Posts filed under 'Raw'
Just a quick one for anyone in or near London - I’ve organised a couple of wild food walks in the next couple of weeks. The first one is this Saturday (10th May), starting from Canada Water Tube Station (Jubilee Line) at 1pm. The walk will be in Russia Docks Woodland which is a little oasis of wild plants so close to the city!
Then the next Saturday (17th May) there will be a wild food walk in Brockley, which is 8 mins from London Bridge by train, starting at 12 noon. On both walks we should find dandelion, plantain, hawthorn, sow thistle, chickweed and many more - there are different selections of plants in each place.
If you want to come, click one of the links above to go to the Funky Raw shop to book, or to be informed about future walks and raw food prep workshops, join the email list here.
May 7th, 2008
Kate Magic Wood’s new book Raw Magic was released a couple of weeks ago. It’s full of amazing superfood recipes like “Sweet and spicy sunshine soup”, “Flaxtastic olive bread”, “Purple Power Pudding”, “Hempilicious Ice Cream”, “Chocolate Crispy Cakes” and loads more. It’s printed in full colour throughout with beautiful photography by Shazzie. Anyway, Kate is having a bit of a launch party tomorrow (Tuesday 29th) at inSpiral Lounge in Camden (London), with a book signing at 7pm followed by a talk at 7.30pm. They have great raw food available at inSpiral, a great selection of salads, raw chocolates and cakes… see you there…
April 28th, 2008
Spring is here, brining with it lots of wild flowers, many of which are edible. Here is a selection I found yesterday. Click on an image to enlarge.
Hawthorn flowers are a good flower to start with, they don’t have a strong flavour. White dead nettles are another easy flower, not too strong and can be quite sweet. They are not related to stinging nettles so they won’t sting you!
Dandelion flowers can be a bit bitter and can take a bit of getting used to, but I like them now. Wild garlic (ramsons) flowers have a delicious sweet garlicky flavour while Jack by the hedge flowers have a stronger flavour - garlic and mustard with a little bitterness.
As always, take care when picking wild food and make sure you are certain about what you are eating.
April 23rd, 2008
I made a delicious soup today, based on Holly’s Dream of Wild Garlic Soup recipe. I put the following in the Vitamix:
- about 100g wild garlic leaves
- 1/2 a red pepper
- 1/2 a courgette (zucchini)
- 4 sun dried tomato halves, soaked
- 2 tablespoons wakame seaweed, soaked, plus soak water
- juice of half a lemon
- water, a few cups
I blended it well and then added an avocado and blended until smooth. I then added some wild garlic flowers. 100g of wild garlic leaves makes a very strong soup, use less if you are not a big fan of the flavour.
April 18th, 2008
The wild garlic (ramsons) is just coming into flower. The leaves are great in salads or made into pesto.
The flowers are delicious, they have a strong garlic flavour with a nice touch of sweetness and creaminess.
Tulips are beautiful, this is taken in Nunhead Cemetery. According to Twinkel’s article in the latest Funky Raw magazine they are edible but somehow they look too good to eat!
I don’t know what this is but it is very pretty. It’s in Peckham Rye Park.
(Click on any photo to enlarge.)
April 16th, 2008
I was sent some samples of a new range of raw chocolates from Pure Flavour and I was very impressed. Soft and creamy, and just the right sweetness, not too sweet. The ingredients are all organic: cacao butter, cacao powder, mesquite, and agave and the fruit and nut version has the addition of hazelnuts and raisins.
Pure Flavour make a range of wheat and dairy free cakes, I think they should also add some raw cakes to their range!
Available from the Pure Flavour website.
April 16th, 2008
A quick recipe, I’m sure it’s got many uses as a kind of icing, maybe to go on cakes or maybe inside chocolate, I’ve not tried that yet…
Mix all ingredients well (it takes quite a bit of mixing) until smooth. It works without the peppermint oil as a plain icing and I’m sure other essential oils could be used, I think orange would work well. Let me know how you use it…
April 14th, 2008
Good news, Issue 12 of the Funky Raw magazine is out now, with amazing cover artwork by Nemo. It seemed to take forever to get it finished but I am so pleased with the result, including the use of full colour for Twinkel’s edible flowers article. The magazine is available as either a printed magazine or as an eBook in PDF format.
Stevia is an interesting plant. It’s leaves are sweet, 30 times sweeter than sugar but it contains no calories. It has been used for centuries by the Guaraní tribes of Paraguay and Brazil. And it has been used in Japan since the 1970s. But in Europe and the USA stevia is not allowed to be sold as a sweetener. According to some sources, it is suspected that the company that makes toxic artificial sweeteners has put pressure on governments to ban this healthy natural sweetener.
The good news though, is that we have started selling stevia in the Funky Raw shop, we just have to put “Not for human consumption” on the label. I’m sure you’ll work out what to do with it 
April 12th, 2008
I’ve been making tea with damiana, which says on the packet “Euphoric, aphrodisiac, restorative, dream recall”. It smells beautiful too. Interestingly I have remembered a few dreams recently, which is not common for me.
According to the Wikipedia article, it bears fruits similar in taste to figs. I’d love to try them - it’s interesting to note what a small selection of plants we as humans use as food, there are so many edible plants out there, there is probably something edible and delicious growing near you as I keep finding on my wild food walks.
March 8th, 2008
I think this chart explains a lot about the way people are eating:
The price of raw food has gone up by 40%, compared with junk food coming down by up to 25%. Taken from www.photobasement.com/cheap-calories/ which has a great photo showing the results of these changes…
March 8th, 2008
Previous Posts
