Delightfully Raw in Utah: Part II

The drive from Eagle Mountain to St-George was a breeze. It was pretty much just a straight shot down I-15 S. The forecast was predicting rain but it only started about 20 miles from our destination. No biggie.

Visiting Friends in St-George
It had also been two years since our last visit with Barbara and Duane, so we were glad to get a chance to spend a bit of time together. As you may recall, Barbara is the president of VSU, the Vegetarian Society of Utah, and has done SO much to spread the good word about the benefits of eating healthily in her community. Barbara & Duane have been following a whole food plant based vegan no-oil diet for the last five years and are lovin' it! It has helped Barbara in overcoming several health issues, including obesity. Now at 68 years young she's like an energy bunny and her enthusiasm is contagious!

Just a short two months before we got there Barbara had back surgery done. Thanks to her surprisingly good health it couldn't have gone smoother (they were able to operate from the front). In fact, her doctor says he's never seen anyone recover so quickly from such a major surgery! ;-)

B&D really get into the Holiday spirit; they are notorious for putting up sometimes as many as 7 Christmas trees around their home! But this year, with Barbara's surgery and their new feline daughter Chai, they decided to stick mostly to lights and little festive decorations.

Raw Potluck
The day after our arrival VSU held a raw potluck at B&D's lovely home. They were a wonderful bunch and I had lots of fun demoing two of our staple recipes: my Strawberry Banana Shake and Sweet Pea Soup.

My little elves getting the samplers ready.

Once again VSU members really outdid themselves and got very creative with their dish contributions, even though raw is very new to many of them.

Kevin Kirkland, a gentleman who is just opening a smoothie bar in St-George called TruBerry, brought a couple of samples of his concoctions for us to try.

Tru Green Smoothie
Apple juice
Banana
Acai berries
Blueberries
Strawberries

Tru Berry Red
Apple juice
Banana
Acai berries
Blueberries
Strawberries
Raspberries


A beautiful salad with the colors of the season made from kiwi, pomegranate, cilantro, avocado, onions and peppers.

Golden Onion Morsels

Golden Onion Morsels
From Joel Fuhrman's Super Immunity

Makes 30-40 balls

1 1/2 cups raw cashews
1 cup raw almonds
1 med. Golden Delicious apple, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tbs nutritional yeast
1 tsp ground chia seeds
1 tbs onion powder
Toasted seame seeds - for coating
Minced chives - for coating

Grind cashews and almonds into a powder in high power blender.

Add apples, nutritional yeast, chia seeds, onion powder and blend again.

Form into small balls and roll each ball in sesame seeds and chives.

Savory Oat Rice

Posted by Jinjee on Gone Raw

We have finally found a way to make raw rice! The secret is not to use rice at all, but raw, soaked oat groats. You can buy the raw oat groats in bulk or in bagged packaging. They look just like brown rice. Soak them for 24 hours and follow the recipe! It is amazing how much this tastes like a rice dish, and satisfies just like rice too. However, the germinated oats give you a ton of energy, which of course cooked rice does not. The men in my family love this recipe, as it is high in protein!

1 c oat groats
1 c button mushrooms, diced
3 tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 tsp sea salt
Savory herbs (thyme, marjoram, sage, or oregano, etc..)
1 Hass avocado

1. Soak oat groats for as little as 24 hours and up to 48 hours. The grains become softer the longer you soak them.

2. Marinate mushrooms for 24 hours in garlic and 2 tbs. olive oil

3. Drain oats, rinse, place in bowl, and add the marinated mushrooms

4. Add 1/4 tsp Celtic sea salt, 1 tsp olive oil and savory herbs

5. Let sit for 1 to 3 hours

6. Add 1 Hass avocado, cubed

7. Stir and serve

Guacamole and raw crackers

This was a yummy cheezey spread made with cashews, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, turmeric, red chili, miso, turmeric and green peas.

Another lovely salad: kale, cabbage, zucchini, tomato, bell pepper and pomegranate. It was served with a ranch type dressing made from cashews, garlic, lemon juice, dates, vinegar, onion, basil and salt.

Barbara had made Carrot Crackers and one of my variations from the wonderful vegan cheeze that she introduced me to during our last visit.

Carrot Crackers
Published in VegNews Magazine 12/11 issue

Makes about 35 crackers

1 cup raw sunflower seeds

2 1/2 cups grated carrots (approx. 10 organic carrots)

4 tablespoons flaxseed meal

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1/2 to 1 cup water

1.  In a food processor, grind sunflower seeds into a fine powder.  Add carrots, flaxseed meal, salt, pepper, and ginger.  Pulse a few times to combine.  With processor running, add water in a thin stream.  Stop processing when mixture is thick, but moist enough to spread.

2.  In a dehydrator on two parchment-lined dehydrator sheets, spread mixture until 1/4 inch thick.  With a knife or pizza cutter, score into cracker shapes.  Dehydrate at 115 degrees for about 6 hours.  Flip dry dough and dehydrate on the other side for another 4 hours.

3.  For a non-dehydrator option, preheat oven to 350 degrees.   On two parchment-lined baking sheets, spread dough 1/4 inch thick.  With a knife or pizza cutter, score into cracker shapes.  Bake for 40 minutes or until dry and crispy.
 

Tarragon Mustard Vegan Cheeze

She also whipped up a batch of this awesome Tropical Chutney that she discovered when she attended the 40th IVU International Vegetarian Congress in San Francisco last October.

Tropical Chutney
By Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff
Recipe posted here

Makes 4-5 half-pint jars
 
You can use any combination of mangoes, papayas, pineapples, peaches and/or apricots along with sultanas (yellow raisins).
 
1 cup dried and chopped tropical fruits
1 cup warm or hot water
1 cup yellow raisins
2 tablespoon fresh, grated ginger root
Juice of one large lemon or lime
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt
Additional water as needed

Place the dried fruit in the warm or hot water and set aside for ½ hour or longer to soften.

Then place all ingredients, including the water in which the fruit pieces are soaking, in the jar of a blender or a food processor. Puree the mixture, adding more water as needed to yield a fine-grained pudding-like consistency.

Allow the chutney to stand for a few minutes before transferring it to a serving bowl for storage, or to clean glass jars for gifts.

This chutney will keep for several weeks if refrigerated.


And on the sweet side...

There's an older gentleman named Frank who has been a member of VSU for years. At every potluck he proudly brings his very own creation: a raw pie made from almonds, dates, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Chocolate Nut Balls made from walnuts, almonds, cranberries, raisins and cacao powder.

This was my personal favorite brought by a lovely lady named Hazna. It started off as a raw apple pie that she got from a lady named April Fazini. She then modified it by adding mango, pineapple and persimmon folded into a yummy cream made with cashews, almond milk creme sauce and sweet potato. Decadent! In fact I even had 2 servings! ;-)

There was also a delicious Chocolate Pudding but I didn't get a chance to take a pic as the dish arrived while I was doing the demo. BUT you can see it at the bottom right corner of Don's plate. It was made with coconut meat, agave, maple syrup, raw cacao powder, carob, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Gina served it with fresh raspberries. Yum!

Let's munch! Yay!

This was my serving. I'm such a foodie; I had a hard time not trying a little of every dish. As a result I momentarily forgot that it had been less than a week since I was eating solid foods again. I later had to pay the price, as my belly complained about this mistreatment. As good as it tasted this feast ended up sending me on a downward spiral in terms of digestion. In the end I had to go back to liquid foods to give my body a chance to recover. In fact, I'm still not totally back to normal yet. *sigh*

A few of us stayed quite late after the meal as we were all caught up in interesting conversations. 

Greg and Mark, two super nice men I had met at the last raw potluck that Barbara held here.

Donnie caught Pu and I the next morning while we slept in. ;-)

Before we left we had a little photo shoot with Barbara and Duane. ;-)

Barbara had the idea to get some family shots with Miss Puss.

I hope you too had a wonderful Holiday Season filled with joy, radiance and beautiful people!

Delightfully Raw Near Walla Walla - Part II

I'm back with more about our adventures near Walla Walla, although this time it will all be food talk! Yippee!

First off, I want to start with a photo that really belonged to my previous post, but hey, what can you do? These things happen. *shrugs* I was mentioning how our hosts live right in the heart of apple country. During one of our walks in the orchard across the street we found the odd apple still in the trees. Among them was probably the largest one we've ever seen! The pesticide coating was so thick (yuck!) that we had to rub it energetically to make it nice and shiny.

While we walked we noticed how some of the trees in each row were bearing teeny miniature apples that hadn't been picked at all. Brian explained that the main purpose of these is to act as pollinators.

Apples, big and small

In Matt & Dawnen's Sunny Kitchen
As I was saying before, Matthew and Dawnen have been experimenting with raw foods for a good while. Often times when we stay with folks, we're the ones who end up sharing a lot of our knowledge. This time it was my turn to be in the apprentice's position and learn a bunch of new tricks and techniques. In the coming weeks you can expect to read feature posts on how to grow micro-greens, make Coconut Yogurt and assemble Matt's famous Hot & Cold Salad.

We happened to be there for Dawnen's birthday, so we all got together for a little feast.

Me with the birthday girl

One of the challenges of living in a trailer is the lack of sufficient light. Like me Matt is a sucker for having his working space very well lit, so he's come up with the perfect solution: a head lamp. Actually once you get used to seeing so clearly you sort of get addicted; now Matt wears his lamp pretty much all of the time! he he

Closely watching Dawnen preparing a Dipping Sauce for veggie rolls. Notice that she's wearing a head lamp too; it's contagious I tell ya!

Whizzing up our raw soup du jour. And nope, that's not a head lamp near my forehead. ;-)

Smile!

For the main course we assembled our own veggie rolls with both rice paper and nori sheets.

Matt making sure everything is looking good.

At some point Brian got hold of Matt's super duper camera and took all sorts of shots throughout the evening.

Mr. Donnie...



... looking very much relaxed, as usual. ;-)

Feasting at Vedra & Merle's
We were invited for lunch a couple of weekends ago by Dawnen's mom and step-dad. They eat fairly healthy to begin with, since, as members of the 7th day Adventist Church, honoring the temple of our bodies is particularly emphasized. I certainly didn't expect to partake in such a raw feast, though! Vedra really went all out in whipping up a bunch of yummy stuff!

See for yourselves...

A nut based Chili

Cauliflower and Jicama Rice

 

Ranch Dressing

Cheeze Sauce

 

Dawnen and Matt contributed lots of goodies for salad, including freshly harvested micro greens as well as a curried quinoa dish.

We brought a blender container full of the ingredients for my Tomato & Herbs Soup which we just had to whiz up on their brand new Vitamix machine. (Very nice!)

Don's ginormous pile! It looked like a LOT of food (and it was!), but he didn't come anywhere close to beating Matt's 3 servings! lol  I'm still not quite sure how can so much food go into such a thin man? ;-)

More of Vedra's handiwork: 2 kinds of sweet nut balls.

Giving Thanks in Good Company
We walked over to Matt & Dawnen's trailer on Thanksgiving day to share a lovely meal. On the menu was a soup concoction of Don's, a large salad with Peppercorn Ranch Dressing, Neat Balls, mashed potatoes freshly harvested from their garden, and Miso Gravy.

Most of the salad ingredients also came from their garden. So vibrant in both colors and flavors!

The Neatballs recipe came from Gabriel Cousens' Rainbow Green, Live-Food Cuisine. I thought that they had a nice flavor from the herbs but they were a tad too salty for my taste.

Garden Neatballs
From Gabriel Cousens' Rainbow Green, Live-Food Cuisine
Recipe posted here

1 C almonds, soaked
1/2 C walnuts, soaked
1 C olive oil
1/4 C leeks
2 celery stalks
1 T sage
1 T marjoram
1 T thyme
2 t Celtic salt

Homogenize nuts with oil.

Finely chop and stir in leeks, celery, herbs and salt.

Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls and dehydrate for 2-3 hours at 140F.

Matt's Mods: He used only 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 cup of leeks and 5 celery sticks.


The recipe calls for serving these with Marinara Sauce but Dawnen opted for her own rendition of Gravy made with cashews, veggie broth and South River miso.

Afterwards we just hung out for a while. Almost as soon as Don and I got settled on the couch Mr. Bean hopped on so that he could snuggle between us. Awwwww! It seems that every time we come over he feels more and more comfortable in our presence. ;-)

Beanie was all chilled... until Dawnen got dessert out: raw vegan pear ice cream freshly made in their fancy ice cream maker. He was so thrilled at the prospect of this treat that the poor fellow tripped while coming down from the couch. It's not easy to maneuver around when you've lost the partial use of two of your legs! ;-(

Matt played around with our Sony a-57 camera for a while and captured this nice shot of Dawnen drinking her tea.

Meet the Matt-Man

During our stay Brian came up with the brilliant nickname of 'Matt-Man' for Matthew, partly inspired by the latter's quirky old Subaru which was instantly dubbed the 'Matt-mobile'. he he Anyhoo, one afternoon we all climbed into the Matt-mobile and went grocery shopping in Walla Walla. It turned out to be quite the funny expedition. Not sure what had gotten into him that day, but Matt-Man sure was being a goofy guy!

 Nice hat, Matt!

But the funniest bit was when he managed the considerable feat of getting (most of) himself and Mr. Bean into one of those kiddie buggies. Mr. Bean seemed to enjoy the ride, especially when Matt beeped the horn. ;-) The tough part, though, wasn't so much getting in as getting out of the thing afterwards! lol

One thing is for sure, Matt is a super interesting character! ;-) He knows heaps about all sorts of topics. Oh, the fascinating (and long!) conversations that Don and Matt had! I also spent a good deal of time hanging at their trailer, picking his brain and soaking up all kinds of helpful info.

Matt likes to amp things up; his motto? The more the better! When Matt does something, he likes to "go all the way, including the postage." For instance a few weeks ago he made such a huge amount of sauerkraut that I could barely lift up the bowl. It filled something like 9 two-quarts Mason jars. ;-)

Chocolat

One Sunday Dawnen and I took over her mom's kitchen and turned it into a raw chocolate factory. Woo hoo! We had several recipes on our to-make list, but it all went very smoothly. Even so, by the time we finished cleaning up our mess it was nearly 7 hours later. Eeek! Call it the 'Raw Choccie Marathon'! ;-)

We worked with two basic chocolate recipes: the one featured in Matthew Kenney's Raw Chocolate book as well as Pamela Vinten's Recipe #1 from her Amazing Guilt-Free Chocolate. We also experimented with different kinds of sweeteners - maple syrup, agave, honey and coconut nectar - although neither of us thought of taking notes of what was in what. Ooopsie! We also kinda lost track of which choc recipe we used for some of our goodies. Ah well, as it happened all the variations turned out marvelously well! ;-)

Both of us felt drawn to certain recipes from Matthew Kenney's book, so we each played with those individually. In the end we split all of our goodies anyways. Yay! I thought that the lighting wasn't the greatest for some of the pics I took that night, so I got more shots in daylight, hence the double pics.

Marzipan Stuffed Choccies

Mint and Candied Nibs

Hazelnut Almond Chocolate Bars

As a matter of convenience we used the dehydrator method for melting the cacao butter and paste, as recommended in Matthew's book. We did end up returning the chocolate mixture to the D while we were working on other recipes. I'm not 100% sure how that affected the tempering process but most of our choccies did turn out nice and shiny, except for a couple of recipes. I'm actually thinking that the molds might have been the culprits for these.

Walnut Maple Chocolates

We both really like Cafe Gratitude's Coconut Almond Joys which we've prepared on a number of occasions. And so we split up a batch between us. I think that the last time I made these I worked on a picnic table at a California campground under Kylo's intense scrutiny. How he used to love chocolate! Not to worry though, we never let him indulge in this compulsion. One time he ate several artisan organic chocolate bars that we'd made the mistake of leaving in the vehicle with him while we continued our shopping. When we returned he had wolfed them down, wrapping and all. He didn't even so much as burp. hehe

 

There were a little bit of left over coconut filling which Dawnen turned into these gorgeous treats.

My intention was to also tell you about a potluck that we recently attended with their local health group, but this post is already getting long. How about I save it for another time, eh?