I’ve been experimenting with making my own super fresh salad dressings lately. This one turned out so good I had 3 helpings back to back to back. When I tell my friends some of the ingredients involved they make the “ewwww” face, but try to keep your mind and mouth open and give this a try! Trust me! Something about the sweet but tar flavor of the strawberries this time of year really lends it self well to both enhancing the flavors of other veggies as well as adding a wonderful flavor blanket on top. Ok enough jibba jabba, here’s the “recipe”:

• 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 3-4 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• 1-2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 8-10 strawberries
• 4 gloves of garlic
• 1 packet of stevia sweetener (although had I had honey, I would have used a spoonful of that instead).

First off, all the ingredients  listed above are guesstimates. I made the dressing by intuition and to taste. So, with that said…puree the heck out of the mix until it is super smooth. Note, you may not need the sweetener, depending on the sweetness of the berries (or unless you just like things “tartier”…hey some of us do!). I just love the color of this dressing. It provided a great contrast to some salad greens, and blended amazingly well with the ingredients I included in my wrap, which were…:

• portabello mushroom slices
• red onion diced
• jalapeño slices
• romaine lettuce cut into strips
• almond slices

The taste of the semi sweet, semi tart, strawberry dressing worked so well with the semi-neutral, earthy taste of the portabellos and the almond slices (which incidentally added a great crunch to the mix).  The onions and hot peppers played a nice contrast to the sweetness, much like one of my other favorite surprising taste combinations, chocolate and cayenne.

You can use that as a dressing in any fashion. I had two plate loads of salad right after the wrap I took a picture of…after I got the taste in my mouth, the camera wasn’t even a thought until the blind consumption of something super tasty was complete, and my lust for this newfound taste combination had been sated. Hah, I know funny language…but, trust me, my words can’t truly describe what my repeated trips to the table for this dressing can.

Try it out, it could be the perfect addition to a RAW Valetines! <3

Except for the garlic part…ok, better bring some fresh mint leaf as well.

[ED-phewww…made it through the whole post without a single mention to strawberry fields…]

The first thing I had to do was get my beans soaking. I had read somewhere that the enzymes in beans become dormant when the bean is in dried state, but as you begin to sprout the bean, then it enzyme activity is reignited. So, I soaked 1 cup of garbanzo beans for 8 hours or so in filtered, room temperature water. I then drained the beans well (make sure not too much water remains in the bowl or dish you use for this, your beans will start to stink–I KNOW!) and let them sit for another 8 hours before I rinsed and drained again. I repeated this process until I began to see the little nubs of sprouts start to wiggle their way out of the beans. You can let them sprout as long as you think is best, but at this point I took all my beans and began to make hummus.

Now, here’s the the basic “recipe” I followed:

• 1 cup pre-soaked and sprouted garbanzo beans.
• the juice of 2 lemons, freshly squeezed
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 tsp of sea salt
• 1 carrot, chopped
• about 5 squirts of liquid aminos

Now here’s the beauty of making hummus, the basics are really simple. Anyone with a food processor can do it 1-2-3, but you could grind it by hand. I can’t say if it affects the end result, perhaps it does, but what I did was use a tiny food processor that I have. But basically, I just addedall of the ingredients into my food processor and pulsed until it was pretty darn well processed. The resulting mash did not appear quite as smooth as store bought hummus, and perhaps better equipped food processors could do a better job, but it was pretty well mashed, and for the most part smooth. I had to add dabs of oil, and a little water as well in order to keep the mixture from becoming overly thick in the food processor. Be prepared to do so as you process. I also ended up having to add more oil, hours later, after the hummus had settled. Garbanzos suck up so much moisture it is amazing.

Here’s a pic of the hummus in the food processor:

After I had processed it as smooth as could get it (adding extra oil helped a lot), I put it in plastic containers that I reuse from the supermarket, added some fresh red bell pepper on top for adornment, spiced it with some paprika, cayenne pepper, and black pepper and then put it in the fridge to settle and to let all the flavors mingle and coagulate.

And, after it had sat in the fridge for about 2 hours or so, I took it out and decided to sample it as part of a salad I was making for dinner. The salad was pretty basic: assorted fresh greens cut into strips, grated carrot, chopped red onion, chopped red bell pepper, diced portabello mushroom, 1/2 Florida avacado diced, and of course, the raw hummus.

It was deeeeeeeeeelish! I will continue to tweek the hummus recipe and see if I can make it even better. It was good for a first try, but I would like to improve the creaminess of it. Part of me enjoys having to chew the bits of garbanzo here and there, but I have read that some people use raw tahini sauce to “complete” their hummus. I do believe that in authentic hummus recipes, that sesame seeds are used, and tahini is basically crushed sesame seeds mixed with oil. Next time I will definitely hunt down a small sack of seeds and add it in. As a matter of fact, I will be trying out several different flavoring ideas I already have. Stay tuned!

The wonderful blood orange, or Citrus sinensis, according to the Wikipedia entry, is quite the unusual fruit. I have had many of these fruits in my travels to both Spain, and Italy, and it is quite the treat when I find them here at the local market. I was able to purchase some for a reasonable price, and even though it is not “the season” so to speak, these oranges make quite the late night snack, and mouth refresher. Sometimes we need to break out of the monotony of eating the same fruits over and over, and I think using the blood orange not only lends itself to new flavors, but makes current dishes even better. For example, blood oranges can be used to make vinegrettes (with balsamic vinegar), and also they can be used in juicer mixes (like with carrots, apples, etc.). In Italy it is quite common for breakfast to be served with freshly squeezed blood orange juice (usually at room temperature). Yes, you will not find many chilled juices in Italy (especially southern Italy).

According to Wikipedia, “The distinctive dark flesh color is due to the presence of anthocyanin, a pigment common to many flowers and fruit, but uncommon in citrus fruits. Sometimes there is dark coloring on the exterior of the rind as well, depending on the variety of blood orange. The degree of coloration depends on light, temperature and variety. The blood orange is a hybrid of ancient origin, possibly between the pomelo and the tangerine. It probably originated in Sicily.” The taste is quite amazing. It is a warm, tangy taste, without the acidity of an orange, and the smooth taste of fruit punch.

“Sicilian Red oranges contain nutritional and preventive properties. As a result, growers incorporated blood oranges into their home remedies for centuries. Current research indicates that blood oranges are a good source of Vitamin C. The fruit’s red pigment, anthocyanin, is an antioxidant that reduces the risks associated with many ailments, including age-related illnesses. Blood oranges contain about 130 percent of the recommended amounts of Vitamin C, and diminish the risk of heart disease, some types of cancer and “bad” cholesterolcataracts, and aid in the body’s healing process. One medium-size orange contains 260 milligrams of potassium, 15 percent of the FDA’s daily recommendation. Potassium also lowers blood pressure, decreasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes, helps to regulate heart rhythm, and affects body growth and maintenance. Eating a medium-sized orange provides 28 percent of the recommended daily amount of dietary fiber. Oranges provide more fiber than any of the top 20 fruits or vegetables. Oranges can also be a valuable source of iron, calcium and vitamin A.” build-up.

Some more pics of this tasty treat as I rip open the tasty flesh. Be warned, the juice will stain so be careful who you “splash”. Hahaha. Enjoy! (Notice the dark flesh. Ohhh so good)

I could enjoy these as is for a treat without ever needing to find a more creative use for them. They are THAT good. But, in the interest of the blog, I decided to look up the culinary and medicinal uses of the persimmon. Here’s what good ole Wikipedia has to say:

Culinary uses

Persimmons are eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked. When eaten fresh the peel is usually cut/peeled off and the fruit is often cut into quarters or eaten whole like an apple. The flesh ranges from firm to mushy and the texture is unique. The flesh is very sweet and when firm possesses an apple-like crunch. In China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam after harvesting, ‘Hachiya’ persimmons are prepared using traditional hand-drying techniques, outdoors for two to three weeks. The fruit is then further dried by exposure to heat over several days before being shipped to market. In Japan the dried fruit is called hoshigaki (???), and in Korea it is called gotgam (hangul: ??). In both places it is eaten as a snack or dessert and used for other culinary purposes. In Korea, dried persimmon fruits are used to make the traditional Korean spicy punch, sujeonggwa, while the matured, fermented fruit is used to make a persimmon vinegar (???) that is believed to have a wide variety of holistic properties. The hoshigaki tradition traveled to California with Japanese American immigrants. A few farms still practice the art, which is being revived in part through the efforts of Slow Food USA, which describes the technique on its site and provides links to producers. [5] [6] In some areas of Manchuria and Korea, the dried leaves of the fruit are used for making tea. The Korean name for this tea is ghamnip cha (???).
The persimmon also figures prominently in American culinary tradition. It can be used in cookies, cakes, puddings, salads and as a topping for breakfast cereal. Persimmon pudding is a dessert using fresh persimmons. An annual persimmon festival, featuring a persimmon pudding contest, is held every September in Mitchell, Indiana. Persimmon pudding is a baked pudding that has the consistency of pumpkin pie but resembles a brownie and is almost always topped with whipped cream. Persimmons may be stored at room temperature (20°C) where they will continue to ripen. It is also a native plant in Brazil, South America, where it is referred to as the Caqui.

Ethnomedical Uses

* In traditional Chinese medicine the fruit regulates ch’i
* The raw fruit is used to treat constipation and hemorrhoids, and to stop bleeding. As such, it is not a good idea to consume too many persimmons at once- they can induce diarrhea.
* The cooked fruit is used to treat diarrhea and dysentery

So, after reading this, I decided I would just try to introduce the persimmon into the cabbage leaf wraps I have been eating lately. So, I cut up some red onions, tomato, jalapeno pepper, and garlic, added a spoon full of hummus, a sprinkle of sun flower seeds (or as I like to call them FUN FLOWERS…actually that is a lie, I never say that), a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar all wrapped up in a cabbage leaf. Here’s a picture of the finished product:

The persimmon blended so well with the jalapeno and hummus flavors. Something about the opposition of flavors made them work very well together, similar to how hot chocolate + cayenne pepper is surprisingly yummy). The tomato flavor was somewhat overshadowed in the mix and the red onions worked, but I am guessing something like ginger might be a better fit. The sprouts worked pretty well but something about the texture was a bit off. I’d like to experiment with other sprouts that better compliment the almost jelly like texture of the super ripe persimmon. The tatse of the garlic worked well with the hummus, jalapeno and persimmon as well, but I could take it or leave it depending on what else was in the wrap. I will definitely experiment using my remaining 2 persimmon is similar fashion. I was going to juice them, but I almost feel that would be a waste because the texture goes together so well with the sweet taste. All in all, this is a new favorite for me. I will definitely be including persimmon in my future shopping trips.

After 1 day of soaking and now 2 days of repeatedly rinsing and draining the beans I am starting to see little sprout tips peaking out of the beans! When I rinse them out the water smells very much like a fart. I can see some people not sprouting their own beans just due to that, although I bet other beans smell less. I did end up watering my Amarylis plant with the soak water, and it is about to bloom. I will include pics of that in this post for the hell of it once it blooms.

Here’s the sprout tips starting to show:

Two more days later, after rinsing every 4 hours or so the sprouts were looking really good, but unfortunately smelling super bad. I took a picture to document the progress of the sprouts, but the whole mess got dumped into the trash because the smell was nearly rancid (think foot + wet dog + old sink pipe + fart), and a good number of the beans were looking gross as well (i.e., darker color than usual, somewhat purplish and as if moving towards the black color of rotting foodstuff). I suspect that I had too many beans in the dish, and did not drain them thoroughly enough during rinses,letting the lower tier of beans stay moist and promote rot, bacteria, and other gross snotty stuff. Here’s the pic…the srpouts did look like they were coming along nicely, but man, I wish I could post the smell in this entry as well. YACK!

So, it is with a heavy heart that I abort this mission for now. I will read up on the topic of sprouting some more and come back better equipped to kick some sprouty ass!

Today I’ll be sharing with you my first experience with a Chayote. I found them on sale, 4 for $1.99. Here’s a picture. The one on the left is set upside down so I could show you the funny mouth shaped crease it has. It’s smiling at you!

Chayotes (Sechium edule) are from the gourd family, and while they may look like a pear or an apple are actually considered a vegetable. Before looking this information up, I washed off my chayote and bit into it assuming it would be pear-like, but the taste was more like semi-sweet celery. The texture was like a firm apple or pear though, and it seemed to have a lot of fluid in it. To be honest, my initial reaction wasn’t what I hoped for and it was a bit of a chore to chew and swallow what I had already bitten. So, I put it back in the fridge and decided I should look up just how these things are used before I go and ruin my initial impression of it.

Wikipedia has the following to say on the Chayotes culinary and medicinal uses:

Although most people are familiar only with the fruit, which in culinary terms is a vegetable, the root, stem, seeds, and leaves are all edible.The fruit does not need to be peeled and can be eaten raw in salads. It can also be boiled, stuffed, mashed, baked, fried, or pickled. Both the fruit and the seed are rich in amino acids and vitamin C.The tuberous part of the root is starchy and is both eaten by humans and used as cattle fodder.The leaves and fruit have diuretic, cardiovascular and anti-inflammatory properties, and a tea made from the leaves has been used in the treatment of arteriosclerosis and hypertension, and to dissolve kidney stones. In Taiwan, chayotes are widely planted for its shoot, known as lóng xü cài (Tr. Ch. ???, lit. Dragon-whisker vegetable). Along with the young leaves, the shoot is a commonly consumed vegetable in the region.

(link)

Well, it did taste like celery but with the texture of a firm apple to me, so putting it in a salad would probably work well. Having already had a salad today, I decided instead to try to juice it. A surprising amount of geenish juice came out of this thing, and combined with apple juice and carrot juice, it blended pretty well. On it’s own, the juice of the chayote reminds me of a less severe tasting wheat grass, and that underlying flavor is detectable in the final mix of carrot, chayote, and apple.

My back is sore today, so maybe the juice also has some anti-inflammatory qualities and might help. We’ll see…

Definitely an interesting discovery, but I am not sure how else I will be using the other 3…stay tuned. I bet you could make a good pie with these and spice it up like an apple pie, but I won’t go on about that, or any other possible ways to COOK this vegetable. Mostly I will wait and see if it makes me feel any different, and if it does, then maybe I will buy it for the effect of the juice, but as for the flavor, I enjoy other veggies more than I do the chayote.

Herb-Encrusted Mushroom Steak

Serves 2-4

This is a wonderfully flavored, savory meal created and shared by Rhio (January 2007’s recipe of the month). The recipe also includes a quick and easy cheeze sauce that can be used on other recipes as well.

Ingredients

• 2 large Portobello mushrooms, sliced
• ? cup extra virgin olive oil (with 1 tbsp. flax seed oil, op.)
• 1½ tablespoons Nama Shoyu
• 2 teaspoons cumin powder
• 2 teaspoons 2 tsp. cardamom powder (or tarragon flakes)
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 Ume plum, seeded and mashed
• VEGGIES
• 1 red or yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
• 1 cup broccoli, chopped small (or you could substitute other vegetable such as asparagus, edible-podded peas, zucchini, etc. or use a combination of vegetables)
• ½ cup scallions, finely chopped
• 1 clove pressed garlic
• CHEEZE
• 1 cup soaked pine nuts, macadamias or almonds (if using almonds, peel the skins)
• 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
• ½ cup filtered water

Preparation

Mushroom Steak

• Mix oil, Nama Shoyu, cardamom, garlic, Ume plum in a bowl and blend well.
• Slice the mushrooms into thin slices and dip each mushroom slice into the sauce, covering both sides. Let marinate 20 minutes while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

Veggies

• Mix all the vegetables in a bowl. Drain the marinade from the mushrooms and toss it with the vegetables.

Cheeze

• Blend all Cheeze ingredients in a blender until creamy.
• Put together your Herb-Encrusted Mushroom Steak by first placing some marinated mushrooms on a plate, top with the vegetables and then spread a few spoons of the Cheeze on top. Mmm good.

Keeps for 2 days in the refrigerator.

(link)

The picture up top represents my make shift version of the recipe above. I didn’t have the plum, so I used 6 dates instead (and 2 more on top at the end). I didn’t have pine nuts so I used a mixture of raw cashews and raw sun flower seeds. I also added about 10 squirts of liquid aminos to both the cheeze paste and the marinade. I did not use any Nama Shoyu, but used regular soy sauce and a cap full of lemon juice and a cap full of balsamic vinegar. Finally, I used fresly diced garlic in lieu of powdered garlic (and I think it added to the overall taste for it to be fresh rather than powdered).

Here’s a picture of the cheeze paste. It was easy to make,took about 10 minutes total minus the time to soak the nuts. The texture of the cheeze was very much like cottage cheese but more of a baby food or hummus like texture. It was a great topping and blended well with the marinade sauce.

And here’s a pic of the mushrooms in the marinade. Tell me it doesn’t look like some sort of meat loaf!

The finished dish tasted amazing. By far this has been the best meal I have had since I started eating raw foods. The recipe yielded 2 filling servings for me eaten as dinner and then 2nd dinner The paste left over from the marinade was spread over the mushrooms on the plate and mixed so very well with the cheeze paste. All together I would rate this meal a 4.5/5, almost perfect.

Then one day while shopping I realized I could use a cabbage leaf much in the same way! I immediately purchased the the most vibrant head of the bunch and tried it out. It took under 10 minutes to make it and clean up and it tasted great. Here are the ingredients…you should feel free to mix and match to your own tastes.

Always experiment!

• 1 large cabbage leaf. Cut the end closest to the root off as it will likely be harder than the rest of the leaf.
• some diced tomato
• diced sun dried tomato
• diced red onion
• diced cucumber
• hummus
• diced garlic
• diced jalepinos
• alfalfa bean sprouts
• balsamic vinegar to taste

Just lay the leaf out so that its curls are facing up and spread as much hummus as you like in a line on the leaf. Stack your other ingredients close to the hummus and your bean sprouts out in front of it all. Dump about a cap’s worth of balsamic vinegar in the sprout pile. Wrap as you would a tortilla wrap.

You can eat right then, but I like to refrigerate mine for about 30 minutes to let the flavors mingle and mesh a bit. I find these to be quick and easy to make, satisfying to my hunger, and quite refreshing. I always have a sort of vegetable buzz afterward eating these that makes me want to cackle out loud with joy.

Mum’s the word though…I wouldn’t want the government to ban vegetables.

Here’s how I made it:

• 1 really ripe mango
• 2 plain old apples
• 5 carrots
• 1 small pinch of fresh parsley

Juice all the ingredients, stir well, and enjoy! You might wan to chill it for a while to ad to the cremecicle effect, or perhaps even freeze them and eat them as frozen fruit pops. This was a wonderful happy accident.

POWER BOOST

Drink this at least 15 minutes before eating.

1 tart organic apple, unpeeled, quartered and chopped
3-5 scrubbed, unpeeled organic carrots, chopped
2 clean stalks of organic kale, stems removed

Juice according to manufacturer’s directions for your juicer. Drink juice immediately. Yes, it is the color of your lawn, but it’s pleasant tasting, loaded with nutrients, and packed with power. You’ll see.

(link)

I am 3 weeks or so into being a raw food eater. Up until now, due to tight pockets, I’ve been using a cheapo “smoothie maker” (read: blender with a spout). I’ve been reasonably happy drinking smoothies, but today while cleaning, I came across a juicer that belongs to my roommate, so I took it out, cleaned up and made the recipe above. I was surprised at how much juice 1 apple, 3 stalks of kale, a 5 carrots amounted to, which was 1 large drinking glass worth (enough for 1 person). The taste is surprisingly nice, since the taste of the kale pulp in my previous smoothie attempts was ok, but I was 100% happy with it. When juiced though, the kale blends right in with everything else. The juice is surprisingly sweet but not overly so. All in all, I would rate this juice recipe a sold 3.5 out of 5 stars and will definitely make it again.

As for whether or not I feel any power from it…

[EDIT] YES! I felt juiced from the juice! I went for a 5 mile walk with my dog. Came back home, took my dog for a drive to Sandy Hook beach, and walked the length of the beach and back. All in all I guesstimate about 10 miles of walking! I won’t lie and say the juice had be running around like the bionic man, but I definitely do get a certain kind of buzz when drinking fresh juice, and my baseline energy was high enough to at least allow me to motivate myself to leave the house and be active. The rest might have been my own enthusiasm powering my burst of walking, but hey, I drank it and went walking for the whole day, came home, and felt just fine.

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