Quick raw update!

So last night I took a long walk up and over the hills of our neighborhood with my neighbor Tracy. At the tail end we stopped at our farmers market, which is only half a block away, and every Wednesday night. I LOVE it. I cannot wait until the summer produce comes! So we browsed and tasted several booths worth of strawberries and I fell in love with one. So I bought 2 baskets of strawberries and brain stormed what I could do with them. When I got home I threw together some nuts and dates into the food processor and topped them with the strawberries and some sweetened coconut milk. YUM! Ill include a rough recipe below, as I didn't really measure so feel free to fidget with the ratios.

2 cups walnuts
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 large dates pitted
2 tbs of maple syrup
2 cups sliced sweet strawberries
1 can refrigerated coconut milk
2 tbs agave syrup
1 tbs vanilla extract, or half vanilla bean, scraped
 1/2 cup slivered almonds

Add walnuts and sunflower seeds to the food processor and pulse until broken up.
Add dates and pulse until well combined, then add maple syrup to help hold it together and sweeten it a bit more.
Add agave and vanilla to coconut milk and whisk together well. Place back into refrigerator until you are ready to use.
To serve you can add a little of each to a bowl and eat as is. Or you could use a pie plate or ring mold and press the nuts into the pan like a pie crust and then layer the strawberries and the cream. Top with nuts and enjoy!

Being a personal chef...

Means sometimes cooking things you don't like, or in today's instance, things I really really like but are against the vegan detox diet. I did make lamb shanks awhile back for a client and despite it being a strange affair for me to touch, and then cook meat it wasn't so bad. But today... I made polenta cakes with an asparagus, mushroom, cream sauce. It looked and smelled wonderful, and because this is something I make often I was able to pass it on and know it was good without tasting it. But man oh man was it tempting.
I have also been experimenting with adding sea veggies to my dishes. And although sneaking them into things and pretending they are salt is a good idea, I need to come to terms with their health benefits and just bite the bullet. So the other day I made the sushi bowl recipe from 101cookbooks.com. This is a blog I have been following for quite some time, and I have loved everything I have cooked from her. She is also local, and has an amazing cook book. Makes it more fun to read her blog knowing the places she frequents. These are AMAZING. I suggest going out to buy the ingredients right now and making it. YUM.
Last night I ate at an amazing vegan restaurant with one of my favorites Kimberly Sandie, who gave me a few pointers on food photography. Pretty awesome since she is almost an official graduate from the academy of art, and one of her specialties is food photography. So hopefully soon I will get a few photos and recipes on here! She also introduced me to the lovely Andrea Primm, who is a raw foods chef and instructor. If only I could have half of this womans energy I would be unstoppable! She is going to be passing on some recipes to me and hopefully I can incorporate more of them into my daily routine to pump up the nutrition in our bodies!
Today Tim made a comment to me that he was already feeling better. This makes me feel so great! I know he doesn't want to do this, and he is pushing himself to be supportive to me, but its awesome that he is already seeing how great he can feel. I haven't noticed many changes with myself (its only been a week) but I have noticed a bit more energy, and I am sleeping a bit more soundly at night. But my body wants to wake me up at the crack of dawn and by 11pm I am pooped. But maybe that is the way my internal clock works and I shouldn't fight it. Speaking of... its nearly 10pm and I am going to veg out (ha ha!) and get some shut eye. Til next time...

Numero Uno...

So I am not a writer, nor will I ever claim to be one, but I wanted a way to share my culinary journey with more than my inner circle. So here I am! I am working on a tutorial for food pictures because those I have taken so far are terrible. So for now I will keep with just text, and in the future you can look forward to some delicious looking photos.
On Tuesday my boyfriend and I started a "detox". Not anything really necessary, but we both wanted to shed a few extra pounds and just become more connected with our food and be more active. So I have cut out all meat, dairy and processed foods out of our diets. Being a vegetarian most of this wasn't very hard, but it has only been a few days and I already miss cheese. To avoid any temptation I packed up the little bits of cheese, eggs and butter we still had left in our fridge and delivered them to our happily accepting neighbors.
Now to get to the yummy part... Last night we had raw tacos with walnut "meat" and cashew cheese wrapped in a lettuce leaf. I know, I know, where are the tortillas?!? Honestly, I tried and failed at the recipe I had for flour tortillas so dinner plans changed slightly. But they were tasty, and really, much healthier.
Tonight we had a soup that I would say is a bit tortilla soup like. Bell peppers, Onions, zucchini, roasted tomatoes, stock and dried chilies. It was super tasty, but even after blending half of it to make it creamy it was missing something. So I tossed in a bit of leftover Spanish rice from last night and some of the raw nut meat and it became delicious. So I guess my habit of making WAY too much food came in handy this time.
After dinner my boyfriend asked if this detox meant we weren't allowed to have dessert for month and I told him its not about what we can't have, its about what we can. So I did a bit of digging around and found a delicious sounding vegan "milk" shake recipe. Its not exactly "healthy" but it was tasty, and much better for us then going to the corner store and buying some Ben and Jerry's.
Anyhow, I am trying to kick start myself into posting regularly to this blog. So maybe tomorrow I will write about the bread I baked the other day, real bread, from scratch! Or post a recipe or 2 for some of the dishes I have concocted over the past few days. And maybe, just maybe, if I post a few more things here I will actually tell people about it and they might even read it...