Tanning Tomatoes

Oh boy, look at me - too busy to write to you. You must have been starving since October 20th. Poor thing. It was a good pie though, wasn't it?

So this next food experience actually happened a long time ago... but I was pretty excited about it and I got rave reviews so I would like to share it with you.

My friend Kristen Stuart of Sacred Roots Yoga in Canmore held a fundraiser yoga class for the children at an orphanage in Peru that she was going to visit the following week. She asked Glowfood to help cater it, and I was stoked to help out!

What does one make for such an event? What would the kids in Peru demand? Something savory, obviously.
Remember all those nut butter stuffed fruit roll-ups that I made this summer for the market? I was thinking about those and it hit me like a ton of tomatoes - savory roll-ups - that's what I'll make!

So off to the over-priced specialty organics store I went to get really nice tomatoes and these other ingredients to make:

Tomato Herb Leather
6-7 large organic field tomatoes, seeded chopped. Place seeds in a fine sieve and drain juice into bowl. Add juice back into mixture, discard seeds.
1 small onion
a few sprigs of parsley, chopped
about 10 small basil leaves
a few sprigs of cilantro, chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
1 cup water
1 cup finely ground chia seeds
½ tsp sea salt
20 turns of a pepper mill

Put onion and tomato in food processor and puree.
Add the rest of the ingredients. process until well combined.
Taste for salt.
Spread on 3 dehydrator sheets and dry at 115 until dry to touch but not too dry that the leather is brittle.

Take the leather off the dehydrator sheets and cut into equal squares or rectangles. Fairly small, maybe business card size? I can't remember to be honest. My pictures aren't telling the truth.

Then I filled them with the most wonderful tarragon + green onion cashew cream, the recipe taken from Matthew Kenney & Sarma's book Raw Food Real World (best raw book ever, get it!). Lots of cashews and nutritional yeast pureed in a food processor with lemon zest, lemon juice and sea salt into a fluffy and soft paste. Yum! Fold in fresh tarragon and green onion and any other herbs that tickle your tomato leather fancy.

Roll the leather around the cream and tie with a chive or piece of cilantro... or parsley...

Feed to people at a fundraiser.

Tart Tart

I wanted to make a pie that I could eat for Thanksgiving. I'm learning more about proper food combining because my little guts still work over-time every day and I want to help them out as much as I can... we all know working over-time sucks. I also have to avoid as much sweet stuff as possible, so no dates, agave, or anything of the sweetener sort.

So fruit with fruit, and only fruit. Hmm, why then do nuts and fruit so often mingle? Why is trail mix so awesome and addictive? Um, Nature, WTF?

So I set out to make a nut-free pie crust. Is coconut a fruit? It is today.

Red Heart Plum Pie w. Coconut Lime Crust

Coconut Lime Crust:
2 cups of raw, shredded, dried coconut
3/4 cup melted coconut 'manna' or 'butter', you know, the product in the jar that is dried coconut made into a paste. I have tried to make this twice in my stone grinder, and both times it has turned out beautiful and silky, except for it is gray from some black oily sludge in the wheel well. Awesome. Artisana makes a nice coconut butter. Don't confuse this product with coconut oil. I probably would have tried to use some melted coconut oil in this recipe but both my gallons of coconut oil are 'off' so I was making do with what I had on hand.
2 teaspoons of fresh lime juice
3/4 teaspoon finely grated lime zest
a large pinch of Himalayan sea salt
1 tablespoon of lucuma powder
1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground vanilla beans

process all in a food processor with an 's' blade until it forms a wall. you may need to push the batter down and form a few walls to make sure all of the ingredients are stiff enough to go into the pie shell.

transfer most of the contents into a 9 inch pie shell with a removable bottom, or if you have a bigger pie shell you can use all of the crust mix. I just ate the extra in a bowl with a spoon (about 1/2 cup I left out so the crust wasn't crazy thick)

press the coconut mixture into the pie shell with the back of a spoon and make sure it is evenly distributed.
place in fridge or freezer to set.

Red Heart Plum Filling:
STEP 1:
2.5 oz irish moss (thoroughly rinse and then soak irish moss in clean water overnight in your fridge in an airtight container, then thoroughly shake excess water off before weighing)
put the irish moss in the high speed blender and break it up into small pieces. i did this so that when i blended everything together it wouldn't take extra long to break down the moss and the mixture wouldn't heat up.
take the irish moss bits out of the blender and put to the side in a bowl.

STEP 2:
8 red heart plums, halved and pitted
blend in a high speed blender to puree. the skins are a tad bitter, take them off and discard if you want before blending, but I didn't.

add: 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice
3/4 tsp or so of fresh lime zest
1/4 tsp vanilla bean
3-4 drops of liquid stevia
the broken down irish moss from step 1
blend on high in a high speed blender until totally smooth, but make sure it stays pretty cool.

STEP 3:
5-6 red heart plums, halved, pitted and quartered
place the plums in the bottom of the coconut pie crust and sprinkle with a few pinches of lime zest.
pour the plum puree evenly over top, cover and place in fridge to set for a few hours or overnight.

Did I like it?
I ate the whole pie. It wasn't in one sitting though, it was in 2 sittings. The first sitting I had 2 slices.

I would, however, recommend for anyone who doesn't have sugar issues to add some agave to the plum puree to make it a bit more palatable for the sweet-tooth.
It could also do with a touch more irish moss, my measurements were a guess based on a recipe in a Cafe Gratitude book of liquid vs. moss in lemon meringue pie. Also, I didn't want to risk the pie tasting like irish moss. It smells like mothballs sometimes but it magically never ends up altering the taste of any dish. yay!
If you want to combine fruit and nuts and don't care about happy guts then I bet an orange zest cashew cream would be pretty killer on top of this!

Twice the Fun w. Pumpkun

Hey Gang,
Feel like making pumpkin seed 'parmesan'?
You know... I don't think I made this recipe up, but I don't know where I got it, it was in my word doc recipes, which means I typed it out, which means that perhaps I made it up, I'm sure it was a take on someone's recipe for some sort of nut cheese.

Anyway, I just made tons of this stuff because I received 5lbs of really beautiful pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin seed pusher. The pictures don't do them justice, they are very dark green, and this is after being soaked!


So soak some pumpkin seeds for about 8 hours and rinse thoroughly. Now, I just stuck them all in the dehydrator at 105 for about 10 hours, but that is because I didn't want to use the food processor at 2am to make the parm - so you can take it from here or you can use dried seeds like me. The difference will be a coarser texture in the final product with the dry seeds. I like texture.

Pumpkin Seed Parmesan
1 cup pumpkin seeds - soaked
1/4 cup water (or more if the seeds are dry)
1/8 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1/4 teaspoon sea salt or more to taste
1/2 serrano chili or jalapeno, chopped (optional but adds better flavour)

In a food processor, blend all the ingredients until fairly smooth. Thinly spread onto paraflex sheet and dehydrate at 105F for about 6-8 hours. Flip and remove the paraflex. Dehydrate until totally dry. Break into pieces and store air-tight.




So this is where things get crazy... My friends Sara and Reno from One Love Yoga in Vancouver http://oneloveyoga.ca/ were visiting a few weeks ago and asked me if I'd ever tried putting my cracker batters on nori sheets. "Well no, in fact I have not (I said), but that sounds awesome!".

So I had a little bit of this pumpkin seed parm left over in the food processor and I chopped up:
one large green zucchini, peel on
one small onion, peel off
a handful of baby dill including stalks/stems
1/2 of a jalapeno, seeded
and threw in some:
sea salt
pumpkin seeds
juice of 1 lemon
about 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast or more

and I blended it all in the food processor until it was combined but still chunky.
I chucked down some raw nori sheets on the paraflex dehydrator sheets and spread the mixture evenly onto 6 of the nori sheets (2 nori fit on one dehydrator sheet).




I let it dehydrate overnight at 105 and they were very crispy in the morning. Curled up a bit. I like this idea of using nori, not only because it tastes good and is healthy, but also because I didn't have to use a binder such as chia seeds, and that is a nice change because I always use chia seeds.



So anyway, they are kind of like dill pickle chips from the sea. SEA PICKLES. Pretty fun. Thanks SJ and Reno for the idea.

Peaches & Cream Pie

Oh gosh, that is a mighty fine peach - suited for a pie I think. Yes, Peaches and cream pie.

First, you'll need to make a nut crust.
Use almonds, walnuts, coconut flakes, coconut oil, dates soaked in fresh orange juice and himalayan sea salt. Process the nuts in the food processor until fine with little chunks, but not too many little chunks. Take the nuts out and place the soaked dates in the processor. Process into a paste. Add the rest of the ingredients, including the processed nuts back into the processor. Pulse until a nice thick dough is formed. As for the measurements... use about 2 cups or more of nuts, about 5-6 dates, a few hand-fulls of coconut shreds, a few pinches of salt, and few tablespoons of coconut oil, or up to 1/4 cup. Adjust from there, you don't want it to be too dry or too wet, but easy to spread/press into containers. It will solidify fully in the fridge. There are many raw nut crust recipes out there, if this scares you, you might want to look one up and use accurate measurements. The second time I made this pie for the market I omitted the dates and o.j. (dates are too sweet for me) and substituted fresh peach to make it wet and added a bit more coconut oil so it would be solid when cold. I got that idea from when I make instant macaroons I add fresh strawberries as a binder sometimes. Lots of fun ways to experiment here.

Press into a big tart shell or into individual sized containers. Place in fridge for a bit to harden.

Then you will need to make the Coconut Vanilla Cream.
1 cup raw cashews, soaked
1 cup young coconut meat
seeds from a vanilla pod
about 1 tbsp lucuma powder
1/4 cup agave nectar or more to taste (you can add a couple of drops of liquid stevia as well if you want to use less agave)
a few pinches of sea salt
1/2 cup coconut oil, warmed to liquefy
possibly some water, if you find the mixture too thick. You want a nice pourable cream that will solidify in the fridge.
Blend all of these things in a high speed blender until very creamy and smooth.

Pour onto crust and if using individual serving dishes, pour even amounts into the dishes, about 1/2 inch thick, or whatever you like. Place in fridge again to solidify. Freezer if you are in a time crunch, but don't allow to freeze.

Last step - Peach Puree
Pretty easy stuff here for the last part. Wash some organic peaches, squeeze a bit of fresh lemon, zest a bit of fresh lemon, add agave to taste. I think I used about 5-6 peaches, maybe 1 or 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp lemon zest and about 1-2 tbsp agave. Blend in a food processor or hand blender until pretty smooth and spread on top of the coconut cream. Place back in the fridge, covered, for few hours and then serve!



I made this twice for the farmer's market. B.C. peaches are in full season right now so this pie is so nice and summery.

Here are some other things I've been up to for the market:
Honey Mustard Parsnip Chips

Hickory Smoked Eggplant Bacon

Transgingers (ginger cinnamon) dark chocolate

Smoked Chocolate Bark

Mocha Body Scrub


and I've been selling my friend Andrew's Smoked Salts, yum!


One market left people! Hope to see you there next week.

Something Quick to Tide You Over

I had a bunch of fruit to use up this morning but I didn't want to run the risk of elevating my blood sugar too much (for me this means itchy skin and rashes) so I came up with this bizarre concoction that is full of protein to balance the sugars and actually tastes pretty great!

I had one realllly ripe banana and I threw it in the blender with the rest of my hemp protein (about 1/4 cup), threw in some true cinnamon which also helps balance blood sugar (about 1 tsp), a handful of raw hazelnuts, a dash of water to get the mixture blending, about 3/4 tsp ground vanilla beans and a couple drops of vanilla liquid stevia.
I blended this to a nice thick paste.

In a bowl I put:
a handful of hazelnuts
a handful of cocoa nibs
a handful of raw shredded coconut
a handful of fresh blueberries
a handful of gogi berries
2 small fresh apricots, cut into chunks


Then I poured the banana goo over top and I'm eating it right now.


There was a lot of energy in this breakfast because I just left this post open and ran around the house and cleaned up before returning to finish writing...

Anyway, just something quick to tide you over before I tell you how I made the Peaches + Cream Pie.

Third Time's A Primavera

Ok so it's not spring (primavera), but it sure felt like it today. Maybe it was borderline November, but I like spring better, and the vegetables right now are more liken to spring. I think the bears are still starving, I saw one at the market today busking for berries but his rendition of Hamlet was closer to Edward Scissor Hands so he wasn't making much coin. Yes - I'm complaining about the weather on my food blog.

Despite the cold rain, the market was once again super awesome and it inspired me to make a raw pasta primavera for dinner. Check it out cold cats:

As usual, the measurements are anyone's guess... mostly my guess.
White Sauce:
1.5 cups truly raw cashews, soaked for an hour or so to soften
the juice from a few stalks of celery (run some celery through a juicer, use about 1/4 cup of the juice)
a splash or 2 of chardy, or any white wine you might be drinking to warm up
one very small shallot (about a tablespoon finely chopped worth)
a dash of fresh lemon juice and a wide thumbnail sized piece of lemon rind
lots of himalayan sea salt to taste
a dash of fresh ground pepper

Blend all these things in a high speed blender with some of the cashew soaking water until it is creamy, medium thickness. I made mine a bit thinner than I normally would have but it worked out nicely - the dish was fresh and summe- er.. springy.

The Rest:
one gigantic yellow zucchini (check the size of this, bigger than my forearm!) shaved with a veg peeler or made into your fave style of noodle if you have a spiral slicer (personally, I give up on my spiral slicer, it kind of sucks). don't use the middle with the seeds, it doesn't make very sturdy noodles.



Place the shaved zucchini in a colander, sprinkle with plenty of sea salt and toss. Let sit for half of an hour. Squeeze the moisture out of the zucchini noodles by grabbing a handful and, well, squeezing.

Thinly slice some white onion, bell pepper and halve some grape tomatoes. Toss with olive oil and sea salt and place on a dehydrator screen for about an hour at 115 or so. If you go higher in temperature for an hour (about 145 degrees), apparently it won't heat the food up but will dry it faster so go nuts. Doesn't this photo look like a bad 80's photo from a sandwich counter in a food court?


The Assembly:
oh I forgot, shuck some fresh peas that you just bought at the market. A few handfuls will do.
place the squeezed noodles, peas and some of the cashew cream sauce in a bowl and toss well to coat. Put it onto some plates and add the rest of the 'wilted' dehydrator vegetables. Garnish with something nice like an oregano leaf, or kale chips, or both.
Don't forget more fresh pepper.

If you have truffle oil, this would probably be a good time to use it - just thought of that - post meal of course. I love truffle oil.

If you have other nice fresh veg on hand like asparagus add it to your wilted veg pile.

Yum!


As for the market, I turned to my friend and said 'you know, I could be happy just designing chocolate labels forever' - and I was serious. I was up till 4am because I forgot that my 2 new white chocolate flavours (lavender peach & wintergreen vanilla) needed labels. I wonder if I wasn't so delirious at 4am if I would have thought of such great titles. If you are wondering, the 'clean' in the 'peachy clean' comes from lavender being often referred to as something people would use in the shower, not in the kitchen - just in case my 4am wit outsmarted anyone. Does anyone know the inspiration for 'A Midwinter's White Cream'?






I will post the Peaches & Cream Pie recipe soon, it sold out today, first time I've ever made it - stoked!

Also, if you need to email me: julie@lookcreative.ca

Fin.