The One Month RAW Challenge

[Bogi]

Kathy, Rain, how are you guys holding your weight? I've succesfully gained 8 lbs. since I eat again (3 days). And I only eat 100% raw, and work out a lot.
Good bye skinny jeans! Life isn't fair...

[Nance]

Oh, I love hearing the transition Bogi and mtmouse are making! Keeps me thinking 'fresh'! I have been thinking of another MC in July, which is a very hot month here, and it will have been 3 months hence my last one. I rejoice with you guys at the weight loss, oh it feels so good to wear clothes that really fit. Way to go guys!!

I am dealing with changes due to what seems like menopause ( I am 52), and have questions. Is there another thread on this BB that is most appropriate for me to ask such anatomical musings as related to raw food lifestyle? I'd rather stick to Dragon Crackers and Spirulizers here

I just watched the beautiful blue-eyed young woman and her 92 Day Juice Feast testimonal. Wow, her spirit is shining! She sure wasn't gungho about those prunes. I can understand why in her eyes.

My laptop was down for a while, it is great to be back! What a warm and encouraing team here!
n.

[TeePee]

Hi Girls!

Been busy. Tried to make a cream sauce last night that didn't come out too good. Maybe too much lemon. I kept adding stuff, including water, so now I'm trying to dehydrate it to make it into sheets of cheese....we'll see. I'm taking SIMS previous advice instead of throwing it out!!

[Nance]

Dehydrators are amazing machines. I am longing to make another big batch of pizza crackers (Cohen pizza wrap bread recipe). Our co-op shipment comes in next week and will get some more almonds, flax seeds, etc.

I have yet to do a batch of sushi. Any suggestions, adventurous alterations to recipes?

I had some maple syrup the other day, after a long while not. Yum! I am warming up to a cleanse in late June or July.

Love to all, keep on keepin on!
n.

[Sim]

Hi Everyone!
Oh yes, I've been checking in and not having time to write BUT I'm loving your conversations!
Bogi, never mind the 8 pounds..you're amazing and those 8 pounds that came back were supposed to come back. Yeah, not fair but that's just the way our bodies work. TeePee, Kath, Rain, Nance...oh my! How happy I am to see you all here

Cashew cheese or any cheese: know what you need to add to make that cheese nutritionally sound? The contents of ONE PROBIOTIC CAPSULE. It speeds up the fermentation process AND makes that cheese packed with more good things than just nut (fat) calories. Thought I'd mention it...

Okay my girls...what am I gonna do with all the information and recipes and knowledge that I've acquired over the last five weeks (one more to go) ?? I need to share it with you all..give me your best solution

Dehydrator ideas: tuiles (cookies) to use as decorations, lasagna crackers made from leftover lasagna that you mush to a half inch thick on a dehydrator sheet, tortilla wraps, coconut wrappers, seasoned cashews or other nuts, kale chips (of course!), mushrooms marinated in tamari, any veggies that you have too much of, thinly sliced. Then you take those veggies, separately, and grind them to a powder, putting it in glass jars to use as plate garnishes or seasoning or in a smoothie or sprinkled on a salad. The list is endless. See? What am I gonna do with all this information????
Love to all you fabulous girls~
Sim

[rain]

Hey there, Sim! It's so great to hear from you! I love your list of ideas, the flexibility of using up whatever's left over. (I'm still at the trying-out-new-recipes stage, and my freezer is the depository to file failures for later re-consideration.) I think you're gonna have to teach us a whole course on raw food preparation. Would I ever love that!

These past few weeks have been a little crazy for me. There's nothing like fasting for 35 days to bring out a little temporary insanity around food.

Bogi, I didn't mean to ignore your last post. It felt too hard to post, so I just lurked. And it often looks like I'm lurking here all the time because my name shows up on the list of "currently active users" for hours, because I often have tabs open to recipes and leave my computer on for several hours at a time without looking at it (I leave it on in case I want to read something...not a good habit!). I haven't had access to a scale to weigh myself for the past 2 weeks, but I feel like I've gained several pounds. As Sim has said, I've given up on trying to have an argument with my body about that. My body always wins those arguments! I still look skinny (or at least a normal weight), and that's good enough for me. And, now that I have some weight I could lose without looking like I'm starving myself, I won't be afraid to do another long cleanse (which I'm warming up to maybe doing later this fall).

I didn't eat anything more than just fruit until the evening of my 6th post-cleanse day because I kept getting home from food-shopping trips too late to make soup (or anything else). And then I never made the soup, because I couldn't be bothered. And then there were days that passed when I just planned what I was going to make without actually making it. It seemed overwhelming and, when i finally wrote down everything I wanted to make (because i couldn't keep it all straight in my head), I realized it was at least about 20 different things, lol. So I've been slowly making my way through that list. Preparing raw food is still relatively unfamiliar to me... I've decided that, before starting my next cleanse, I'm going to make sure I have some things already made up in the freezer.

The most amazing thing I've made so far is that fermented cream cheese (thank you, Kathy, for giving me the inspiration to try that!). Sim, I did add some probiotic powder to it (I got the idea from a recipe online), and it made it taste just like real cream cheese! But I used too much (10 capsules to 1 cup of cashews). Next time, I'll do as you suggest and just use one. I also read somewhere that a good way to tell if your nuts are truly raw is to make a fermented cheese with them. If they're raw, they'll ferment. If they're not raw, they'll go bad.

I have a copy of Raw Food, Real World from the library (as well as Ani Phyo's book), and it has me spinning with all the things I want to make (crepes!...and the samosas with mango chutney that Teepee said were so good!). What a beautiful, amazing uncookbook! I've been having fun trying out cracker recipes (I love them just with slices of really good tomatoes on top). Nance, I think I'll have to add pizza crackers to my list, if i can find Cohen's recipe online (don't have her book).

[Nance]

Rain:

Pizza Bread Recipe Thanks to Alissa Cohen!
2 cups ground flax
1 cup soaked almonds, ground fine
2 cups carrot pulp (from whole carrot in food processor) I spirulized carrots and minced the strands instead.
1 cup diced red pepper
1/2 Tb minced garlic
1/4 cup parsley
1/2 cup cilantro
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 Tb fresh onion
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1 cup sundried tomatoes, measure before soaking

1. Combine ground flax, almonds, and ccarrots in a large bowl
2. In Food Processor (FP) blend until smooth the sundried tomatoes, garlic, parsley, cilantro and salt. Add this to the first mixture.
3. Add remaining ingredients, mix together. In FP, blend until smooth (do it in batches).
4. Spread on Teflex sheets on dehydrator trays. (Alissa recommends 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick for pizza wrap bread.)
5. Dehydrate @ 19 hours. (I spread them very thin and so about 24 hours for crackers.)

[Nance]

Sim,

I am thinking about how to magnify your generosity in the corporate effort in the group! Can we delegate a sort of bucket brigade process and come up with a final prodeuct that would benefit the enitre site?

Is there a feature on this new Bulletin Board we have not utilized yet that would make this process more corporately hands on?

n.

[rain]

Oh Nance, thank you so much for posting that pizza bread recipe! I searched but couldn't find it anywhere, so now I'm happy. I haven't made crackers yet with carrot pulp, so that's going to be interesting. I'm loving the surprises of this new way of preparing food. And it's great to have a bread/cracker that's less than 50% nuts.

* scurries off to make pizza bread (and corn chips and red dragon crackers and pickled ginger and...) *

[TeePee]

Dehydrators are amazing machines. I am longing to make another big batch of pizza crackers (Cohen pizza wrap bread recipe). Our co-op shipment comes in next week and will get some more almonds, flax seeds, etc.

I have yet to do a batch of sushi. Any suggestions, adventurous alterations to recipes?

I had some maple syrup the other day, after a long while not. Yum! I am warming up to a cleanse in late June or July.

Love to all, keep on keepin on!
n.

Nance,

My favorite, and pretty much only, sushi I make regularly is very simple. I used finely julienned cucumbers, sliced avocado and red pepper cashew cheese, stuffed in nori and sliced. If I don't have fresh ginger, I add some ground ginger to the nama shoyu. (red pepper cheese is just the basic cashew, water, lemon juice, garlic, salt and fresh red peppers blended.....also good when you make it a little thinner and DH into sheets) My friend at work gave me some beautiful chopsticks for a gift and it makes eating the sushi so much tastier!!!!

Sometimes I add spinach leaves or julienned carrot to the sushi also.