Beet Ravioli with Pistachio Pesto and Citrus Sauce
This beet ravioli recipe has been playing a little tune in my head for awhile now. More than a month ago, I started fiddling with it but I was apparently lacking in the finesse required to get paper thin slices of beet without cutting the ends of my fingers off in the process. The combination of beet juice and my own blood created something that looked like a grisley crime scene and, at some point, I did think cordoning off the kitchen with yellow tape, might not be a bad idea. I certainly was afraid to go in there. As it was, I was standing there, my hand wrapped in…
Smokin’ Raw Chili Chill Chaser
I just finished eating this raw chili for lunch for the second day in a row. The first day I ate it at room temperature and all the spices and chile peppers gave me all the heat I needed. But today, after coming in from a very snowy day, I heated it up for an hour in the dehydrator. After it had spent the night in the fridge it needed the chill taken off as much as I did! This is not verboten. That’s what the dehydrator is for: making sure those enzymes stay intact and you still get to have something warm when it strikes your fancy. In the…
Cherry Chocolate Chia Pudding
What could be better than chocolate for breakfast? Offhand, I really can’t think of anything. Especially if it’s a breakfast as power-packed as this cherry chocolate chia pudding. Cacao and chia: its like having two super heroes come to work for you! As fall makes its inevitable drop upon us, I’ve been getting this incredible urge to substitute my normally high-fruit first meal of the day for something a little more hefty. I’ve made many a chia pudding before but this time it was a little different because I felt genuinely inspired. Not to mention the fact that I was really craving chocolate. It was actually verging on lust. The…
Broccoli Salad with Creamy Dressing
A couple of months ago a friend brought a broccoli salad from Costco to a little get together. I remember having it a couple of years back and a similar one from Whole Foods. The problem…both contain bacon and the dressing is dairy. Well, once I perfected the coconut bacon, putting this delicious salad together was a breeze. I make enormous batches of coconut bacon and keep it handy. It enhances just about everything and I throw it into practically everything or just snack on it to satiate savory cravings. Throwing all the ingredients together is quick and easy and you can prepare the dressing in advance. This is a…
Wild Rice and Oat Raw Porridge
Those who live in exotic and tropical locales have it made when it comes to adopting a raw diet. It’s a lot easier when fresh fruit is virtually dripping from trees and the markets are overflowing with all manner of produce. We ‘peons’ of colder climes have never even seen some of that stuff. Ask a New Mexican what a rambutan or durian is and you’ll get a blank face staring back at you. Never heard of it. Consequently, it’s in places like this, where cold creeps in and settles like an unwelcome guest, that we need to get creative. We are beckoned from beyond the fruit bowl. And that’s…
Harvest Time Raw Caramel Apples
So, let’s get it straight: this whole idea emerged as a healthy treat for Halloween. Raw Caramel Apples. We’re always trying to think of ways to make all those old, comfortable, non-raw, non-vegan recipes into something we can eat now. Face it: it’s become our life mission. It’s like, whatever recipe we come across that sounds good, we first ask, “Is it raw?”. If the answer to that question is no -as it most often is – secondly we’ll ask, “Can we make it raw?” Honestly, you can’t imagine how often those questions get asked around here. It’s like a broken record. Ultimately, when it comes to making things raw,…
Avocado Chocolate-Coffee Mousse
The trials and tribulations of ripening a perfect avocado in the desert. The struggle is real. One minute it’s almost ready and an hour later it’s overripe. The trick is to be so hyper aware that you look like you’re waiting for an egg to hatch. I love avocados and I eat them a couple of times a week. In my world they go with everything. For 26 years, I was able to get them from local farmers in California or pick them from a neighbors tree. On occasion a friend would call and beg me to take them off their hands. A mature avocado tree can produce up to…
Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream
We had our fair share of ice pops this summer but somehow never ventured into ice cream territory. We certainly talked about it enough. Countless nights were spent with the four kids discussing what kind of ice cream everyone thought would be good to make. But there was never any kind of consensus so I figured, rather than encourage more argument – because we had something verging on Ice Cream Wars here -I’d put the whole thing to rest by making nothing. Serves them right. Only problem is, I wanted ice cream, too. And I was just as specific as everyone else. I wanted lavender ice cream. All this dispute…
Two Tomato Tartare with Green Relish
Tomatoes may be one of the most commonly used fruits in the world. I certainly have no problem listing the multitude of meals that include them… If this were a game, I could go on indefinitely. And, on top of it, there’s ketchup – pretty high on the list of favorite condiments (although I think it’s been surpassed by salsa in recent years). However there’s not a much more elegantly uncommon yet satisfying dish than this beautiful tomato tartare sitting in its private pool of basil pesto. It’s almost too pretty to eat. But seriously, you’ve just got to break down and dig in. It’s like sand art; impermanence and…
Green Mango Salad with Thai Basil and Chile Mango Dressing
Green papaya salad has always been one of my favorite meals, even before I went to Thailand and ate it in it’s land of origin. But green papaya isn’t always easy to find around here. Luckily, green mango is an excellent substitution and it seems to be all over the place. In fact, sometimes it’s harder to find a readily ripe mango than it is to find a firm, green one at any given grocery store. This mango salad uses both ripe and green mango and what may seem like an odd smattering of yellow squash. The combination is exotic and delicious and something the whole family will love. That…
