Wow! It feels like it's been ages since I've filled you in on what I've been up to here in my kitchen. Now that I'm finally settled in our new home, the energy to play with food has returned. Yay!
Mosaica/Suzana came up to me one day with a list of recipes she'd been meaning to try, so we've been slowly working our way through it, especially those from the soup department! lol Some of the soups we've made lately include:
Red Pepper Curry Soup from
Carol Alt's
"The Raw 50", the
Cheezy Corn Chowder I posted last week, and my
Curry Soup. I've also been whipping up some old favorites such as Don's
Pilgrim's Soup,
Cream of Zucchini Soup,
Cream of Leek, the
Tomato & Herb
Soup from my Best Of The Sunny Raw Kitchen" ebook, as well as Rawvolution's delicious Scarborough Fair Veggie Soup, which is too good not to share.
Scarborough Fair Vegetable Soup
From
Matt Amsden's
RAWvolution
Serves 2 to 3
3/4 cup Thai coconut water
3/4 cup pure water
2 stalks celery
1/4 yellow onion
1 cucumber, peeled
1 carrot, peeled
1/4 red bell pepper, seeded
5 to 6 fresh sage leaves
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tbs fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
Chopped parsley, to taste
Minced rosemary leaves, to taste
Minced thyme, to taste
In high-speed blender, combine all ingredients and blend until smooth. Pour into a serving bowl.
If desired, top with garnishes: chopped carrots, celery and yellow onion.
Carmella's Notes:
~ I sub the yellow onion with green onion or leek.
~ If I don't have any fresh herbs on hand, I blend some dried herbs along with the rest of the ingredients.
~ It's delicious lightly warmed up on the stove, especially on a cold, rainy day.
As Mosaica and Pontifex were driving through the Okanagan for the big move, they managed to lay their hands on a 40 lb case of roma tomatoes. Besides enjoying them in soups and dehydrating a whole bunch, we've also been making lots of tomato-based dressings, such as
Ingrid's fabulous
Tomato Dressing and the
Red Rogue Dressing from
'Vibrant Living’. Other yummy dressings that have adorned our daily salads include the
Creamy Italian Dressing from The Complete Book of Raw Food, my
Dill-icious Dressing and
Kristen Suzanne's outstanding
Herbin' Ranch Dip, which Pontifex has declared his favorite so far.
Herbin' Ranch Dip
By
Kristen Suzanne
Published in her June 2008 Newsletter
Yield 1 1/2 cups
This is the one of the most nutritious, delicious ways to have
ranch dip, but without guilt. I love serving this dip at summer picnics with vegetable crudite or as a dressing on your favorite greens*.
1/2 cup raw cashews, unsoaked
1/2 cup raw pinenuts, unsoaked
1 zucchini, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon extra virgin coconut oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 cup fresh basil, not packed
1/4 cup fresh dill, not packed
Blend all of the ingredients, except the fresh basil and dill, until creamy and smooth. Pulse in the basil and dill. This will stay fresh for 4-5 days when stored in an airtight container (mason jar works great) in the refrigerator. This dip also freezes well.
* To make this as a dressing, simply add more water until you reach the desired consistency.
Carmella's Note: I used all cashews as I didn't have pine nuts.
Although, crackers and spreads are still a standard fare these days, we have also dined on pizza, zucchini pasta, and
Russell James' Pad Thai from his recent
Thai recipe ebook. We served the latter along with his Broccoli & Spinach Salad, which we had tried once before during
Heathy's visit. Both were absolutely delicious!
Mosaica and I also had our first major D day over the weekend. Yippee! We were planning to fill up my Excalibur 9 tray, but ended up filling her 5 tray as well. We were on a rawll! lol
The two of us had a blast preparing food while listening to old 80's favorites on utube. (The little iMac is on the kitchen counter, so I can browse through my stash of online recipes and ebooks. Ahhh! You gotta love technology!)
We made Snow's
sesame chicken (which I hadn't made in ages!),
Savoury Nori Snacks,
Chewy Crunchy Garlicky Toasts, Mosaica's
Corn Bread and RawVee's
Badabing Bruschetta Bread. We also prepared the Herb Stuffed Mushrooms from
Purely Delicious magazine which we devoured for dinner that day. These were really very good, and would be perfect for the holidays with their little specks of red and green.
Herb Stuffed Mushrooms
Featured in
Purely Delicious
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup chopped mushroom stems
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 red pepper
2 green onions
1 tsp Herbs de Provence
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 tbs lemon juice
3 sundried tomatoes, rehydrated
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 packages button mushrooms
Olive oil for brushing mushrooms
De-stem and clean mushrooms. Brush with olive oil. Set aside.
Process nuts and coconut together until light and almost fluffy. Do not over process.
Add remaining ingredients and pulse chop until well blended. Stuff mushroom caps. Eat or dehydrate for 2-4 hours at 115F.
We've been enjoying discovering
Rossland; the sort of 'Whistler of the Kootenays'. What a change to be a mere 15 minute walk away from downtown. There's some really great stores and services for such a small population (1500 people or so), including an awesome kitchen specialty store with toys to make food lovers smile. I found cute little tart shells with removable bottoms and a wooden tamper which I used to make onion bread crusts for mini quiches. I wasn't sure if the tamper was just one of those gadgets that don't really work, but since it was only $3.99, I figured it was worth a try. Amazingly, it does really make that slow and painstaking step a LOT easier.
And on a sweet note, earlier this week we picked up a case of young coconuts that we special ordered from the local grocery store. I could hardly contain my excitement (not to mention my surprise) that after years of having to buy young coconuts in the big city, such a small outfit can bring them in for us. Woo Hoooooooo! Needless to say we've been treating ourselves to all sorts of yummy coconut-full delicacies such as Heathy's
Chocolate Decadence smoothie,
Cafe Gratitude's wonderful Coconut Cream Pie and Heathy's
Blueberry Cardamom Ice Cream, in which I subbed part of the macadamias for coconut.
Hum, I guess that pretty much brings you up to date in terms of what all we've been up to in our (lately very!) sunny raw kitchen.
Our savory yummies weren't even out of the dehydrator that Mosaica was already working on her wish list for a sweet D day. ;-)
Hope you're having as much fun in your kitchens as we've been!
'Til next time...
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