Raw Recipes

I've been taking a class on raw foods for the past few weeks and it's been really exciting to cook new dishes for dinner and having a new way of thinking about food. I don't feel like I'm really cooking at work so as soon as I come home at night I start on dinner and, if I do say so myself, we have been eating like kings. I keep telling Jon how lucky he is to have such great food every night. But he does all the dishes so we're both lucky.
I thought a new feature on this blog could be some recipes that I have tried out that we have really enjoyed. Tonight we had raw mushroom soup (which can be heated if you want it hot) and crackers with beet tamarind dip. These recipes come courtesy of my raw class with Roger Melvin from Wild Health (wildhealth.co.nz)

Mushroom Soup

300g (about 25 each) mushrooms, crimini or button, roughly chopped
1/4 cup brazil nuts, soaked in water overnight
2 tablespoons karengo (seaweed), soaked 20 minutes in 1/2 cup water, drained
10-12 black olives, pitted
2 tablespoons white miso
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 cups warm water
1/4 cup olive oil
garnish:
4 sundried tomatoes, chopped
chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, marjoram, or thyme

1. Combine soup ingredients in a blender or food processor, blend until smooth.
2. Add more salt or miso depending upon your taste. Add more water to thin the soup to desired consistency.
I added some fresh thyme with all of the ingredients. The more powerful your blender the smoother your soup will be.

Beetroot Tamarind Dip
use this as a side dish, serve it on crackers, or as a dip. thin it out with water and olive oil to use as a salad dressing

2-3 medium sized beets
1 tablespoon tamarind paste (found in asian food stores)
juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 tablespoons
1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked overnight
1 knob ginger, sliced
1 apple, grated
2 teaspoons white miso
optional: 1 red chilli, chopped

1. Grate the beet and apple in the food processor (or by hand).
2. Combine with the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth in a food processor.


perhaps the most amazing recipe was this chocolate mousse (actually healthy!!)

Chocolate Mousse:
2 medium avocadoes
1/2 cup whole cane sugar or honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup good quality cocoa powder (scharffen berger of berkeley is a great brand)
3/4 cup water
a pinch of salt

1. Process all ingredients in a blender. Add additional water if necessary to thin to the desired consistency. It can be frozen in an ice cube tray as 'fudgesicles.' Again, the more powerful the blender, the smoother the result.

Bon Appetit!

Summary of the Trip Home

Hi everyone…

After about 3 great weeks in the United States we’re back to our second home in New Zealand. It was great to see my family and friends and Gay’s sister’s wedding was incredibly fun.

Arizona
My parents are living their retirement dreams in Scottsdale, Arizona although the average temp while I was there was about 107degF. I don’t know how anyone gets anything done in that heat, but whatever it is they do, they don’t do it outside. All I basically did there was swim in their pool, hang out with the fam, watch the World Cup in HD and played Xbox. It was very relaxing.

Hanging out in my parent’s new house wasn’t as weird as I thought it was going to be as this was the first time I had been there since they moved. My parents were able to make the place feel so comfortable that it was natural for me to kick up my heels and fall right asleep on the couch.

San Francisco
When I got to San Francisco I helped Gay with the myriad of errands she was running for her sister, saw some friends and my favorite sights, went on a short but exciting sailing trip and even got in a little billable work. And, most importantly, ate the burrito I was waiting for at my favorite spot, Taqueria Cancun.

I miss SF. Actually when I think about it, it was more about being in a big city. There are just so many more things to do and see when you go to a place as big as San Francisco. Don’t get me wrong, I think Nelson is great and maybe it’s just that I have yet to find all the things available to me. But overall when it comes down to a weekend night and I look at Gay and ask her what she wants to do tonight and she turns back and says “I don’t know what do you want to do tonight” and we carry on like that for a good hour; if we were in San Francisco it would probably only take us ½ hour to either find something to do or realize we don’t have lives and settle on doing nothing.

I’d very much like to come back to the Bay Area after this whole adventure is finished I just have to save up about a million dollars to afford to live there. Although I just saw on the news some chump was able to trade a red paper clip for a house using the internet, so you know, anything is possible.


Napa Valley (The Wedding)
Then it was up to Sonoma for the wedding extravaganza. 3 days worth of Napa valley warmth and partying. It was fun to meet all of Gay’s extended family and friends and I never tired of talking about our life in New Zealand. Really.
Before the wedding Gay and I were a little nervous about how we were going to dance together. We had attended only one other wedding as couple and, neither of us, for whatever reason, ended up dancing and it was a little bit of an “issue” between us. Needless to say we weren’t going to let that happen at this wedding. So for months before the event we were constantly practicing our moves, fast and slow. When it came down to getting down at the wedding, Gay and I were pretty good (well at least I was, Gay was a little spastic if you ask me). And surprisingly the DJ never played any slow songs so we didn’t have a chance to bust out our version of the Forbidden Dance. Which was probably best for everyone.

Other than that, the wedding was wonderful and the happy couple had huge smiles on their faces all weekend.

Nelson, NZ
Now we’re back in New Zealand and freezing our asses off. It took me 2 days to get over the jet lag. Now I’m back to work and getting back into the rhythm of things. It felt like I had been gone for months. Last night I had a squash match and completely forgot how to play. I guess that’s just the sign of a great trip.

Unfortunately the trip home occupied so much of our thoughts and time that now we have nothing really to look forward to. I guess now our goal is to save enough money in the next 6 months or so to be able to travel and see all the great sights on our way back to the States.

Pictures and Acknowledgements
Here’s a mix of pictures from all parts of the trip. Thanks to Heather for the AZ pics. I also want to thank all the people I saw who told me they had been reading and enjoying the blog. Don’t be afraid to write comments, they all don’t have to be as weird as my brothers.

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