Well Mr. Plum, That's a Wrap.

The other day I felt like having a wrap. How nice is it to hold your salad in an edible container? Pretty nice I say.
I've made lots of crackers and breads but not really any wraps. My first shot at it was a success! Check the recipe.

Zucchini Dill Wraps

2 large zucchini
¼ cup olive oil
1/8 cup braggs
some parsley
some dill, mostly large stems (great way to use up the stems)
¼ cup sesame seeds, raw, white
½ cup ground chia seeds + 1-2 tbsp
1 fairly large leek, white and light green part only
6 green onions

Process all in food processor for a while. If you have a seven cup processor like me, or smaller, you may need to do this in shifts 'cause it won't all fit. Spread on teflex sheets (3-6 depending on size of anticipated wrap). Circular spreads - see picture below. Flip after about 4-6 hours. Dehydrate another hour or so. Keep a good eye on it, those edges will crisp up in no time and you want it to be very bendy, not crisp. This wrap was the size of my torso. I used 3 teflex sheets, one wrap on each. Next time I'll make smaller ones.



If you aren't using them right away, roll them up and put them in some sort of plastic (eew gross I'm sorry!) to keep them soft.


Even though this wrap was huge, there was still room for pie. There is always room for pie.

How amazing are red heart plums?! So juicy and sweet. So so lovely. I got a bunch from the fruit truck the other week and made this pie. Sure, the agar agar part isn't raw, but I didn't plan on making this pie, so I didn't have any soaked irish moss on hand.

Of course I didn't write it down, so this is a basic guideline. The pie was so simple to make you can just play around with these ingredients and get something awesome.

Red Heart Plum Pie

Crust:
I just took a bunch of nuts like almonds and pecans and pulsed them with date paste (dates processed in a food processor with orange juice, lemon juice or water) and a bit of sea salt and coconut oil until I had a crust that held together. Don't over-process nuts though or they will get very oily and turn to nut butter. Press in pie shell and place in fridge until the filling is ready.

Filling:
approx 8-10 very ripe red heart plums
finely chopped zest from about 1/4 of a lime, maybe more
juice from half of a lime
a couple drops of liquid stevia or agave to sweeten
1/2 cup of water
2 tsp of agar agar flakes(to be honest, I can't remember how much agar I put in)

Skin the plums and eat the skin. Chop the flesh into random small bits (mine were so mushy they pretty much fell apart on their own). If your plums aren't that mushy, place in food processor and pulse until broken down but still a bit chunky. Place in bowl and add stevia/agave, zest and lime juice. Taste for sweetness. I can't remember if I added a pinch of sea salt...
Bring the water to a boil on the stove. Add the agar agar flakes and stir well. Keep on the heat for a minute or so. Remove from heat and make sure it looks like it is getting thicker. If you are not confident this mixture will slightly solidify your plums then add more agar while it is still hot. Allow the agar agar to cool slightly (so it won't make the plums hot). Add to plum mixture, stir well and pour in pie shell. Place in fridge for a few hours to set.

I topped this bad boy with fresh mango lime cashew cream consisting pretty much just of lime juice and zest, a really ripe mango, cashews, lucuma powder, sea salt and water blended in a vita mix until smooth.

Hope you can still get red plums from your local farmers market, they are all done for the season here. Bye bye till next year special plums.

Sunny Coconuts

Coconut [koh-kuh-nuht, -nuht] - The most awesome thing to ever come out of the tropics, and that includes the bikini.


I woke up this morning to this sight beaming in my bedroom window. Holy crap - were is the camera?!


After a ten minute photo shoot with the clouds I made my way downstairs and thought "well... there is only one way this morning can get better, and that is if I make coconut yogurt".

On a recent trip to Calgary I picked up 8 coconuts (the ones that didn't have mold on them at the little Asian market). The first 4 I used to make chocolate coconut pudding (from Sarma's 2nd book "Living Raw Food"). The last 4 I used this morning to make lemon coconut yogurt.

I was lucky with this batch of coconuts because all of the meat was white and pretty thick (but not too thick). I have bought coconuts before that were off (all pinky/purple inside). What a waste. The water inside these ones was not totally light and clear, it had a bit of a yellowish/brown tinge, but it tastes ok, and I'm not going to waste it...

If you want to know how to open a young coconut, follow this link: http://www.rawguru.com/html/openyoungcoconut.html
I like to use the back of a spoon to pry the meat from the shell.


Lemon Coconut Yogurt:

Meat from 4 young Thai coconuts (about 4 cups)
1/4 cup water from young coconuts (add more if your meat is really thick and hard, or less if your meat is thin and slimy)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
a piece of lemon rind (size pictured below)
1/8 tsp sea salt
2 drops vanilla liquid stevia (I didn't want it too sweet, you will probably want to add about 1/8 - 1/4 cup of raw agave nectar and either a bit of vanilla extract or some vanilla bean inside scrapings)
3 Bio-K dairy-free probiotic pills



Place everything in the blender except the probiotics and puree until smooth and creamy. Then:

Break open the Bio-K probiotic capsules and pour the powdery contents into the blender. Turn blender on for a couple seconds to incorporate the powder into the coconut cream.
Pour coconut yogurt out into a glass bowl and allow to sit on counter for 4-6 hours to activate the probiotics. Give the yogurt a sniff every once in a while to see how fast the probiotics are culturing the coconut cream. When you feel it is ready, place it in the fridge with a lid and cool. Eat!

Coconut yogurt w. red heart plums

There's No Taste Like Home

One week in hot, bountiful heaven. If you haven't guessed from the title of this entry (if the slogan hasn't been ingrained in your brain from childhood), I am talking about southern Ontario. Kahshe Lake, Gravenhurst, Muskoka to be exact.

I had an unlimited amount of organic tomatoes available to me from my dad's garden waiting to be paired with fresh picked basil, parsley, rosemary or jalapenos all sitting in the garden getting massaged by tent caterpillars.


On the third day of vacation, the mom and I set out on the cottage road and into the forest with a 3L "Fresh Ontario Fruit" basket to get scratched by thorns...er pick wild blackberries.

After a couple hours of photographing nature things and searching for berries we managed to fill the whole basket. Heck yea! We had so many I made a pie and only used 1/3 of them.

Here are some pretty flowers along the way

and some more...

...and some more?...


As I have always been aware, from living in a tourist town, when you go on vacation your brain spends most of the time drinking wine and listening to the crickets. There were a lot of crickets outside the cottage so I can't blame my brain for not remembering how my hands made the pie.

Perhaps brain was subconsciously paying attention...lets ask it.

Pie Crust?
6 dates
splash o.j
blend in food processor until mostly a paste then add:
some almonds and walnuts (a bunch)
about 1/8 cup chia seeds, maybe less, like a tablespoon
some large coconut flakes/chips (not a ton, maybe a handful)
vanilla bean powder (maybe a 1/2 teaspoon)
about a tablespoon or maybe about 3 tablespoons of coconut oil
some sea salt
pulse all together in food processor until well combined and nuts are broken down to a pretty small size. You want this to be dough-like, easily spreadable in a pie dish.

Blackberry & Cream Filling:
Place a whole bunch of blackberries on the crust and then make the cream.
The cream was made from one cup of raw cashews (soaked for a few hours), the meat from two young thai coconuts and some of the coconut water, 2-4 drops liquid stevia, some vanilla bean, a touch of sea salt, maybe about a 1/4 or 1/3 cup of coconut oil and some lucuma powder (about a tbsp). I think that was it. Cream should be quite thick but pourable.

Once the cream ingredients are blended and smooth, pour the cream into the pie crust speckled with blackberries. Place more berries on top and place in fridge to set for a few hours.

Pie will be easy to slice with a knife and hold its shape on the plate.




It was so good!

Did you know that wintergreen mint is a berry? I just blew your mind didn't I?
Also available in this flower and blackberry forest is wintergreen! I picked some of these berries, along with the leaves and muddled myself a fantastic elixir.

Wintergreen MoVito
10 or so fresh wintergreen berries
6 wintergreen leaves
1 oz vodka
1 drop liquid stevia (I used vanilla) or agave syrup to taste
ice
soda to top it off

Muddle the berries and leaves with the vodka, sweetener and ice. Top with soda.
Amazing and so refreshing when it is 34 degrees out!