Fake Foods

A lot of things have been running around in my mind this week, so it has been hard to narrow it down to something that was intelligible. We were asked an interesting question at the market last week. A woman asked, "Is everything here in your section organic?" When I answered that it was, she asked, "How do you know that?" At first I didn't understand her question, but then I understood that she was asking how does anyone know that what they are getting and paying a higher dollar for is of any different quality than the lower priced product.

This is an interesting question. When we first brought Darius home from the hospital after his 30 day stay there, he was in a very weakened state. I prayed to know what to do to help him, and I was inspired to feed him "mild" foods. Not knowing what that meant, I had to think about it and pray a little more. I did some research and found the following scripture: "And whosoever among you are sick, and have not faith to be healed, but believe, shall be nourished with all tenderness, with herbs and mild food, and that not by the hand of an enemy" (Doctrine and Covenants 42:43). My mind conceived this to be foods that could digest easily so that his body could use its vital energies to help him heal.

I remembered a book I had read many years before, Fit for Life, where the authors explain this concept. I was grateful I had learned this though I had not implemented it to any great degree at that time. Foods that are easy to digest are fruits and vegetables primarily, especially juices of them. Darius' wife and I were now on a mission to get as many "mild" foods into him as we could. We purchased 25 pound bags of carrots, pounds and pounds of spinach and celery, and trays and trays of wheat grass. As we poured these elixirs in him, we were relieved to see his strength returning. It was truly a miracle!

We decided that as we purchased these "mild" foods as well as the other foods he would be eating, we should buy the ones as chemical free as possible so as not to tax his digestive system even more. This meant buying organic. So how would we know what was organic?

We had long grown our own vegetables and fruits in a chemical free manner using compost and mulch to build up the soil. We had hand-picked off the insects that occasionally came around for their daily munchies. To produce the quantity Darius needed though, vegetables would need to be purchased, so we had to rely on the vendors at the health food stores in the area.

We have learned that organically grown food is different than certified organic. Which one is better? There is a trust factor, certainly. For me, I visit the farms of those who claim to be growing organic but do not as yet have certification. Because I have grown food this way for many years, I know what I am looking for. It is not just the absence of poisons that makes it organic; it is the soil that makes it organic as far as I am concerned (assuming the farmer has the aversion to poisons that I have).

What I have come to learn is that organically grown food really does taste better. I think one of the reasons that so many people don't think they like a plant based diet is because the thought of eating all those gross tasting (i.e. chemical tasting) things is pretty disgusting. Even before this happened to Darius, I had started buying only organically grown lettuce as I found the chemical taste of conventional lettuce to be very off-putting. Now that I only eat plant foods, I am very sensitive to that chemical taste. I feel that fruits and vegetables that are grown properly (i.e. with soil that is highly developed with organic matter) have a sweet well-rounded rich flavor with no chemical aftertaste at all.

2 examples: one of our customers got a spinach salad from us last week where we provided a pear to slice over it to go with the candied pecans and raspberry vinaigrette. She e-mailed to say it was the best pear she had ever had, and could she please have some more. I don't think we have the best pears available; I think she had just never had an organic pear.

On the reverse side, another customer told me that she has a friend dying from cancer. When our customer suggested she change her diet to a plant-based diet to relieve some the stress a conventional diet was putting on her, the other lady said she would rather die than eat only that "stuff" -- and she will! That lady has never sat down to a whole day of plant-based goodies, now has she? We often remark at our house how blessed we are to have all these wonderful things to eat.

So this brings us full circle back to our beast boxes. You knew I would get around to them, didn't you? As we strive to come up with menus and foods that inspire our customers to eat a more plant-based diet, we want folks to know that these foods really are good. There really is not a sacrifice involved in eating this way. We may have to develop our palettes to appreciate some things we aren't used to, but time will give us that. If God intended us to eat a plant based diet (you know Adam and Eve were raw vegans, right?), He would not have wanted it to be a negative experience. Of course, our addictions to our former way of eating color our appreciation of the foods that we were really intended to eat.

Reminding me of something another customer said in her response to our beast box survey: "We have really enjoyed trying new food. It has opened up a new world of fun possibilities. I guess the biggest thing is to realize that while the raw versions are very good they are not going to really have the taste or texture of the real thing."

Ha! the "real thing" is really only our perception of what it should taste like. For example, we have a red pepper, onion, and mushroom fajita as one of our foods this week. Who is to say what a fajita is supposed to be? If all you knew is the one you get in the beast box this week, you would be content. If you, however, expect it to taste and feel like the one at the cocina, you will probably be disappointed. It's not that you won't like this one; it is just that your brain is expecting it to be something else.

Perhaps we should not call the foods by names by which other foods are called. Perhaps we should think of all new names for them so there are no pre-conceived notions. We'll work on that. Using familiar names helps us know what we are getting into.

My biggest problem with this is the raw vegan breads. To call them breads at all is an atrocity. I baked yeast breads for 30 years before entering this lifestyle, and I cannot wrap my brain around this cracker thing being called a bread. Nor can I accept that this cracker thing is anything like the little orange crackers I ate a box of every week of my life before adapting healthier habits. My solution? I don't eat raw vegan bread very often. I don't need it or want it. I don't dislike them, I just can't get my brain to accept them as bread. When I need a vehicle to hold my avocado mayo and tomato slices, I can eat them and enjoy them immensely. Just don't call them bread... they are tomato holders!

Well, I didn't think all the things running around in my head were in any way related to one another, but I got every one of them into the same discussion. Well, kind of. The reader is probably totally lost and gave up paragraphs ago. On to a more sensible subject: this week's menu.

As mentioned previously, we are making a mushroom / red pepper / onion "fajita". The "tortilla" is an actual corn chip in a circular shape dehydrated until it is hard. We have to dry them to that extent so that they do not degrade. Because there are absolutely no preservatives in them, molds will find them if there is any moisture there to help them survive. If you'd like a more pliable fajita wrapper, you will find the filling itself will soften it up a little bit so that it can be folded around it. We are also including a cup of cashew sour cream to add to your little sandwiches. Can anyone think of a better name for this than "fajita"?

Next, we have a cup of what we call queso dulce. I don't remember how we came upon this, but we loved it from the first day we invented it. We love it as a dip for celery, apples, and mixed into fruit salads. Are you noting a pattern here? Celery is not a food we would eat a lot except that we come up with all these delicious ways to eat it. Now we eat it by the bunch. Often for dinner we'll clean up 2 bunches for the 6 of us and devour it with our dip of choice. It is extremely satisfying and easy on the digestive system. So nearly every week, you'll find some kind of celery dip in the beast itself, and a bunch of celery in the veggie add-on.

Also, every week, there's usually a "pasta" type dish. Here again, squash might make a poor substitute for an actual pasta dish, but I think of it as a wonderful vegetable dish especially considering all the many toppings we've come up with to put on it. One of our favorites is this one: mac n cheese. The cheese is in a separate cup to add to your "noodles" when you are ready to eat. Both products hold up better that way. The "cheddar" is a cashew based cheese sauce with red pepper and cilantro. We think it is delicious. We've included some of Lil's down home greens to have along side or mix right into the squash noodles. Lillian Butler is a woman we met in New York. She runs a restaurant in Harlem called Raw Soul. She has done a wonderful work helping the poor black community there overcome some of the cultural choices that were ruining their health. These greens reflect her southern roots.

Our soup and salad choice this week is not entirely congruent: Asian soup and Italian salad, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Miso soup is very satisfying. I am not a big fan of raw mushrooms, but I like how they taste in miso. Miso is not actually a raw food since it is made from cooked beans, but because it is cultured, it is considered live. Isn't that interesting?

The Caesar salad is also one of my favorites. It took us awhile to come up with satisfactory substitutes for the SAD diet counterparts, but we love this dressing which uses miso for both flavoring and saltiness. I'm anxious to see how you like the crouton we've provided, and don't forget to sprinkle on the dulse. Dulse is another sea vegetable. Some people really had an aversion to the surf n turf last week because it had seaweed in it, but we are hoping we can convert you over to the raw side where these foods are an important part of a nourshing diet.

Our "chip and dip" feature this week is more familiar: vegan corn chips (made from corn and flax and seasonings) and salsa fresca. We think this tastes great with a sliced avocado and maybe some olives if you are so inclined.

You have probably noticed we don't eat a lot of grains even if they are sprouted. One exception to this is tabbouleh. It is made from quinoa which is an ancient grain; the indigenous people of Bolivia have been cultivating "the rice if the Incas" for over 5000 years. Quinoa is superior to other grains because it is a complete protein, containing 8 essential amino acids. It is actually a seed, not a grain, and is gluten free. When cooked, the grain itself is soft and delicate, but the germ is crunchy, creating a delicious combination of flavour and texture.

What we've prepared for you this week is a mixture of sprouted quinoa, cucumber, tomato, and onion in a lime vinaigrette. We would suggest you use it as a salad topping over some sliced lettuce. We are also including some cumin flatbread (which again, is not really very bready) to have with it.

Since we have 3 breads this week, we only have one snack, so we made it a rich one: something we call Greek dates. These are dates stuffed with a baklava type filling of almonds, walnuts, and honey. They are very tasty, but don't try to eat them all in one sitting. A half one a day will probably be very satisfying. One of our customers slices them into her salads, but we haven't tried that yet. Sounds intriguing.

We're having my favorite dessert this week: apple crisp. I've always been a fan, but I like this raw vegan version far better than the SAD version. We make a base from raisins, dates, pecans, coconut, and spices. Then we spicily sauce up some apples with more raisins and dates. It is topped by more of the crunchy topping and some maple cream made from cashews and maple syrup.

The development of this recipe took many months as I experimented with different combinations until I got it where I wanted it. I could eat it every day if it weren't such an involved recipe. You can count on it being in the beast box on a monthly basis.

(Which reminds me, Darius wanted a survey question wondering how often you would like certain items in the beast. Are there some things you'd like every week or every other week? Or would you prefer lots of different things? We are changing our catalog to only list about 15 items that will be available weekly. Hopefully they are items you like! We will also have extra of items being offered in each beast box for people to purchase ala carte if they don't want the whole beast. We are hoping this model will work for everyone.)

Our other dessert is the skinny mint (pictured above) so called because it won't make you fat like its SAD counterpart! The downfall of these is that they must be kept frozen or they disintegrate. We are working on that aspect of it and will hopefully come up with a different recipe, but it is so tasty, that we can't wait for the final draft before enjoying them. They are made from almond flour, raw cacao, maple syrup and sugar and coconut oil along with vanilla and peppermint extracts.

Our recipe this week is for a soup we love love love, but it is seasonal and difficult to hold so we can't put it in the beast. We thought about giving you the ingredients and letting you blend it up when you are ready to eat it. One time we put it in thermoses when we were going on a trip, and it exploded all over the van when we opened it to eat it. It was still good, but we were eating it and smelling it in our van for a long time!

Cauliflower Soup

2 cups cauliflower
2 - 3 cups water
1/2 cup cashews or pine nuts
2 T lemon juice
sea salt to taste

Put everything in high speed blender and blend til thick and smooth. Serve at room temp.

I almost forgot to post survey results (5 means really, really good, and 1 is stinky):

4.0 sprouted garbanzo bean hummus
3.8 olive cheese spread
5.0 pad Thai
3.7 surf n turf
3.2 raita
3.3 savory kale salad
3.1 spicy broccoli cheese soup
4.4 spinach salad
4.7 pita chips
3.8 Alicia crackers
3.3 zucchini chips
5.1 crunch meister
4.6 chocolate cheesecake
3.8 panna cotta

Everyone seems to like menu suggestions. Since our goal is for everything to be a 5 (or better), obviously some of these choices were not up there on everyone's list although none of them "failed" miserably. Rating them for us helps us to know which things you will like more than others. So thanks to those who took the time to let us know what they liked. We like it all!

Social Expectations

This week one of my son's who has no interest in our dietary changes was telling me that it was a selfish thing we are doing since it benefits no one but ourselves. He pointed out that we have paid a dear price for our newfound health and have sacrificed our relationship with our family to do this. I can certainly understand where he is coming from, and I have had to deal with some of these feelings myself.

It is true that many of our social conventions revolve around food and drink. There is hardly an activity you can think of that doesn't. Believe me, we've tried. The closest we have come is having a birthday party at the baseball field during one of the games (since I have a summer birthday). Not only was there the game for those who liked baseball, but there were alternative snacks for those who didn't care for our healthier fare. We played some family games as well, and it was a lot of fun. At least I thought so. But, as my son notes, it just isn't the same...

Could it be that a lot of what we are missing is the knock-out effect these foods have on us? We're all aware of the drug induced reaction we get after Thanksgiving dinner. Scientists have discovered that roast turkey induces a drug-like state after consumption. Maybe we're looking more for anesthesia than companionship...

Beast box results are in with some surprising results. Some of our family favorites have lower scores than items we personally don't like as much, so that goes to prove our palettes are different than most others. Here's the results (scale is 1 bad, 5 great):

4.9 unfried no bean
3.8 elotes con crema
5.3 macadamia ricotta
4.7 Waldorf salad dressing
5.5 marinara sauce for pizza
5.3 cucumber salad
3.7 Mexican rice
4.4 Asian salad
4.0 everyday bread
4.2 Mexi-cali wrappers
5.3 honey almond butter
4.5 ballpark sunnies
5.3 chocolate trifle
5.5 pumpkin pie

Anyone with better analyzing skills than I have want to figure this out?

This week's menus have a Mediterranean angle with sprouted garbanza bean hummus, pita chips, and raita. Dessert is a nice coconut frozen custard called Panna Cotta. We're also making a delicious spinach salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, crunchy candied pecans, and a sliced pear. Fantastic!

Our olive cheese spread is very popular. Each of us in our family likes this a different way; I love it as a dipper for celery, and Roger likes to smear it on veggie crisps. Darius likes it on cucumber slices and tomatoes. It is also good as a salad topper. It isn't as olive-y as it sounds, but since I am a big olive fan, maybe I wouldn't know if it is.

Pad Thai is an Asian addition to our menus this week. We shred zucchini, sliver up some red peppers and onions and toss with a delicious mock peanut sauce (almond butter substitutes nicely for the peanuts in the traditional sauce).

Our version of surf n turf is some nice arame sea vegetables mixed with sweet pepper, onion, and carrots (for the turf part). These are tossed in a nice ginger marinade. My favorite way to eat this is on top of shredded romaine.

Our soup this week is a spicy broccoli cheese soup. There are people who would literally walk (drive) miles to have some of this soup while others don't see what all the fuss is about. I am anxious to see how this one does in the survey. In our family, we like this with Alicia crackers which have a cheesy flavor all their own. The salad part of the soup / salad combo is a savory kale salad. Julienned kale, chopped onion and tomato are dressed with avocado and a nice vinaigrette. Very tasty... Who would have thought kale could be tasty not cooked?

We're also including zucchini chips and crunch meister in our box this week, both of which should be very popular. There's also a chocolate topped cheesecake. My brother who is a professional chef says this is the best cheesecake he's ever eaten, baked or unbaked. Ours is made with cashew cheese and the chocolate topping is made out of the best raw cacao I've ever tasted. Nothing else to say about that...

We've had requests for a few other items, including my favorite dessert: apple crisp. We also have pumpkin pie, chocolate mousse trifle, and key lime tarts. Hard to decide... We're also making Waldorf salad, veggie crisps, Mexi-cali wrappers, guacamole, sweet kale salad, more of that delicious spicy almond dressing, unfried no-bean, veggie soup. Wow, I'd better get to work! Enjoy and have a delicious week...

I almost forgot the recipe!

I'm going to share the recipe for our spicy almond dressing. This has been hugely popular. You will never see it available again as my family will probably kill me for sharing this with you...

Spicy Almond Dressing

2 cups almond butter
4 Roma tomatoes
½ cup braggs liquid aminos (or Nama Shoyu if no gluten intolerances)
¼ cup sesame oil
2 T lemon juice
2 T maple syrup
1 t miso
3 inch piece of ginger
1 jalapeno pepper
cayenne pepper to taste
1 scant t sea salt

Blend in a blender until completely smooth. Thin with water as needed. Yield: 1 quart.

The Beast Box Saga

I'm trying to think of something new and profound to say, but our lives are consumed with beast boxes. We call them beast boxes because we call the vehicle in which we drive to the farmers' market "The Beast", so the boxes delivered in "The Beast" would naturally be called "Beast Boxes".

I e-mailed out a survey to the recipients of last week's box to see where we were at with everyone. The ones returned were very interesting to say the least. Rochelle said that she was very surprised that each time she opened a new container, she was happier than the last one. She even added that it was helping her give up fast food restaurants! Now that's a nice compliment. Michele said that the granola was better than any granola she'd ever had before. Wow, that's incredible.

The funniest one was Laurie who said, "The pickled beets were MUCH better than when Grandma served them...however" [I'm translating here], "they still sucked." Thankfully, others gave them a higher rating.

Of course, everyone didn't like everything. Keith said the kale salad surprised them by being sweet which they did not enjoy. Everyone else gave it a high rating. The beets got mixed reviews from Laurie's suck vote to Rochelle's 5. (The rating scale was 1 to 5 with 1 being "stinky, never want to see it again, what were you thinking giving me this stuff..." to 5 being "I loved it and want to order some with my next beast box."

Almost every thing got mixed reviews: half the people gave it 5's, and the others gave it a 3. Exceptions to that was the cashew cream cheese which got a 5 from everyone except for 1 person who gave it a 3. The marinara got 4's and 5's from everyone. The desserts got 5's across the board except Rochelle gave the key lime pie a 10! There really wasn't any item offered that got poor reviews across the board.

Some folks didn't vote, so I don't know if they didn't like the food or just hate surveys (like me). Most people that try the food say that they like it. We get lots of interesting comments at the market when people try our samples. We kinda don't like to give samples to people drinking soda pop as we're pretty sure their palette is going to be unreceptive. Sometimes that is the case, but surprisingly, sometimes they do like it.

This week we are trying a a couple of foods new to us: macadamia ricotta, and Spicy Almond Dressing. That is one thing about doing the boxes we really like: we can try something we don't have in our catalog just to see what kind of reception it gets. If is wildly popular, it will probably make its way into the catalog. Likewise, if people really don't like something we have in the catalog, we'll pull it. A lot of times, people won't order something in the catalog because it sounds weird, or they are afraid they won't like it. The boxes serve as a sampler of a large number of products they otherwise might not get to taste.

Another suggestion that was made was to let people know expiration dates. I'm not scientific enough to know exactly what date a food will go bad, but we do know which ones have to be eaten within a couple of days. We try to include some foods in each one that will last until the end of the week, but if the one getting the box doesn't know which foods that is, it won't do them any good. Anyway, we're going to mark the menu sheet with an asterick for those foods which need to be eaten at the beginning of the week. We always make these on Friday so they will be the freshest possible.

We also decided to make add-on boxes for vegetables and/or fruit that would compliment the items offered in the box. For example, on weeks when a pasta sauce is part of the menu, we will have zucchini in the vegetable add-on box. The fruit add-on isn't so much because it's part of the menu (although it will be in some cases), but it provides some of the fruit one might need for snacks, breakfast, and/or smoothies.

We are having a lot of fun with this, and I found my mind wandering earlier this week as I started planning the box for the week of Thanksgiving. We prepared several dishes last year for Thanksgiving, and many of our customers loved them, so it will be fun to put them in the box this year.

One issue we are having that we aren't sure how to resolve is the quantity of food. In coming up with the price, we simply added up the cost of the items. We played with the serving sizes to try to keep the price affordable since that is such an issue in these tough economic times. Some said that while the price was fair, it wasn't as much food as they wanted for some of the meals and that they wanted larger servings even if it meant paying more.

I think the way we will resolve that is we'll offer an upsize version for those who want the larger portion sizes. It will require more organization on our parts to keep the various sizes straight, but we'll figure it out.

Blogging this now strikes me as a rather boring medium right now, but I guess I felt I wanted to document our early efforts in this. We feel like this is a good way to reach a lot of people and help them incorporate more plant foods in their diet. Most people have two obstacles: money and time. We are trying to help in both those areas by keeping prices as low as we possibly can and saving people prep time.

I'll close with a recipe to satisfy some sweet teeth out there. We have the most incredible raw cacao that anything made with it turns out like a dream, and these truffles are no exception.

Chocolate-Coconut Truffles (40 of them)

In a high speed blender, combine until well blended:

1/2 cup coconut oil, warmed to soften
3/4 cup raw agave nectar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon unrefined sea salt

While continuing to blend, add 1/2 cup of coconut blending until smooth; repeat with a second 1/2 cup of coconut.

Transfer to a bowl, and stir in 2 cups raw cacao powder until thoroughly combined. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes so that it can set up a little.

Place another 1/4 cup cacao powder onto a small plate. Forming balls from the chocolate mixture with a tablespoon, roll them in the cacao powder on the plate. Store in the refrigerator (assuming you don't eat them all in one sitting!).

In Over My Head!

I've only got about an hour left in me, but I didn't want to let a week go by without making a couple of notes. Last week I mentioned my idea about a weekly box which would have a few meals in it for the week, and I sent out an e-mail to our living foods list on Monday. We have gotten a good response, and it is pretty exciting to think that a few more people will be trying our cheeses, salads, sauces, and desserts for the first time. I hope they like them and that they help them incorporate more plant based foods into their daily lives.

I didn't think this through as well as I should have, so we are flying by the seat of our pants getting it organized. I'm glad most of our customers are patient people!

The box will have 4 mains/cheeses, 4 sides/soups/sauces, 2 breads, 2 snacks, and 2 desserts. All servings are single size servings. The cost of the box is $30, we think. Right now we are delivering it on Saturday, but I'm wondering if folks would like having it on Monday or Tuesday better. People like to do their partying and eating out on the weekends which means they wouldn't get to their box food until Monday. Because everything is freshly made with no preservatives, shelf life is limited on some things. Just something to think about and tweek...

This week's box contains the following:

no net tuna
queso verde
marinated mushrooms
cashew creme cheese
marinara
pickled beets
kale salad
veggie soup
veggie crisps
chili lime corny chips
banana bark
Hawaiian granola
rawky road
key lime pie

We also need to work out the details on refrigeration, labeling, sorting; I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now. Tomorrow is a new day, and things will look better, I'm sure. Maybe I'll write more when I get through some of the rough spots.

Can Good Habits Be Habit Forming?

What a crazy week this has been with school starting back up. Our grandchildren talked us into taking the summer off from their studies (against our better judgement), and let's just say we won't be doing that again. Which speaks to habits and how they are formed and how hard they are to break.

It's interesting how good habits seem harder to form than bad habits. I'm sure that's not true. It's just that we prefer the bad habits over the good ones. It might be a lazier way to do something in some cases. I am trying to teach my grandson to make his bed every day. He was having such a time of it that I just let him throw the sheet over the top and then the bedspread on top of that the first time. Now he thinks that is the definition of a made bed, and there doesn't appear to be anything I can do to convince him otherwise. Lesson learned: do it right the first time no matter how hard it is because they'll never let you back up and do it the right way. There are no do-overs in their world! Of course, I could decide I well-made bed is not that important and not worry about it. The lesson there is to pick my battles...

I'm convinced that many of the problems we face in our daily eating choices are the results of bad habits formed. I met a young lady once who was reared as a vegan. She had never eaten at a fast food restaurant, had never had white flour or sugar, and she was a most beautiful creature, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I marveled at that and wondered how many others there were in the world like that. Then I started thinking about the rest of us. All of us come from varying levels on the healthful eating scale. To me, this young lady was a 9 1/2 (with 10 being a perfect diet), while many of us have had some pretty gross stuff in our bodies. Like the un-made bed, what difference does it make? How do we decide if this battle is worth fighting?

For me, the way I feel makes the battle worth fighting. When I don't eat the food upon which my body was created to thrive, I don't feel well, and I don't think as clearly. That is the bottom line. As an overweight person, I tried every diet out there I think, but there was never a diet that I couldn't wait to get back to because of how it made me feel until I went raw vegan. I did not start eating like that for weight loss or to feel better; I did it because we were hoping it would help Darius fight cancer. Feeling terrific, having more energy than I knew what to do with, and weight loss were just fantastic side benefits.

When I have slips, I suffer physically and mentally. I do not enjoy feeling badly anymore especially when I know I don't have to. When I know there is a way to feel great, why would I purposely endure suffering? If all I have to do is wash in the river to rid myself of leprosy, why wouldn't I do it? (See 2 Kings 5: 1 - 14 in the Old Testament of the Bible for the whole story.)

The fact is, most of us want a fancy solution. I saw advertisements on the TV yesterday for some kind of probiotic pill people can take to restore their intestinal balance of good bacteria and yeast. Why do we need a pill for that when there are wonderful probiotic foods we should be eating every day? We seem more comfortable when there is an 800 number attached to what's good for us, or if a doctor will write us a prescription for it. We think, "How in the world can the food I eat make a difference in how I feel?" Really, are you kidding me? How can it not?

At least once a week, someone calls us who has heard Darius' cancer story telling us someone in their family is dying from cancer, and can we help them? This week it was a little 8 year old girl in Texas. I do not know why people get cancer or if eating only the foods upon which we were intended to thrive can heal us. I am not a doctor or medical professional. I do know our bodies are created as perfect "machines" with self-healing mechanisms. If we overload them in anyway (food and otherwise), they must divert their energy to waste removal instead of other functions. Eventually the body will fail when the other functions are ignored long enough.

Those bad habits are killing all of us at an alarming rate. We must face the addictions to which the habits have led us to fall victim and overcome them if we are to have a decent quality of life. Like Kris Carr said when asked by Dr. Oz how she would feel if she ended up dying anyway, she answered that her quality of life was so much better since having cancer and making changes in her lifestyle that she would not regret making the changes. There's something wrong when our bad habits blind us to reality! We've got to get honest with ourselves. For me, it takes doing the AA 12 steps to do this, but it doesn't matter HOW we do it, just that we do do it!

I've been thinking about putting a box together each week for those who would like to try to add more plant-based foods into their lives. I think a lot of people are over-whelmed when they try to do this, and maybe this would help them. There's a restaurant in Los Angeles called Rawvolution that has been doing this for quite a while, so it is helping people in these highly populated areas.


We have no idea how much to charge for this and are not inclined to sit down to do the math with everything else that's going on. We are not so much interested in doing it for profit as we are trying to get people to get turned on to how good some of these foods can be. If we can come up with a price that can cover our expenses and be affordable, than that would be a win-win. We're going to start with $40 which will include the following (each week will be different) (each is a single serving size) (menu suggestions will be included):

4 main dish starters (pasta, main dish salads, terrines, pizza, burritos, sandwiches, etc.)

1 sauce
1 pate or dip
1 cheese
1 salad topper

4 soups/sides

1 fermented or marinated vegetable
1 shredded salad
1 soup
1 VV salad

2 breads
2 snacks
2 desserts

We could also offer a discount on any produce ordered to round it out like lettuce, zucchini for pasta, veggies for dip platter, tomatoes, fruit for breakfast or smoothies, etc.

What goes into the box each week would depend on what our regular customers order for the week. This week's box includes the following:

1 peanut sauce
1 no bean pate
1 cheddar cheese
1 sweet potato souffle

1 cucumber salad
1 Mexican rice
1 broccoli soup
1 ¡ Viva La Verde ! Salad

1 each: everyday bread, mexi-cali wraps
1 each: honey almond butter, crunch meister
1 each: skinny mints, pumpkin pie

Well, that's our menu for the week as well. Good stuff.

How about a nice tahini dressing this week? This one's from the Raw Food Bible. Good as a dip too.

Tahini Dressing

Yields one pint
½ cup raw sesame tahini
½ cup cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil
freshly-squeezed juice of 4 limes or 3 lemons
1 tsp mustard powder
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp Celtic Sea salt
3/4 cup water

To make:

In a blender, process until desired consistency is reached. Add more water if necessary and always add more garlic and salt till you love it and want to eat it on everything. Sesame seeds are a great source of Calcium.

Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?

I know every week that I will need to think of something to write at the end of the week. Things float through my mind constantly, and sometimes they actually seem as though they might be interesting for those who read this blog or for posterity who may read it later. At the market we are constantly asked questions for which the answer is, "You know, we did a blogpost on that a while back. Here's our blog address." I don't know if they ever read it; I guess it depends on how interested they are in an answer. Hopefully there will be a few tidbits here and there which are helpful to someone.

I suppose it helps me more than anyone as it helps me clarify a lot of things in my mind when I put them into words. I have always loved writing, and it comes easily to me as a means of sorting out mixed up thoughts. For that reason I've never cared if anyone reads what I write, so I suppose I will never be a successful author. I would think they have to care if someone reads what they right, and in turn, they would write to the reader instead of for themselves.

Of course I have enough of an ego to be glad when someone does read it and especially if they are benefitted by what they read. Do I have illusions that I am saving the world? Not hardly. I rarely talk about the lifestyle changes we have made, but sometimes people ask me about them when something comes up. The biggest thing is when I see people I haven't seen for a few years. They're pretty shocked by the weight loss Roger and I have had. (We've each lost over 100 pounds. Darius and Alicia have too. As a family we have lost 450 pounds. That's a whole other family!) Our driver's licenses still have our old pictures. One time a lady at the store refused my check because she thought I was using someone else's license to cash it.

There are a lot of people doing the stomach stapling thing and the rubber band thing, so big weight losses aren't all that surprising until someone asks how you accomplished it. One lady actually argued with Alicia and I about it when we said we just changed our diet when she asked us. She assumed we were lying and didn't want to tell her we had had stomach stapling. She even asked if we got a group rate since all four of us evidently had the surgery.

Being overweight most of my life, I feel so much empathy for those who suffer from this. Those who have never been overweight can't imagine how difficult it is to struggle with everything obese people do. I couldn't even put on a pair of shoes with laces! I think the worst part was knowing that if I could just control what went into my mouth, I wouldn't have to go through this. I had so much pain in my joints that when I got out of the car I would have to stand there a few minutes for the pain to subside so that I could walk to my destination a few feet away. I had acid reflux nearly every night to the point that I'm sure I burned my esophagus. I went through a roll of antacid tablets almost every day.

(Note about this picture: I am on the right, and Roger is on the left. I can't believe I am posting this. I can't believe this is even us. It seems so long ago, and yet it is a very vivid memory - a horrible one. I hope that before I die I can help at least one person not have to continue their suffering as I did.)

I have always had an aversion to medical doctors. I'm sure they would have prescribed various medicines for the ailments from which I was suffering. That is their job: to relieve suffering. It is assumed if the patient could handle this themselves, they wouldn't be seeking professional help, so therefore their approach is warranted. We get what we deserve when we suffer the side effects of the drugs they prescribe.

Rather than seek professional help, I always knew there must be something I could do about my "disease". I wasn't sure what it was as I had tried everything, but I continued to pray for inspiration. Isn't it odd that it came to me through my son and his brain tumor diagnosis? We have all said more than once how grateful we are for that ugly old tumor even though it had so much power to devastate us at the time. I will be forever grateful for the inspiration we received to change our life and the way we were eating.

I was talking to my older son the other day who has no interest in our lifestyle changes. I was mentioning that a mutual acquaintance has a lot of curiosity about our lifestyle but not enough to make the changes himself. My son said that he thinks most people fall in that category. I remembered once when I read about a man who only ate raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. This was back in 1985 or so. It was in an Organic Gardening magazine. I remember thinking at the time, "Man, that would be so cool, but I could never do that." I had in fact tried to do it and had failed. So what makes the difference?

I don't think anyone is ever perfect in the way they eat any more than they are perfect in the way they dress or talk or think. It is all a process. If we have a problem with bad language, every day we will try to not use bad words (once we become convinced they are inappropriate). So it is with diet. Once it rings true to us (which may not happen initially), we will struggle with it, and just try a little harder each day. The important thing is to find out if it is a correct principle: Is a diet of raw fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds the ideal diet for humans? If it is, we have to make efforts to incorporate them into our lives. We can expect it to be difficult as all changes are. We can expect to struggle and evolve.

I am thoroughly convinced that this diet is the ideal diet for humans. I do not expect anyone to believe me when I say this. They will have to come into it as I have. They will have to experience the miracles I have experienced. They will need to gain their own confirmation. Without a belief that something is true, we will never have the ability to incorporate it into our lives. So that is the first step...

Is bad language something I should abstain from? How about alcohol? Tobacco? Pornography? Caffeine? Meat? Dairy? Sugar and refined foods? Cooked and unsprouted grains and legumes? Cooked veggies and fruits? All of these things are related in that they all induce an addictive response. If I am to be totally free, I have to back away from them - one shaky step at a time.

It is a journey, and a very fulfilling one. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for giving me the opportunity to learn these truths and benefit from them.

This week: fresh everyday bread, pumpkin pie, sweet potato souffle, waldorf salad, marinated broccoli, olive cheese spread, queso verde, cuke salad, and no net tuna.

Plus lots of glorious glorious fruit. I can't get enough of it this time of year.

This recipe is from Pansy, someone in an e-mail group I ran across. She says, "This recipe is from www.sadtoraw.com and we have it a couple times a week."

Mexican Vanilla Frozen Shake

1 1/2 cups water
handful of almonds
maple syrup (add as much as you like for sweetness. Can also use honey or agave.)
1 baby young thai coconut (all the meat and water)
2 tsp. vanilla extract or 1" piece of vanilla bean
Cinnamon (sprinkle in as much as you like)
8 ice cubes

*I also add hemp seed*

Blend till creamy!

This make two huge glasses!

Enjoy! There's a few more months when we'll enjoy having cold, frosty drinks like this. Then we'll be scrambling for something to help us warm up!

Another Time Around the Moon for Me...

Wow! 57 times around the sun doesn't seem possible, does it? Doing something 57 times doesn't seem so difficult, but when one considers it takes 365 24-hour days to do one of them, it takes on a little more significance. Now that I think about it, from an eternal perspective, 57 times around the sun seems kind of puny! I'd better get busy so that I can turn this into something grand... What would be significant? 157? 257? How about 1,057? Heaven help me. I'd be bored to death if I had to stick around that long. I've got quite a few years before I will be able to clear my desk, so I hope I can be around a little longer.

Longevity is a big issue in the health industry right now. It is interesting the things they are finding out about how we shorten our lives, but how to extend it is still a mystery to a certain extent. No one has lived long enough yet to prove the theories. I just keep looking at that stack on my desk. I have to live long enough to clear it off as I'm sure my kids will just throw it all in the trash. That would be a disaster on many different levels!

Which brings me to the next step in my thought process: what is really important? Why do we waste time doing and worrying about things that really don't matter? Are we just trying to keep busy like a little child playing with his blocks? Does our need to feel important and to feel our work is important drive our actions? Does what we do really matter to anyone else?

Like the toddler, we don't really care as long as we feel like we and our work is useful. Like the toddler, we occasionally become bored and wander over to the toybox to see what else there is to do.

As you can see, birthdays don't treat me kindly, and yet this year, I felt full of gratitude for all the blessings that I have in my life. I couldn't think of a single person with whom I'd switch places. Regardless of how many years I'll be given, I've had a wonderful life, and I'm looking forward to whatever is ahead, no matter what. How can it be anything but exciting? What does it matter whether others find what I do worthwhile? I am amused and fulfilled and every once in a while I actually think what I do does some good. (Whether that is an accurate observation is not relevant... It is only relevant that I think it is doing good which motivates me to keep doing it which in turn, keeps me busy and amused... you know, like how we try to keep the toddler from getting bored.)

I haven't actually thought all of this through, mainly because there is a shiny red toy over there in the toy box that keeps distracting me. I must go check it out...

If you've read this far, you deserve a reward. Here's a reasonable sounding recipe for a smoothie that can easily be turned into a green smoothie by adding a kale leaf.

Vanilla Bliss
This is something a bit heavier to keep from being hungry for several hours. Blend in some kale to increase consumption of greens and also to lighten the sweetness.

3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons raw tahini or other nut butter
1-2 frozen bananas.
Dash of vanilla
sweetener if desired: maple syrup or a date or two

Blend until thick and smooth. Serve immediately. Serves 1.

Lots of breads this week due to customer requests. I think we ended up making everyone of them, so let's talk about bread...

On a raw vegan regime, yeast breads are not in the picture which makes a few of our favorite foods a little bit of a challenge. So what's wrong with bread anyway? That's a whole post in itself; maybe next time...

But I digress. If we don't eat yeast breads or quick breads or wheat based crackers, or anything baked, what do we eat? Buckwheat is the basis of several of our breads and is a very interesting food. Despite its name, it is not a cereal or a grain. The seed of the buckwheat plant is an achene , a fruit containing the seed, like the "fruit" from the sunflower plant. So even though it is botanically a fruit, it is a little different in that is high a higher starch content than most fruits. It contains no gluten but is used in bread and cereal applications because of its starch content.

Anyway, when one starts to use buckwheat to substitute for common bread products, one needs to do some powerful paradigm shifting. Buckwheat breads and cereals will not taste like their high gluten alternatives, nor will they "act" like them in their production. We must forget everything we thought we knew about bread and bread baking. It is interesting to think how what we consider normal becomes that way. At one time in the United States (18th and 19th century), buckwheat was a very common crop and buckwheat use was prevalent. It was not until the introduction of chemical nitrogen fertilizers (to which wheat and corn responded well) that the use of buckwheat declined. Isn't it interesting that a crop that does well on low-fertility soils was pushed aside for ones that required fertilization and therefore fattened the pocketbooks for those providing the fertilizer? Talk about a profit-driven crop!

Anyway, we use this ancient starcy fruit as the basis for most of our breads combined with a little flax for stick-togetherness. (Now there's another ancient crop - flax.) Lots of veggies get mixed in there. In fact, you can experiment with just about any veggies sitting around to come up with a million different combinations. Seasonings help make it a little more interesting as buckwheat is VERY bland tasting (in my opinion anyway). Here are some of the buckwheat breads we make (all have sprouted buckwheat as their base, some flax to hold them together, a little honey or sweetener of your choice, unrefined salt, and maybe some extra-virgin olive oil plus the ingredients in parenthesis):

everyday bread (carrot)

chili lime corny chips (zucchini, tomato, sprouted sunflower seeds, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, garlic, lime, whole pumpkin seeds, sprouted)

veggie crisps (cabbage, carrots, onions, tomatoes, garlic, jalopeno, cilantro, sprouted sunflower seeds, cumin, chili powder, oregano)

We also have an onion bread that has lots of onions, flax, and sprouted sunflower seeds - amazingly good for something so simple. Coconut, zucchini, and flax is the basis of our new pita chip, and Mexi-cali wrappers have no flax or buckwheat in them, just lots of veggies, avocado, and a little psyllium to hold them together.

Having that much variety really does help us not miss our traditional breads especially when we remember why the breads we grew up with really aren't the best food for our bodies no matter how much we might think we want them.

Besides all of the above-mentioned breads, this week we also have the following:

cheddar kale chips (By the way, our kale experiment from last week was a great success. This week we are experimenting with cheddar chips and they smell fantastic!)

Olive Sandwich Spread is still a family favorite. I like it with celery, but Roger and Alicia like it on the veggie crisps with a slice of tomato.

We're making some raita (cucumber in a vegan cashew sour cream base) this week which will be another nice sandwich addition.

Our beloved queso verde is back after a little hiatus. That again will make a nice addition to our sandwich menu this week. It also makes a great "sliced" cheese when we dehydrate it in thin circles.

We're making unfried no beans this week to use in our weekly taco fest. We're going to enjoy them with our Mexi-cali wrappers. The moisture of the "beans" helps to soften up the wrappers so that they bend better and do their job of holding in the beans and other fixins'. Hopefully we can get Alicia to make some Mexican rice (cabbage, tomatoes, and lots of spices) to go with that.

Of course, we must have our elotes con crema too and some nice avocados to stuff it into. We usually have that with ensalada (cabbage, cilantro, lemon juice, and salt).

We have a couple of regular salads during the week: lettuce (looking forward to the red butter lettuce that came in this week), celery, carrots, onion, raisins, dulse, and Ranch dressing. Kale salad again this week too; it is sooooo good (kale, tomato, avocado, olive oil, lemon, and salt). Can't forget some cucumber salad too. I had some on my regular salad today, and it was delicious. I think it was the sweetness of the cucumber salad mixed with the saltiness of the dulse that made it so good.

Sweet potatoes from North Carolina have been fantastic, so we're glad someone wanted some sweet potato souffle. Very nice. Always makes me think about Thanksgiving...

We made some mock peanut sauce which we love on shredded zucchini. We also like to slice a little red pepper into it and a little onion. By the way, we got a great buy on "choice" red peppers this week. When we get them, they are a great buy. We don't have to feel guilty using them! Choice in the produce world means not as good as premium or prime, but we feel like they are just fine for our uses.

Customers requested pizza roll-ups, so we'll be making marinara for one of our meals. Maybe we'll do a "leaning tower": sliced zucchini and tomatoes layered with queso verde or crema and sauced with a little marinara. Marinated mushrooms are a good addition too. We can't make the roll-ups til we get all the bread out of the dehydrators, so we'll probably have that ready Monday.

Alicia has been wanting another dressing, so we're going to have some raspberry vinaigrette made with some of the beautiful raspberries we've been getting this summer (olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lime, raspberries, agave nectar to sweeten, and a little salt). I love this dressing over greens with a few candied pecans and some sliced apples. You gotta love that the new crops of apples are finally in too right alongside all the summer fruits still in season. We do love them with our honey almond butter, too. It's official - everyone in the family has their own cups of it now except me.

Desserts: vanilla panna cotta (An experiment from a few months ago that resulted in a delicate vanilla flavored custard (no eggs or milk though - vegan, remember?). The base is coconut milk, and it's topped with a mango coolis.

We're also making marshmallow topping which is delicious on top of our almond coconut ice cream, but we also use it in our coconut cream pies: chocolate date crust, bananas, and a marshmallow layer. (The marshmallow is coconut based. I don't remember why we started calling it marshmallow except that it is like that stuff you make out of marshmallows when you're doing rice krispie treats.) Roger better get busy busting up some coconuts!

Since Roger and I are celebrating our birthdays together this weekend (mine's the 10th and his is the 25th), we'll be making some ice cream to enjoy under that marshmallow! I think I'll have my ice cream with some apple crisp...

We also have rocky road, pumpkin pie, and key lime pie. Nobody's suffering in this family for something sweet to finish off their dinner.