy diet, I thought I’d go about as far the other way as one could possibly get.

I present to you, the Bacon Explosion.

It turns out that these two guys developed a food item called a Bacon Explosion a couple of months ago. They blogged about it and, unfortunately, their Bacon Explosion is sweeping the country. They’ve had about a half-million hits to their Bacon Explosion Blog and a New York Times article was just published about it.

I’d kill for publicity like that. I doubt that my cilantro smoothie will have such a following which tells you something about our dietary priorities in this country.

Anyway, to make a Bacon Explosion, you begin with two pounds of thick-cut bacon and criss-cross it like a pie lattice:

Cover it with seasoning and then smash a bunch of Italian sausage over it.

Top that with lots of crispy-fried bacon.

Roll it up into a big torpedo and slather it with barbecue sauce.

Cook it on a smoker until the internal temperature is 165. You can also cook it in an oven.

Slice and enjoy! It would probably be a big hit at a Superbowl party or great on a McMuffin

Most importantly, don't forget to make a monthly appointment for a colonoscopy.

Raw Repast

The Raw Food experiment continues. . . .

Yesterday, I made another blender-full of my new favorite, the cilantro smoothie. (One whole bunch of cilantro, a peeled cucumber, a peeled grapefruit, fresh pineapple, a granny Smith apple, fresh spinach and cinnamon all blended together).

Last night, I was wondering what to make for dinner. I had eaten all the cashew-sunflower seed hummus. I looked through my raw food cookbook to get some ideas.

Did you know you can make cheese from nuts? It’s awfully labor intensive. You soak cashews, macadamias or almonds in water, blend them up, strain off the “milk”, add lemon juice to coagulate it, let it sit out for eight hours, refrigerate it to thicken it, strain off the whey, and you have cheese. Isn't that incredible?

I didn’t do that.

I was still trying to think of something to make. I had bought a spiral slicer that will turn a zucchini into strands of “spaghetti” but it turns out I really don’t like the dry, spongy texture of raw zucchini.

The raw food “hamburger” looked good. You make an herby nut-seed patty, and the “bun” is a giant Portobello mushroom. However, a blizzard was raging outside and the 'bello burger would have to wait.

I was still in a quandary. I was about to say “the hell with it” and boil some pasta or have Thai food delivered when I thought of it. . . .

Why hadn’t I thought of this before?. . .

. . . a salad

Simple, healthy salad.

I had been admiring the raw food “thing” and the creative, albeit counterfeit, means of coming up with cheese, spaghetti, and hamburgers when I had neglected the simplest means of consuming raw foods.

Of course, I had tons of tasty things with which to make a salad. Spinach, parsley, cucumbers, carrots, a grated beet, nuts of all kinds, some chopped dates all got dumped into a big bowl.

For the dressing, I have the most delicious stuff on hand from Old Town Oil here in Chicago. . . a bottle of tangerine balsamic vinegar and a bottle of orange olive oil. The two combined makes the most incredible vinaigrette you’ve ever had. Salad like this has never been more appealing.

After my salad and smoothie, I had a craving for sweets so I ate about a dozen prunes.

Needless to say, there’s a lot to be said for the digestive . . . um. . . "properties" of eating a dozen prunes.

Raw-licious

I’ll admit that I’ve been very intrigued with the “raw food” diet recently. I even bought a cook book on raw foods with a Border’s gift card that Miss Healthypants gave me for Christmas.

I’ve found the raw food diet attractive for a couple of reasons.

First, every food item used in the raw food diet is something that you should be eating. Everything is healthy and good for you. Also, I’ve really been surprised at the creativity regarding the recipes -- It’s not just nibbling on raw vegetables like a health-conscious rabbit.

So, this past weekend I “did” the raw food thing.

The verdict: I’m still doing it today. I liked it.

I’ll admit that some things worked better than others, but hey, that’s life in general. For example, here are two smoothies I made:
They’re very pretty, aren’t they?

The green one is a cilantro smoothie and the fuchsia one is a beet/pomegranate smoothie. Strangely enough, the cilantro smoothie was just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted and the beet one tasted like kerosene. So, there you go.

To make the cilantro smoothie, blend one bunch of cilantro, one peeled cucumber, one granny Smith apple, about one cup of fresh pineapple, a big handful of fresh spinach, one peeled grapefruit, a big dash of cinnamon with enough water to make it blend. (I added a small scoop of protein powder) It makes a full blender full.

And lookie here what I made for lunch: Hummus with caramelized onions on whole-grain crackers.
It’s very pretty, right?

To make the hummus, soak cashews, sunflower seeds and garbanzo beans in water overnight. Blend them with marinated sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice and tahini. (I used very few garbanzo beans because raw, soaked beans taste too “beany”).

To make the “caramelized” onions, blend four dates with a tablespoon of soy sauce and a little water. Pour over sliced red onions to marinade. They’re really really good!

Normally, in raw food recipes, one can make crackers by blending sprouted grains and nuts into a puree, then spreading them on waxed paper and dehydrating it overnight.

I’m not about to go to the trouble of spouting a bunch of grains and nuts, puree-ing them, then dehydrating it. Please. Not when I can just buy these super-healthy 13-grain crackers. And especially since I don’t have a dehydrator (and I doubt I’d go to all this trouble even if I had one).

Yeah, the crackers are baked, so kill me.

Today for lunch I had guacamole and the hummus on the crackers. I have a big container of the cilantro smoothie for later.

I tried some raw food items previously but didn’t like them. It makes a difference to actually follow some recipes and, bottom line, if the food isn’t appealing or tasty I’m not going to eat it just because it’s healthy.

Oh, and for breakfast I had a Venti half-caf from Starbuck’s.

Yeah, the coffee isn’t “raw food” but one can only go so far.

Really.

Eating Slime

Okay, I’ve been playing around with raw food recipes for a while, trying to develop something that actually tastes good and is appealing.


Some raw-foodies call it “energy soup” and after tinkering around with a recipe for it, I think I’ve finally “got it.”

The thing about this is that it really does give you energy. I’ve made it for three days in a row and consume it for dinner and breakfast. I can really say that I feel great and don’t require near as much sleep. It really is pretty remarkable.

Here is my basic recipe, enough for dinner one night and breakfast the next day.

½ bag of fresh spinach

2 carrots

1 cucumber, unpeeled

1 apple

1 avocado or ½ cup of soaked green split peas

A few cashews for protein

A few soaked golden raisins

Juice of one lime.

Dash of salt

Chop everything up a bit and bung it in a blender with about 2 cups of water.

Blitz it.

Yeah, it looks like bright green slime. But it tastes good, you get all your veggies in one go, and it sure keeps you feeling spunky.
The thing is, I'll probably do this healthy-eating-thing for a few more days, then break down and have a giant deep-dish Chicago style pizza delivered. With anchovies.

Raw Repast

I tried some more of my “raw food” thing this weekend.

I had a combination packet of beans – I think there were about fifteen different kinds of beans in there. I soaked them over night then pureed them with some lime juice, olive oil and macadamia nut butter. It tasted pretty good, so I stuffed it inside a red bell pepper and that’s what I had for lunch on Saturday.

I had had a flu shot the day before, which, they say gives you a touch of the flu. I don’t know what made me feel so badly and gave me so much “intestinal distress”; the raw beans or the touch of the flu, but I was not a happy camper.

So, rather than healing myself, I went out for Ethiopian food on Saturday night. If you’ve never had Ethiopian food, lets just say that it contains just about every spice known to humans. I love Ethiopian food and this place was fantastic, but it was not the most prudent move to make.

The raw beans, the spicy Ethiopian food, combined with a touch of the flu. . . .

You know those over-the-shoulder harnesses that roller coasters have these days?

My toilet could have used one of those.

Not wanting to be beaten by the raw food experiment, I decided to try another raw food recipe on Sunday.

I still had a bunch of bell peppers and a gazillion grape tomatoes, so I decided to go that route. I began slicing the little tomatoes and was going to mix them with diced zucchini, fresh basil, diced carrots and stuff that in a bell pepper. All raw.

Then, I thought, “Aw, the hell with it.”

I had a can of garbanzo beans and tumped that in with the diced veggies along with some pesto and freshly-grated parmesan cheese.

Here’s what it looked like raw. Pretty, huh?

Then, again, I thought, “Aw, the hell with it,” drizzled it with olive oil and shoved the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Holy mother of god, this was good. Especially served over some jasmine rice.

Cooked jasmine rice.

Raw Food Lunch

I’ve always been interested in all kinds of food.

Lately, I’ve been intrigued with the “Raw Food” movement. That’s where you eat only foods that are raw; no animal products of any kind.

(Sushi would not really be “raw food” since it contains fish. Also the rice is cooked).

When I first heard of raw food, I envisioned some veggie salad-head type of person, nibbling on a stalk of raw broccoli – preferably with bits of dirt clinging to the root hairs.

However, once I read some of the recipes, I was pretty intrigued with the creativity involved. After trying some of them and was even more impressed.

What really persuaded me was the fact that every raw food recipe ingredient is stuff we should be eating. Think about it. Take a hamburger for example. We know so well that beef, white bread, and mayo are known to cause distress. The only things in a hamburger that we should really be eating are the lettuce, tomatoes and onions.

Whenever I made a raw food meal, any hunger was really satisfied with just a small portion of it. After all, it’s pretty packed with lots of nutrients. If you want to pig out with a heaping portion. . . . all the better.

Can you say that with any other diet?

What raw foodies like about it is that all of the natural enzymes remain and are not destroyed by cooking. That sounds nice. But in reality, I think the acid in our tummies destroys a lot of the enzymes anyway.

But still, can any other food programs actually advocate eating more food that less?

I’ve been fiddling with my own ideas and recipes. Here is my lunch that I brought to work today. (See pic below) It’s my raw food version of lasagna.

For the “noodles,” take a zucchini, a yellow squash and a carrot and shred them with a vegetable peeler. Toss with olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice to “cook” them.

For the filling, soak black eyed peas overnight in water (in the fridge). Drain the peas and puree them in a food processor with olive oil, a few golden raisins, lime juice and a little salt. (The sweetness of the raisins takes away any of the bitter “beany” flavor of raw beans).

Use flaxseed oil if you like. Use more of it if your budget allows. It will only make the filling richer and is packed-and-pure omega-3s.

For the sauce: Soak cashews in water for a couple of hours. Reserve some of the soaking liquid. Drain and puree them in a blender with some sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, (or flaxseed oil) a few golden raisins, lemon juice, fresh basil and garlic. Add a bit of reserved liquid as needed. As it emulsifies, you really will get an incredibly rich and creamy sauce.

Assemble in layers with sauce on top.

Ta-daahhh. . .

. . . Yeah, I know.

It sort of looks like when my beagle would throw up.

But it’s really very good. And it even contains a complete protein since it has beans and nuts and is packed with omega 3s. The black-eyed pea is just about the best legume around; low in fat, packed with protein and contains more minerals than any other food source, including significant amounts of the trace element, selenium, (which we really need).

Because this recipe combines the proteins of legumes (black-eyed peas) with seeds (cashews), it results in a protein complementarity that is more complete and useable than any other animal protein. In other words, the parts are greater than the sum.

And, when you think about it, have we ever known of any primate to obtain sustenance from eating animal flesh or from sucking the milk of other species? . . .

. . . It’s Saturday.

I’ll probably have a big honkin’ Chicago style pizza delivered tonight. With anchovies.

After all, what other primates have evolved to deliver Pizzeria Uno?

Here's the Sandwich

Lorraine over at Here's the Thing has truly inspired me with her new food blog, Here's the Dish. Her recipes, cooking tips and insights are so impressive and to top it all off, her writing is so appealing to read as well.

Recently, I've been trying to eat healthy at lunch while at work. It's difficult to do because I'm not the most disciplined person in the world and it takes a bit of that to prepare a lunch to take with you. Also, there are SO many good places to eat where I work which makes it all the more tempting just to schlep down to the food court in the building rather than exercise a bit of self restraint.

So, awhile back I was a little intrigued by the Raw Food movement and poked a tentative toe in its pool. I was impressed by the idea of eating a vegan diet and even more so with the idea of eating only uncooked foods.

So, I developed a vegan, raw food sandwich spread that actually tastes good. Mighty good, in fact. And it's good for you. And it's inexpensive, easy to prepare and easy to pack along as a lunch. Yay.

It's made from soaked split peas. I like it as a sandwich spread with mayo and little grape tomatoes. (I know, mayo isn't vegan, but you can buy "Vegannaise" if you want.) If you want to go total Raw Food, stuff it inside half a yellow bell pepper, top it with grape tomatoes, shredded carrots and purple cabbage. Very colorful.

And no, I'm not some health-food, vegan, salad-head either. I had fried chicken for lunch today with a side of Tater-Babies.

Here's my sandwich spread:

1 16-0z pkg dried green split peas
Juice of 2 limes
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
1/2 cup oil (olive oil or half olive and half flaxseed)

Cover split peas with water and soak overnight in the fridge.
Drain water off split peas.
Combine all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Serve on whole grain bread, mayo and grape tomatoes.

Here's a pretty pic with a side of fresh mango.