Archive for March, 2006
I made a dressing using:
- 1/2 avocado
- 1 yellow pepper
- 1 1/2 sun dried tomatoes, soaked
- a bit of kelp, soaked
- a bit of chili
- a small piece of lemon grass (it’s still the same one I bought, I used the last bit tonight so no more lemon grass for a while!)
- about 1/4 tsp of corriander
Everything went into the blender, including a little of the tomato soak water and a little of the seaweed soak water. I know it’s quite similar to some of my other recipes, but it tasted particularly delicious to me.
We had it on a salad of grated carrots, sweet potato and beetroot and chopped cucumer, tomatoe and spring onion.
For desert I first ground up some sesame seeds in the coffee grinder then added them to the food processor along with
- handfuls of walnuts and pumpkin seeds, soaked
- handful of currants
- 3 figs
- a few goji berries
- about 2 tsp cacao butter
- about 1 tablespoon cacao nibs
- about 1 1/2 tsp cacao powder
- 1 tsp coconut butter
It tasted delicious. I’m still massivly impressed with cacao butter, I need to get some for our shop… [Update: Thur Sept 7th 2006 - we now have cacao butter in the shop…]
March 30th, 2006
Holly and myself are organising this years Funky Raw festival. Last years was great and we hope this years will be bigger and better. We’ve already got confirmed raw food preparation demos with Holly and Jess, Rainbow Claire to do Qi Gong, Tom to do massage and Star to bring her “Scented Tent” where she will run workshops on making natural skin care. There will be two raw cafés including the “Magic Café” with superfood treats, a juice bar and an organic fruit and veg stall. We’ll have bands and DJ’s, performances. Hope you can come…
It will take place from August 8 to 13 somewhere in the South West of England, starting with a full moon ceremony on the evening of Tuesday the 8th.
Tickets are on sale now on the Funky Raw website. The festival page on the Funky Raw website will be kept up-to-date with what will be happening at the festival.
March 30th, 2006
Sometimes I’m not in the mood for chewing so I make myself a blended salad. And tonight I made one I was particularly pleased with.
First I put two tablespoons of flax seeds in a coffee grinder and ground them up. Then I put them in the Vitamix along with:
- 1 small avocado
- about 1/3 of a red pepper
- 1/2 a carrot
- a piece of cucumber
- 1 sun dried tomato, soaked
- a big handful of pennywort
- a few dandelion leaves
- a few wild garlic leaves
- a small amount of fresh chili
- a piece of fresh lemongrass
- about 1/4 tsp ground corriander
Pennywort is a wild green leaf which grows all over the place (well it does down here in Devon), although I’m sure this recipe will work fine with other greens.
March 29th, 2006
Most people would call these energy balls but Bertie and Lizzy (Holly’s younger children) call them Rolling Balls and the name has stuck!
First I put the following in a coffee grinder and ground up:
(Sorry, again no quantities, but quite a few sesame seeds and less pumpkin and cacao.)
Then I put the ground mixture in to the food processor along with
- 6 fesh dates
- handful currents
- handful walnuts
- a few sunflower seeds
and blended until it formed a thick consistency. Now roll the mixture into balls and eat.
March 26th, 2006
I’ve been working on this recipe for a while and I’m getting closer, although it’s really still nothing like a ‘real’ Thai green curry. As usual, the measurments are not very exact or non-existant - I’ll try and post a complete recipe when I’ve perfected it!
- 1 1/2 avocados
- 1/2 sun dried tomato (soaked)
- handfull of fresh corriander leaves
- a couple of pieces of fresh coconut meat
- 1 tsp celery salt
- 3 wild garlic leaves (I guess you could use normal garlic if you prefere)
- fresh chili
- lemon grass - a piece about 5cm (2inch) long
- 1/2 tsp ground corriander
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- water - quite a bit
Celery salt is a natural alternative to salt, made by drying celery leaves and grinding up.
In my next attempt at this recipe, I’ll try replacing some of the water with lime or lemon juice and maybe some coconut water.
If anyone knows how to make ‘real’ raw Thai green curry, please let me know and put me out of my misery. It’s one of the few things that I can’t really re-create a raw version of.
March 26th, 2006
Did something a little different today for the salad dressing (oh, ok, not that different).
- 2 avocados
- 1 soaked sun dried tomato
- handful of fresh corriander
- small piece of cucumber
- some chili
- a shaking of dried basil
- a bit of lemograss
I got a whole stalk of lemongrass, never actually bought it like that before. It was still dried, but seemed a lot fresher than when you buy it in a packet.
Anyway, back the recipe. As usual, shove all the ingredients into the blender with some of the soak water from the tomatoes and blend.
March 24th, 2006
I went to London last week for a few days, partly for work and partly for play.
Web Design
I arrived in East Grinstead on Thursday evening and met at the station by Steve Charter, an old friend from the days of Ecoforest. It was good to catch up with Steve and see the community he now lives in - Hoathly Hill. On Friday I helped Steve set up two websites www.sc2.org.uk for his Sustainability Consultancy business and www.cultureofchange.com which is an interesting idea based around using popular culture (film, novels, music, etc) as a vehicle of change to bring about a sustainable, healthy and inspiring world. I created both sites using Wordpress (the same as this site) so it is easy for Steve to update them himself.
London
Later Friday afternoon I travelled up to London and met up with another old friend for dinner then headed over to Camden where I stayed with Janet for the next three days for lots of raw food excitement.
Saturday evening it was the Raw Food buffet at “The Spirited Palace” in Crystal Palace which Janet had helped to organise. We started off with a Sound Healing workshop which was lots of fun and included speaking gibberish! Then an amazing raw food buffet. Afterwards some great music, I had a bit of a dance but I was the only one! After this was poetry and me and Debbie got told off for talking in the corner 
Sunday morning I did a bit of work on the Festival of Life website with Janet, set up a mailing list system using phpList, not very exciting so I won’t say anymore.
The Raw Meeting
Sunday afternoon was the “Raw Food Organisers Conference” (bit of a moutful and we changed the name to something shorter and snappier, but I can’t remember what it was!). About 20 (?) people turned up for this and we discussd various things including the Food of Life festival in Brighton on June 4th, the Rawberry Gathering from 10th - 14th August and the Funky Raw Festival from 8 to 13 August, which you will be hearing a lot more about very soon as Holly and myself are organising it.
We also discussed the setting up of a Yahoo group where people can post raw food events which can hopefully help us avoid clashes like Rawberry and Funky Raw both being at the same time. (Although Rawberry is near Harrogate in the North of England and Funky Raw is down in Cornwall, so shouldn’t cause too many problems).
We also talked about other stuff including lots of completely inconsequential stuff, I can’t actually think of anything else to report, but if when I get the minutes I find something, I will report back…
A few of us stayed over at Janets and we stayed up quite late talking pretty random stuff and having a laugh, the kind of thing years ago I would have done when having a few beers but this is all fueled by raw food!!!
March 24th, 2006
Funky Raw issue 6 is finished now and is at the printers, should be with us early next week. Some good stuff - Aranya’s experience with his Ejuva cleanse, running vehicles on used vegetable oil, reports of experiences of taking ayahuasca and of course a good selection of recipes.
Which leads on to the curry I made for dinner:
- 2 sundried tomatoes (soaked)
- 4 tomatoes
- 1 carrot
- handfull fresh corriander
- 1 wild garlic leaf (you can of course use shop bought garlic if you prefer!)
- 1/2 tsp dried corriander
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/4 tsp fenugreek
- 1/2 tsp tumeric
- 1/2 tsp garam masala
Put all ingredients into your blender and turn it on.
We had this over a salad of cucumer, tomatoe, grated carrot, grated sweet potatoe and broccoli with wild pennywort, wild garlic and watercress.
March 10th, 2006
No posts for a while as I’ve been very busy producing the next issue of the Funky Raw magazine. I really need to get it finished by tonight so I’ll be quick. We had a raw food gathering here last night and here are a couple of recipes I made:
Avocado and Carrot Sauce
- 1 avocado
- 1 carrot
- 2 sun dried tomatoes, soaked
- 3 tablespoons of seaweed flakes
- fresh chili to taste
- 1 tablespoon flax oil
- water (as much as you need to get it to blend properly)
Put everything in the blender, including some (or all) of the soak water from the tomatoes and blend.
I’ve started to use flax oil as I read a bit about Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids and their importance to our health. We need a balance of the two, but most nuts and seeds have way more omega 6 so we need some flax oil which has more omega 3. Hemp seeds have a good balance of both.
Carrot and Beetroot salad
- 2 carrots
- 1/2 beetroot
- juice of 1 orange
Grate the carrots and beetroot into a bowl and pour over the orange juice. Leave to marinate for a while, stirring occationally.
Everyone who came brough delicious food, my favorite being Charlie’s Carob Pie (and of course Holly’s Golden Cream Pie).
March 4th, 2006
