Raw Magic Book Launch

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Rob

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…

Edible Wild Flowers – Colour and nutrition for your salad

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Rob

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.

Wild Garlic Soup

Posted on April 18, 2008 by Rob

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.

Photos from trip to Lithuania

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Rob

Here are some photos from last years trip to Lithuania. Click on any image to enlarge.

Spring Flowers

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Rob

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.)

Pure Flavour – New Raw Chocolate Bars

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Rob

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~~.

Raw Peppermint Cream

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Rob

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…

1 tablespoon agave
2 tablespoons lucuma powder
1 teaspoon coconut oil
a few drops of peppermint oil

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 in the comments below how you use it…

Funky Raw Update: Magazine and Stevia

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Rob

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 😉

Positive Advertising

Posted on April 3, 2008 by Rob

I saw an advert in Kentish Town tube station today, it went something like “Need Energy? Try fruit.” I couldn’t believe it! It was sponsored by Camden NHS (National Health Service). I’ll try and take a photo of it next time I’m over in that part of town…

Revolve – Hush The Many Music Video

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Rob

Hush The Many (Heed The Few) are one of my favourite current bands, great name and some very thoughtful lyrics, they’ve got their first single out on April 7th:

Hope you like it! You can hear more of their music and see their current tour schedule on their MySpace page – listen to “In Bloom”, you’ve got to scroll down the list of tracks to the last on, it’s beautiful.