Delivered To My Door

Speaking of Greenling's, I just can't say enough. Here's some pictures of our last Tuesday's local produce box. These are local, in season fruits and veggies that are wonderful. And they're delivered every Tuesday right to our door. Every week is like opening up a new birthday present. We LOVE Tuesdays.

When Life Brings You Lemons

Actually, Greenling.com brought me these gorgeous meyers. We order them by the case. The case a couple of weeks ago looked like oranges, they were so large and deep yellow.

It's been pretty warm around here, so we've been getting the garden in shape. And, yes, it was so hot, that our daughters made us a fresh pitcher of meyer lemonade. They just added pure water and agave nectar to the juice. Really refreshing and perfect after working in the heat. (We've been hitting the 90's already.)

Thanks to my personal photographer. She's really getting creative with her shots. She loves to take pictures and it seems like I'm always standing there just dying to dive into my food. I did take a sip here before I let her have it.

Raw Bean Burger with Bubbies

Here's another meal I made using Whole Foods raw items. Bean burgers are pretty popular in this area, so I decided to make a raw version.

I took some of the wonderful romaine that came in our Greenling.com Tuesday box and used it as my "bun".

Then I spread on some of the "refried beans", placed the raw patty over that, and spread on some hatch chili mustard we brought back from the Santa Fe farmers market. Then the whole thing was topped off with Bubbies pickle slices, avocado, a few onion slices and a dollop of homemade salsa.

Whata burger!


I heard about Bubbies on a couple of raw food websites and thought I'd give them a try. Are they raw? I don't really know, some say so. They don't use vinegar, just veggies and salt. Are they good? Please, just give me a fork and a cold jar. My oldest daughter and I fought over the sauerkraut and it was gone in two days. Fortunately, we have another. We're seeing how long we can wait before we open and devour the next one.

Raw Food Restaurant

We not only don't have a raw food restaurant where we live, but we have only one vegetarian restaurant, and that's 40 minutes away. So when we went to Austin recently, we went to the largest Whole Foods for dinner and shopping. They have a mini raw food restaurant in the store. Yummy. I brought home a few a la carte items to replicate some of it at home.

This is a tostada that I used their shell and "refried beans". Just topped it with spinach, guacamole and tomatoes. It was so nice to just assemble and not have to make our own. I'll show a few others later.

Altering Recipes

We like to take recipes from cookbooks and play around with them to make raw versions. Here's a simple example from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook. It's a simple avocado salad that called for black beans. We left that out (along with the corn) and added some capers and yellow onion (I didn't have any red). It also has yellow bell pepper and a great lime dressing. Fresh, simple and raw.

Asian Lunch

Here's what my creative daughters came up with for lunch today. They each made their own.

This first one is a coconut "asian goulash". That's what she named it because she just dumped different ingredients in her dish. The base was young coconut meat. (I was the happy recipient of the coconut water). Then she added:

Red bell pepper
Jicama
Cucumber
Carrot
Mint
Cilantro
Tomato

The dressing was a mixture of nama shoyu, toasted sesame oil, and hot chili oil.



My youngest made a veggie stir fry. Her base was soaked wild rice and added:

Jicama
Carrot
Broccoli (from the garden)
Sprouts
Orange pepper
Cilantro
Mint
Celery

Her dressing was lime juice, toasted sesame oil, celtic sea salt, and pepper.


I'm assuming they both were delicious by the absence of talking and the crunching of veggies.

Summer? Gazpacho

Maybe I'm antsy for summer, but I've really been enjoying variations of gazpacho the last few days. I've been getting some really red juicy organic romas from Whole Foods that will do until the garden comes in.

This is a blended soup of roma tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, cilantro, lime and celtic sea salt. I blended it up in the vitamix and topped it with avocado, scallion and more cilantro. Very creamy and fresh tasting. It will do for now.

Eating Out

Who says you can't eat out and stay raw. These are just some examples of dinners I've enjoyed at restaurants. I just look at the menu and pick out "ingredients" from all the dishes that sound good to put on my salad. I ask for a large mound of their darkest greens and then request different raw goodies to be placed on top. I usually ask for them to make me a lemon/olive oil dressing. Sometimes they just bring me the oil and lemon on the side.




Sometimes they get creative in the kitchen and make something beautiful. Yumm. I LOVE mango in my salads.




This one was so great. The chef actually came to our table personally when he was told of my request. He had a notepad and pen and wanted to make sure he got it just right. As you can see, I think I got a little bit of everything. Asparagus, peppers, olives, oranges, tomatoes. It was so good.



OK. This one was easy. This was at a raw food restaurant in Seattle. I can't remember exactly what went into this one, but at least I ordered it straight from the menu.




Funny thing is that even at the nicest of restaurants, my dishes normally look so much better than their cooked specialties. It's like God's rainbow on every plate.

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

This was one of those impulse buys. I ran into the store to get just a couple of items we needed, and I passed right by the florist area on my way to the register. Just LOVE sunflowers. I think they're my favorite. Maybe because of their size, or just that luscious golden color. Anyway, they made it into my little carry basket also.

Our resident photographer, (my photog daughter) played around with them to try to capture the beautiful colors that God has bestowed. Wow! Breathtaking!

Simply Mango

Sometimes simplicity is best. And when I'm looking for something satisfying and delicious, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING better than a juicy organic mango. These came from Whole Foods and are the best we've tasted in quite awhile.

Simply delicious, and simply mango. That was my meal.

Herb Salad with Guacamole

Love Salads! I look in the fridge to see what looks and sounds good at that moment. Today it was an herb salad with guacamole.

I started with an herb mix from our organic veggie delivery service. Then I added a mound of guacamole made with avocado, lime juice, onion powder and kelp powder. Next came generous sprinklings of chopped cilantro and dill over the whole salad. Tomatoes finished the salad with color. Then for a last touch, I squeezed more lime juice over it all.

VERY FRESH!

P.S. Our veggie delivery service is wonderful. They deliver fruits and veggies that are grown from local farmers right to our door. They have the most unbelievable customer service I've ever experienced. And the product, well what can I say? We're a very happy family.

Pizza Time

Looking forward to pizza again. But not yet. I'll be waiting awhile before starting back into seeds and nuts. But to give a flavor of some goodies in the future, here's one of our favorites.

This is probably known best as a fridge pizza, because it just depends on what's available and what we're in the mood for.

This pizza was made with an onion bread crust, similar to the one in the Rawvolution recipe book. I topped it with some seed cheese, collard green and then I sort of cheated. I didn't take the time to make a fresh tomato sauce, but used some Muir Glen organic pizza sauce we had on hand and then added my veggies--baby salad mix, avocado, fresh dill, parsley, oregano, green olives.


We never turn out the same one twice!

Juice Feast

I've recently finished a juice feast. That means that for a couple of weeks, I consumed nothing but juicy juices, primarily green juices. It's different from a fast in that I drank as much as I wanted through the day and added extras such as super green food powders, bee pollen, hemp seed oil, etc. I included a minimum of 2 lbs. of greens each day in addition to all the other veggies and fruits I wanted. And, boy, what variety. Spinach, escarole, beet greens, turnip greens, collards, chard, cilantro, parsley, romaine, and I could go on and on. Add in zucchini, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, ginger, lemons, limes, carrots, beets. It felt like every drink was alive.

This smoothie is one of the foods I used to transition out. (You don't just jump right into eating all solid foods. I probably won't even get into seeds and nuts for a few weeks.) It was scrumptious! Greens, banana, blueberry, mango, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, bee pollen, hemp seed oil. 32 oz. in all. (Obviously I had to refill my glass) Very sweet!

Warming Porridge

Sometimes when it's cold outside, we like to have foods that are warming and comforting. Our whole family enjoyed this the last two days. It's a combination of a couple different recipes.

Sliced bananas, soaked wild rice, almond or brazil nut milk. Sprinkle on some cinnamon, bee pollen and drizzle a little raw honey. Sooooothing....

Seed Cheese Sammy

We're always looking for ways to make a filling sandwich without the bread. This is the seed cheese sandwich from Rawvolution. The collard leaves are spread with a sunflower seed cheese and filled with whatever goodies we have on hand. This day we used avocado, tomato, sprouts, kalamata olives, dulse leaves, scallions, basil and cilantro. It was really filling and warming on a cold day.