Author Archives: Rob

How to make Fermented Butternut Squash

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This recipe is so simple but I love it. There are only 3 ingredients, butternut squash (also works with other types of squash or pumpkin), salt and water. I’ve tried adding various flavourings and seasonings but I always go back to this simple recipe as it tastes the best.

I’ve talked about fermented foods before on this blog, they are wonderful for digestion, assimilation and detoxing and I eat several different fermented foods every day.

Start by cutting your squash into pieces suitable for grating, and then grate using a file grater:

Pack the grated squash into a jar, a kilner jar works well. Don’t fill the jar right to the top, make sure you leave some space as it can bubble up during the fermentation.

Next, add salt water so that all the squash is covered by water. The ratio of salt is approx 1 teaspoon of salt per litre of grated squash – so for example the jar I used was 1.7 litres, so I used just over 1 and a half teaspoons of salt. The amount of water you will need will depend on how much water is naturally in the squash. So mix the salt into a small amount of water and pour in, then add more water if necessary.

Finally, place something on top of the squash to keep it all under the water. I use a stone, cleaned thoroughly first of course. Check every day to make sure that the squash is still under the water.

Store at room temperature during the fermentation process. It usually takes 3 to 4 days to ferment, although it will take longer in colder climates. You can taste after 3 days and see what is happening. Once it is fermented to your liking, you can store in the fridge to stop it fermenting more.

What is your favourite fermented food? Please leave your comments below.

Croatia – Photos from our travels

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I got a little behind with travel updates – for now I’ve skipped forward to Croatia, which was November – December last year. Croatia is a really beautiful country, and the local food from the markets was of amazing quality.

Click on any photo to enlarge.

Croatia has over 1000 islands, this is a little island called Lošinj, just below Cres island. It was really beautiful here. I was very supprised when I found that Pula has a Roman Amphitheatre, in amazing condition. Plus other Roman buildings.
Near Pula is a wild peninsular called Rt Kamenjak. Wild and beautiful. Pazin is an interesting little village, but the best bit is in the ravine, really beautiful but so cold as not much sunlight.
Pazin ravine. More coastlines on Krk Island
Plitcitce National Park was one of the most beautiful places I have been. A completely unique landscape with lakes and waterfalls, made even more beautiful due to the November frost.
More in Plitvitce.
And more Plitvitce. Waterfalls in Krka National Park.
Forest in Krka National Park We got a ferry from Makarska to Brac island.
An amazing beach which sticks out into the ocean, called Zlatni Rat (Golden Beach) on Brac island. Korcula town on Korcula island, a short ferry trip from Brac island. Dubrovnik is amazing, the old city is surrounded by the castle like walls.
Another view of Dubrovnik We went for a great walk along the coast from Dubrovnik. The sunsets in Croatia were almost always beautiful, the colours this night are amazing.

Arbutus unedo – The Strawberry Tree

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I first came across Strawberry Trees (Latin Arbutus unedo) when I was living in Spain, over 5 years ago. They have them in Madrid because the city’s coat of arms is a bear picking a tree strawberry. But they are tall and I never managed to reach one of the fruits (although also I might not have been there at the right time of year, they are ripe in November and December.)

When I lived in London, I found one in someone’s garden near Epping Forest and found a few ripe fruits on the ground on the street. They were delicious, with a flavour and texture like apricot jam. I always wanted to find another tree to eat more.

A few days ago we found a few Strawberry Trees on the island of Cres (Croatia), most of the fruit wasn’t ripe although we found a few good ones. Then yesterday we saw loads of trees with ripe fruit along the side of the road so we found somewhere to park and found some trees away from the road with loads of ripe fruits. I ate loads, when ripe they are so delicious. Ripe ones are generally dark red and very squashy, generally we found the best ones were on the ground under the trees.

But a little while later I started feeling ill. Thankfully not too bad, just a bit of nausea, but it did go on for a good few hours. We got the ferry back to the mainland and I felt really bad during the journey, thankfully it was only a 20 minute crossing.

So I did some more research, and some people say the when the fruits are over-ripe they start to form alcohol and you can get drunk from them. I didn’t feel like I was drunk though. Interestingly Jolita was fine, although she probably didn’t eat as many as me.

So if you do find a Strawberry Tree, go easy on them!

Real Raw Lemon Cheese Cake Recipe

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After a short break in London, we’re back on the road. We’re heading to Croatia, but had a little detour to Slovenia. It’s a beautiful country, loads of forest and wild nature. On Saturday we went to Ljubljana, the capital and found an amazing market. Loads of organic veg stalls, plus we got organic raw milk, raw butter, raw sour cream and raw cheese.

I love cheesecake, and it is actually very easy to make raw cheesecake, assuming you can get some good raw cheese to start with. We got some soft plain curd cheese, it needs to be fairly plain to make into cheesecake.

I didn’t measure the ingredients, but I think this is a recipe where it is hard to go wrong.

Base
brazil nuts
apricots
a few cacao beans (optional)
1 tsp vanilla powder
grated lemon rind

Topping
cheese
lucuma
honey
grated lemon rind

For the base, you want an approximately equal amount of nuts and dried fruit, you can use various combinations of fruits and nuts. I soaked the apricots for a couple of hours so they would process easier, but you don’t want them too wet otherwise the base will be soggy. Put all the ingredients in a food processor until it forms a sticky ball. If you need more liquid you can either add a little lemon juice or water. As you may know, I don’t generally eat dehydrated food as I find it hard to digest, so this base was soft and sticky, but you could probably dehydrate this is you want a more traditional cheesecake.

For the topping, just mix all the ingredients together. The more lucuma you add, the thicker the mixture will become. And of course, the more honey, the sweeter. (The cheese I used was very soft so I only needed to mix it with a spoon, with a firmer cheese you may need to blend.)

I’m sure there are many variations you can make instead of lemon.

Learning from Tribal People: Book Review

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I’ve read a few really excellent books recently which I want to share with you all. I’ve just finished reading Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett. This book defies categorisation, on the back it says “Travel/Linguistics”, both of which are correct, but this book covers so much more than that. Daniel was a Christian missionary who went to try to convert an Amazonian tribe, the Pirahá, to Christianity. To do this, his first task was to learn the language and then translate the New Testament of the Bible to the Pirahá language. This might not sound too difficult, but Pirahá doesn’t have a written form, no-one else speaks it, there are no dictionaries or teach yourself courses, and the Pirahá people don’t speak any other language (apart from a few words of Portuguese). So Daniel moves, with his family, to a Pirahá village to live with these people and learn their language. (Daniel is a trained linguist so he does know how to go about the task.)

The book is in three parts: Life, Language and Conclusion.

Part 1, Life, which is the largest section of the book, is a selection of experiences, challenges and insights during Daniel’s life while living with the Pirahá people. One of the most fascinating things about the Pirahá is that they seem to live in the present moment, much more than us westerners could even imagine possible. They have a very minimal amount of personal possessions. In general, they do not store food – they go out hunting/gathering almost every day, if they don’t, they don’t eat that day (which is ok by them, a self imposed fast).

The Pirahá people will only talk about things that they themselves have experienced, or that someone else they know who is still living has experienced. This was one of the major challenges Daniel encountered when attempting to talk about Jesus – once the Pirahá realised that Daniel had never met Jesus, and that Jesus died a long long time ago, they weren’t interested!

The second part, Language, goes into much more detail about the Pirahá language. I found the first half of this interesting and easy to read, although the second half started getting much more technical and possibly only interesting to linguists. But even if you skip part of this section, it doesn’t detract from the rest of the book, and it is only a small part of the whole book.

The conclusion contains the information that convinced me to read this book in the first place – after living with the Pirahá people for many years, Daniel didn’t manage to convert a single Pirahá, and in the end Daniel stopped believing himself. To ‘save’ someone by converting them to Christianity, they would need something to be saves from, and Daniel found that the Pirahá were the happiest people he ever met, and didn’t need saving!

I highly recommend this book, there is so much to be learnt from the Pirahá people.

Yummy Scrummy Chocolate Brownie Review

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Wow, this was delicious! A chocolate brownie with a chocolate topping with the perfect brownie flavour, coming from the well chose ingredients including walnuts, Brazil nuts, goji berries, raisins and dates. Plus it looks great too!

For anyone strictly raw, this product does contain Sweet Freedom which is a natural fruit based sweetener that isn’t raw, but the other 95% of the ingredients are raw.

It’s just won the Taste of the West Gold award, so another vote for how good it tastes.

For more information and to order, see the Elements for Life website.

Raw Milk, Raw Cream and Raw Butter Delivered

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In the UK, the law says that you can only buy raw milk direct from the farmer. Which makes buying raw dairy products quite difficult for most people. So I’m excited to tell you about the service from Hook and Son, I got my delivery today. They’ve been delivering raw milk for a while now, and they have just added the raw cream and raw butter to their service.

And even better, if you live in their local area (Eastbourne area) they will deliver in glass bottles, and collect the used ones for re-use, just like in the ‘olden days’!

For more information and to place your order see www.hookandson.co.uk

Recipe: Quick and Easy Fermented Courgettes

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Fermented foods have become a big part of my diet in the last 6 months or so. Kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha, fermented vegetables and more. It was the book Wild Fermentation that got me started and I’ve not looked back. I’ve recently discovered a very simple fermented food which can be made in minutes, although of course you need to wait for them to ferment, usually around 3 days: fermented whole courgettes.

For this to work, you need very small courgettes. The ones in the photo are probably a bit too big, it works better with smaller ones.

The process is really simple:

1) Take a kilner jar, (or a screw top jar) and wash well with hot water. The larger the jar, the better, the jar pictured is 1.7 litres.

2) Fill jar with whole courgettes.

3) If desired you can add some flavouring, I’ve used various combinations of grated ginger, grated turmeric, crushed coriander seeds and crushed cumin seeds. It does also work well without any flavouring, just experiment and see what you like.

4) Mix the brine – for each litre of your jar, use 1 teaspoon of salt, so for example for this 1.7 litre jar, use approx 1.7 teaspoons of salt. Mix with water and add to the courgettes so they are completely covered. If necessary, use something to push them under the water if they are floating to the top – a boiled and scrubbed stone works well.

And that’s it. Check every day that the courgettes are still completely submerged, and remove any scum that may form on top. Taste after 3 days. After 6 days or so (or once they are to your liking) you might want to put them in the fridge to stop them fermenting any more.

In hot weather the fermentation happens quicker, in cold weather slower. The more salt you add, the slower the fermentation, so in really hot weather adding more salt can slow the fermentation down and in cold weather less salt will speed up the fermentation.

If you can’t find small enough courgettes, you can also use larger ones and slice them. Make the slices quite thick slices, around 1cm each.

Let me know your favourite fermented recipes in the comments…

Review of Raw Food Controversies by Frederic Patenaude

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Why do some people fail on the raw food diet? That is the question that Frederic attempts to answer in his new book “Raw Food Controversies”. He does this by taking us for a ride on his journey over the last 14 years of his life, starting right back at the birth of the modern day raw food movement. The first part of this book is essentially an autobiography, with Frederic including every detail of his life (or so it seems) including his love life, how he met and became friends with David Wolfe and got to work for Natures First Law, and how he met many other famous raw food pioneers including David Klein, Juliano, David Jubb and more. If you have been involved with the raw food movement for many years, you might, like myself, find this section fascinating. If, on the other hand, you are new to the raw diet, you might, like a friend of mine, keep wondering when Frederic is going to get to the point.

This book is very refreshing in that Frederic questions the raw diet, none of the “raw is the best, raw will cure everything” some books are guilty of. Frederic experimented with various different raw diets, including animal foods, fasting even returning to cooked foods for some periods. He realised that raw diet is not simply eating all your food raw and hoping for the best, it needs careful planning.

The first few years on a raw diet left Frederic with a mouth full of cavities, which he discusses in detail, including his view on what cause the problem, and the solutions. If you read this book, I recommend you also read Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel, for a completely different view on the subject (I don’t claim to know which author is correct, but if you have problems with your teeth, it’s best to read both opinions).

Towards the end, Frederic starts to pinpoint what he considers to be the ideal raw diet, which is a low fat vegan diet, with lots of fruit. Which is great that he has found a diet that works for himself, but I don’t agree with his belief that the same diet (with minor variations) will work for everyone. One example of how we are all different is the conversion of beta-carotene into vitamin A – we all have a differing ability to make this conversion and those people where this conversion is not optimal will not thrive on a vegan diet.

Frederic recommends a diet containing 7-15% fat, saying that before Western Civilisation took over, most people ate low fat diets, but he misses the research by Weston Price who found that traditional peoples ate diets which contained between 30-80% fat.

I realise that this review is critical, I think that is because this book is written in a way that attempts to show that Frederic’s current diet is the ideal diet for everyone, which I just can’t agree with. So, by all means read this book, but do it with an open mind. It is a very good book, I enjoyed reading it, and it makes some very good points. And the diet recommended might just work for you, but there is also a good chance that it won’t.

Available direct from Frederic’s website.

This review was first published in Issue 19 of the Funky Raw magazine.

Juice in a Bar review

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I was sent samples of Jason Vale’s new raw Juice Bars: Veggie Juice in a Bar and Super Fruit Juice in a Bar. I was intrigued at the idea of how they could make juice into a bar, the answer was obvious once I looked at the ingredients – the first two ingredients for both bars are dates and almond butter, so these are standard energy bars with the addition of juice. I can’t see anywhere where it says the percentage of juice compared to the base ingredients.

First I tried the Super Fruit bar – first reaction is that it is very sweet, with the dates overpowering the flavour of the juices. Overall a nice bar, although I wouldn’t buy it as it is so sweet.

Much better, the greens tempering the sweetness a little, so while still sweet, a much more balanced bar. There is a “green” flavour to this bar which some people might not like (my Dad liked it and my Mum didn’t), but it’s worth it to get the mineral rich greens. If you generally eat this kind of energy bar, then maybe switching to this one would be a good move so you get a load of nutrition from the greens and algaes into your diet. It contains a lot of good ingredients including wheatgrass, dandelion juice, kale juice, spirulina, chlorella, kelp and dulse, plus also digestive enzymes. I would be interested in what percentage of the bar the dates and almonds make up. Of course if you have the option, I would recommend a fresh green juice, preferably made with lots of wild greens, but if you don’t have that option then this is an ok substitute. But don’t go overboard, there are still a lot of dates in this bar.

Find out more and order at www.juicemaster.com