Food Sadness

I don’t know about this raw food business.  I didn’t like most vegetables when I ate cooked food, so I’m having a hard time eating them raw.  Although I have found that a lettuce wrap filled with my favorite veggies (avocado, mushrooms, and sprouts), dipped in a Thai-style almond sauce is rather delicious!

However, that leaves me with one thing for breakfast (smoothie), one thing for lunch (salad), one thing for dinner (lettuce wrap), and some snacks (raw crackers with raw hummus, fresh or dried fruit, raw desserts).  How boring is that?

Then I started thinking back to what I used to eat for breakfast (Frosted Mini-Wheats), lunch (Lean Pocket, piece of fruit, fat-free pudding cup), dinner (pasta), and snacks (crackers with hummus, Le Petit Ecolier cookies).  Back then I ate the same thing every day, too!

So I’m going to keep trying, even though I can’t say if it’s starting to help with my allergies, since friends and family frequently invite me out to lunch or dinner.  I think my raw options will expand once I take the plunge and purchase a dehydrator.  Then I can try some recipes from Everyday Raw such as granola, BBQ crisps, and mac and cheese (made with seed cheese and squash).

Vegetation

Strawberries!

And tomatoes!

And peppers!

Oh my!

Happy little plants!

I recently checked out the book Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler from the library.  It’s a great book for urban gardening, and touches on just about everything – outdoor spaces, houseplants, composting, even dumpster diving for materials – with suggestions for other books to check out if you would like more information on a certain topic.  One absolutely cool idea she had was for using bricks as make-shift window boxes.  She suggested planting Sempervivum in the holes of masonry bricks and setting them on a window ledge.  I was intrigued, as one of the windows in my bedroom overlooks the roof of the townhome next door – not an awesome view.  But with her suggestion, I thought I might be able to spruce up my ledge.

Before (sad):

After (happy):

Closer-up:

It turned out to be absolutely charming!  The middle plant in each brick is Sempervivum tectorum, and the remaining plants are Sempervivum arachnoideum.  They are heat and cold hardy perennials, so they should last.  And I can simply pick up the bricks and take them with me when I move!

I’ve also started growing things from the pits and seeds of fruits.  I’m attempting to grow some avocado pits, a peach pit, some lemon seeds, and one of these:

It’s the seed inside the fleshy, hairy mango pit.  None of them will bear fruit of course, but I do have high hopes for some righteous houseplants!

A Raw Update

My Independence Day contribution to the family cookout was a raw dessert from Raw Food/Real World: Dark Chocolate Ganache Tart (pictured above) with Vanilla Cream (not pictured).  It was freaking amazing, and was a big hit with everyone.  I really love this recipe book.  It makes raw food look slick, hip, and NYC chic.  However, in order to accomplish this, most recipes take forever to prepare and call for ingredients that are either hella expensive, impossible to find, or aren’t truly raw.  (For example, the tart calls for cocoa powder and maple syrup – not raw!)  But I’ll let it slide because it’s all so delicious.  I’ve also made the Chewy Chocolate Freezer Fudge which was 50 times yummier than the Frozen Fudge from The Raw Truth.

I’m still trying to find a raw main course (other than a salad) that is appetizing to me.  All the “pasta” dishes call for strips of raw zucchini to stand in for noodles.  I’ve quickly learned that I don’t like to eat zucchini raw, so I’m currently auditioning other vegetables to play the part of my noodles.  Maybe mung sprouts – they are inexpensive, sturdy, neutral in taste, and don’t require any prep work such as peeling and julienne-ing.