Celebrating an all-natural lifestyle

Raw Picnic Dinner

Last night, my favorite movie of all time was playing outdoors, in Central Park:

Needless to say, I had to be there.

My friend Nelly and I planned a hot date—including a picnic dinner—to see the movie together. When we arrived at Sheep’s Meadow, I was delighted to run into Hadley, who was there with a group of friends.

Nelly and I found a little patch of spare grass, and, as we waited for the movie to begin, we got down to the real business of the hour: dinner!!! We attacked our picnic bags with gusto. Nelly, who’s a passionate athlete and runner, had been playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament all day. And me? I was just really hungry

Nel and I shared a little chuckle over the fact that we’d had at least some of the same picnic ideas: hummus and raw veggies were in both of our picnic bags. Nelly’s a vegetarian, so I can usually count upon our enjoying some of the same things, but we also share a lot of the same tastes. Nelly had with her a container of whole wheat pita, some Sabra hummus, veggies, and a delicious homemade cocktail made with ginger beer, cucumber, and fresh peaches. On my menu was (obviously) a giant kale salad, marinated earlier in the day:

I’d also discovered this brand at my local health food store earlier in the week:

It’s Chocolatree, which is the prepared food made by the staff at Chocolatree Cafe in Arizona. I picked up the pizza crackers (made with buckwheat and sunflower seeds) and the onion flatbread (made with sunflower seeds and chia seeds). Interesting fact: I have learned, thanks to Lori and Michelle, that while I do not like raw onions (or cooked onions, for that matter), I really like raw onion flatbread. Go figure.

My verdict? Two thumbs up! I really liked both breads. The pizza flatbread is heartier, and more “bread” like; it reminds me of Lydia’s breads and crackers, which I truly adore. The onion bread is nice and thin, and I imagine it would make a great raw “wrap.” While I’m still a loyal devotee of the Twins’ flatbreads and crackers, the Chocolatree brand is a nice second choice. I love that my local store takes care to stock these lesser known raw food brands!

I made two little open faced raw sandwiches. One was onion flatbread, roast red pepper hummus, tomato, avocado, and cucumber:

And the other was pizza flatbread with a simple topping of tomato and avocado:

Both were delicious! Between these, kale salad, and raw veggies+hummus, I was a very, very happy camper. And a very full one.

Of course, what made me really happy was the joy of seeing my favorite movie on a big screen. And what could be more appropriate than watching Woody Allen’s love poem to New York City in the middle of Central Park, surrounded by skyline?

I got a little misty when we got to this scene:

Forget Love is a Many Splendored Thing. Forget Casablanca. Forget Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Dr. Zhivago, Gone With the Wind, and even An Affair to Remember. Those movies are all terrific, but in my world, there is no more romantic movie still than this one from Manhattan:

My understanding of romance will always and forever be intertwined with my love affair with Manhattan. Part of why I—well, why most New Yorkers—love Woody Allen’s work so fiercely is that he understands that feeling. His movies chronicle the vicissitudes of human love, but the infatuation with New York is always a constant. In other words, he gets it.

Dinner last night was so extraordinarily good that, today, still basking in the haze of cinematic joy, I repeated it. Using only the pizza crackers this time (I’m saving the onion flatbread for later this week), I made one flatbread with avocado and tomato:

And another with cucumber and my dilly sunflower seed cheese.

How’d I made the “cheese?” This is just a simple sunflower seed pate, made all the more delicious with the addition of dill. Observe:

Dilly Sunflower Cheese (yields 1 1/2 cups, or 6-8 servings)

1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked at least one hour
2 tbsp lemon juice
3/4-1 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup water
8-10 small sprigs fresh dill, coarsely chopped

1) Place soaked seeds, salt, and lemon into the bowl of a food processor and let it run till they’re broken down. Scrape the sides of the bowl.

2) With the motor running, drizzle 1/2 cup water into the food processor, so that the sunflower seed cheese becomes light and creamy. If it starts to get at all watery, stop adding water! I usually use anywhere from 1/4-2/3 cup water; it totally depends on how much water the seeds have absorbed, so use your judgment.

3) Add the dill to the processor and pulse a few times to distribute it into the cheese. What you’ll have left looks like this:

…and it tastes tart, salty, and fresh!

Along with some salad and raw veg action, it was a perfect midday meal:

Sometimes I find that raw flatbreads and crackers leave me totally empty only a few moments after mealtime; I’m really impressed with how nicely the Chocolatree products fill me up. A good reason to make these a semi-regular “splurge.”

And now, I’m procrastinating with Mad Men diligently working in preparation for the week ahead. I hope you all had great weekends. New Yorkers, were any of you with me in the park last night? And here’s a question: what cinematic moment or image ranks as most romantic in your book? I know that questions like these are a little reductive and silly but they—like naming the scene in a book or film that you find most sad, or most poignant—tend to say fun things about peoples’ personalities!

xo

Work Lunches for Real Women

Hi guys!

Thanks for celebrating IWD with me, and for your responses to Tasha’s great post. One reader mentioned that she actually hadn’t considered herself a feminist before reading the post, but that she was reconsidering that position. This made me so, so happy: in my experience, many women hew to feminist ideals, but fear the word feminism because its detractors have managed to tarnish it with inaccurate stereotypes. It’s time for women of this generation to change all that, and to reclaim the word for their own set of purposes.

I’ve promised you a week of posts that pertain to womens’ issues. Today’s post isn’t exactly what you might expect from that promise, but if you bear with me I think you’ll see why I thought it was kinda relevant. A few weeks ago, I posted some zucchini wraps I’d made and enjoyed as a part of my lunch. Aletheia had this to say about the post:

While I think your zucchini wraps looks absolutely delicious – as do most of your other foods – I have noticed recently that a larger proportion of the recipes you post necessitate the use of a dehydrator.

Which kinda makes me sad!

I’m just thinking that if I had come across your blog today, and it was my first time discovering the world of raw, I might be a wee bit intimidated!

I thought about this, and then I wrote back:

Fair point, Aletheia…keep in mind that my work…ha[s] kept me away from my kitchen for the last month. I’m not complaining, but coming home at 9, sometimes 10 PM, and leaving my apartment at 8 AM knowing I won’t be back till late quashes my cooking routine. Which means 99% of my meals right now are things I take to work in tupperware or eat on the go — nothing worthy of recipe sharing. The stuff I make on weekends to last for the week tends to be either soups, cooked foods, or dehydrated raw foods. The rest is stuff I throw together raw, and don’t usually have time (or inclination) to document for you.

Later, as we were exchanging emails, Aletheia reminded me:

…one thing I really appreciate about your blog is that, in addition to being a great raw food-related resource, it’s also a glimpse into the life of a beautiful person…After all, it’s not just about “doing the food”.  It’s about how you do the food when you’re busy living, too.

This was a great point! I love sharing with you recipes that I consider presentable and “blogworthy,” and I try to insist on making my posts as polished and thoughtful as possible. I’ll never write about a nutrition topic, for instance, without calling upon my past studies, or doing some new research. But blogging is a personal act, too; even bloggers like me, who consider their blogs public forums, rather than personal diaries, must remember that many people read blogs because they find it inspiring to peer into a person’s life. This needn’t mean, as so many critics claim, that all blogs are purely narcissistic. Readers have always been fascinated by letters, diaries, and memoirs, because we like to feel empathy and kinship with other people. Reading memoir is moving because it reminds us that so much of human experience is shared.

So even though it’s not my own “blogging style” to post all of my eats, or to say too much about what’s going on in my private life, I do realize that you, my readers, like to be reminded that I’m a real person living a real life, as well as a nutrition writer. Which means that I needn’t post only the most inspired or creative dishes and recipes; I can also show you some of my more slapdash TV dinners, my work lunches, my recipe failures. In fact, it might be practically useful for you all to see what I eat and how I handle my food prep during weeks when time is short.

On that note, I wanted to share a bunch of my recent desk lunches. I’ve written about my desk lunches before, mentioning that I, unlike many people, don’t hate eating at the office, but I don’t typically take note of my midday meals, or share them with you. For the last week or so, I decided to snap photos of my lunches, so that you could all see what a busy working lady eats when she’s got about thirty minutes between meetings, or a manuscript that’s waiting for her attention. What follows is a roundup of my meals–and proof, Aletheia, that eating vegan and semi-raw is entirely possible in a pinch!

Leftover Bowl of Lindsay’s African Kale and Yam Soup, to which I added chickpeas, with a salad:

Large salad with pumpkin seeds, raisins, and my tomato curry dressing:

Salad with my Asian dressing and two slices of my carrot raisin bread:

Salad + Ezekiel wrap with avocado and mixed veggies:

Salad with beet dressing and a pumpkin seed pate (stay tuned for that recipe!!)

Salad with two slices of Love Force raw bread (the raisin flavor–I liked this very much!)

Simple spinach salad with butternut squash dressing (I was craving spinach like crazy that day!)

Salad with butternut squash dressing and leftover digestive-friendly hummus:

And, finally, one of my weekend lunch faves: my Saturday leftover quesadilla (recipe follows).

Get the idea? I keep it simple, keep it easy to pack, and, though the varieties change, greens of some sort are a constant. Now, for that recipe…

Gena’s Saturday Leftovers Quesadilla

This is one of my fave weekend lunches. I do grocery shopping on Saturday AMs, so I’m always eager to round up all of the old produce and leftovers I’ve got and put them to use in my Saturday lunch. You can use any combo of ingredients, but I find that a green+cooked veggies+creamy avocado/guac is great; hummus or mashed beans are also terrific additions!

Step one

Warm up one Ezekiel tortilla in a dehydrator or low temperature oven. Top it with some leftover greens–in this case, I used leftover massaged kale salad:

Step Two

Top it with some avocado slices. This is a GREAT way to use up any stray halves or quarters of avocados that you have leftover from making guac or other dishes:

Step Three

Add a layer of leftover roasted root veggies. I love yams, turnips, mashed butternut squash, or carrots. In this wrap, I used Kabocha squash that I’d taken home in a doggie bag from dinner at Peacefood Cafe:

Step Four

Pour some leftover dressing on top — I used my zucchini dressing here:

Step Five

Top with another tortilla, and serve with a salad. YUM!

These dishes won’t win any vegan or raw culinary awards. But they are nourishing, healthy, and tasty, and they’ve all given me pleasure on days when I’m caught in the hustle and bustle of work life. Today, let’s all vow to treat our bodies to nutritious and quality foods even when we’re pulled hither and yon by our obligations. We women balance work, life, and (often) motherhood, not to mention the responsibilities of being caretakers of friends and family. We deserve nothing less than power food to make us run. And nothing can give us more nutritional bang for our buck than veggie-centric meals. Happy lunching!

xo

Adventures in Raw Bread Making!

Happy Raw Wednesday!

How’d it go, guys? My day, though raw, was stressful and utterly unworthy of documentation. But in honor of the day, I do have a very special post to share with you. It is a chronicle of my journey into a brave new world of raw food. Yes, friends. Today, I share my first ever food dehydrating experience.

Food dehydrating. The final frontier. After six months of assuring you that you don’t need a dehydrator to be raw, and proving the claim myself, I have been gifted with a dehydrator. Which means a whole new world of breads, crackers, cookies, cakes, pizza crust, pie crust, and more.

Before I give you the detail of my first dehydrating adventure, I want to make something very clear. Having a dehydrator will in no way change the ethos of my blog. Sure, it’ll be fun to show you guys some of the fun things one can do with a dehydrator, and to make recipes that are a little more elaborate than the usual raw soups and salads. But I started this blog to prove that anyone—even someone equipped with nothing more than some kitchen knives and an imagination—can enjoy the raw lifestyle. The appliances help, but my kind of raw lifestyle (simple foods, simple combinations) doesn’t necessitate them. As I’ve stated before, I began my raw journey with nothing more than a food processor, a box grater, and some knives, and I managed nicely for a long, long while.

But every now and then, we welcome change into our lives. So get ready. A few times each month, I’ll try to make something really fun in the ‘ole Excalibur. I’ve already got some recipes bookmarked to try, and I hope you’ll love them. Rest assured, though, that Choosing Raw will remain a place where raw foodists come to relax, not show off; a place where prepping a meal takes fifteen minutes, not five days. And with the exception of today’s post, I’ll always try to give you a low-temp oven option on the recipe.

On that note, let me begin my first dehydrating adventure with a little tour of my kitchen. Welcome.

The first time I brought my ex-boyfriend (who was, shall we say, a meat and potatoes man) into this sacred room, he grinned and said, “So. This is where the magic happens.”

Yes. This is where the magic happens. This room is where it’s at. It’s where I come to unwind, to create, to shake off a bad day. Merely walking in here gives me a sense of calm. And well it should: by New York City renter’s standards, I have a pretty incredible kitchen (my old kitchen, which I shared with a roommate, was virtually so tiny that two people could not stand in it at the same time).

Here’s my countertop:

My appliances, all lined up like ducks in a row:

A still life from my Mom (she’s a painter):

Pantry items – healthy grains:

Coconut butter, nut butters, and raw honey:

And sea veggies/spices:

Here is my vegan cookbook collection (and this ain’t the half of it—just the VIPs!):

My tea kettle:

And no kitchen of mine is complete without some yams.

Hoping for a fridge tour? Not yet! I’m saving that one for a special organizational post. Soon.

Of course, having a dehydrator in an already full NYC kitchen brings up one crucial issue: space. Where to put? For now, I think a laborious tradeoff will have to happen each time the machine is in action. Other appliances get to sit on the floor:

While it gets the counter:

The rest of the time, you’ll find this guy here:

Whatever works.

In contemplating what to make for my first dehydrating jaunt, I thought (as I often do) of my clients’ food requests. Many of my clients ask me for raw bread recipes, and I’ve yet to provide them with one. I’ve also always hoped to put juice pulp to good use in a bread. So last weekend, I vowed that if I could find an easy, hassle free bread recipe, I’d christen the dehydrator with it.

Fortunately, I did. My friend Blaq Berry’s Carrocumber bread was the perfect template. And since I happened to have a ton of carrot pulp on hand, I figured it was time to take the plunge. I followed her recipe closely, making a few modifications (raisins in place of dates, celery/kale pulp in place of cucumber). And voila, Miss “I’ll never use my dehydrator” had herself some raw bread.

Here’s how:

Raw Carrot-Raisin Bread (Inspired by Hi-Rawkus; makes about five slices)

Ingredients:

1 cup carrot juice pulp
1/3 cup green pulp (celery or cucumber would be ideal)
½ cup ground flaxseed
½ tsp salt
1 tsp flax oil
¼ cup raisins, packed
1/3 cup water (if needed)

Begin by blending the first five ingredients in a food processor until well mixed. Add the raisins and pulse until they’re well incorporated.

Next, drizzle in water until the mix is clumping together – just as you would make any bread in a processor. Don’t use it all if you don’t need it – you don’t want an overly sticky consistency. (You could also do this by hand, it’ll just take some extra time.)

Roll the “dough” out onto a wooden board. You’ll probably need to oil the roller and board for this. Cut it into rectangles (mine yielded five sizeable ones).

Turn on your dehydrator, and set it to 115 degrees. Put the bread onto a Paraflexx-lined dehydrator tray, and place the bread in the machine. Dehydrate for about one hour, and flip the bread. Dehydrate for another hour and a half. Then, flip the bread again, and dehydrate for thirty-forty minutes, or until the bread has reached a consistency you like. I was aiming for a soft, yet sturdy texture, and it’s exactly what I got!

Remove the bread from the dehydrator. If you’re not eating it right away, but it in an airtight container and store in the fridge (should keep a few days). Or, go ahead and whip up a raw sandwich!

Since I had this baby on hand:

I decided to make a hearty MLT sandwich: mushroom, heirloom tomato, and lettuce. I spread some of my raw almondaise on the bread:

Stacked Portobello mushroom and thick tomato slices on it, topped with some lettuce, and voila:

A comforting, diner-worthy lunch.

Alongside a big salad, this hit the spot.

I was especially impressed with the bread’s texture: it was soft and pliable, unlike most raw bread, which usually resembles a giant, crumbly cracker.

It was new territory, but I found the whole dehydrating process ridiculously easy. It’s true, what they say about dehydrators: all you have to do is walk away and come back a few hours later. Unlike ovens or boiling pots, they require no vigilance. And the results are, well, pretty cool.

I hope you all had an awesome raw Wednesday! And I want to hear about it! Please chime into the comments section and let me know how you fared. And keep sending photos; I got a few (you guys know who you are, and thanks!) but I’d love to be able to post a whole bunch next week.

On that note, I leave you to five days sans Gena. I’m off to Crescent City to visit Chloe, my best friend, who lives there. I look forward to some hot weather, some girl time, some strolling by beautiful old homes, and some pleasure reading (fingers crossed!). In the meantime, I have three awesome guest posts lined up for you guys. Expect the first tomorrow evening!

xo