Kraut Salat

Ok so you might find this meal incredibly strange or boring or just straight up gross. Well, I have great news for you - you don't have to make it! Phew, right?

I have run out of precious cooking (uncooking) time lately and all of my creative efforts are spent on making logos and pretty posters. Aside from many smoothies I keep coming back to one quick and simple salad. Perhaps because of my European roots or maybe because I'm preparing for a German invasion of the WURST kind (German restaurant opening soon), I've been crazy about kraut.

Lets call this Kraut Salat.
As much mixed lettuce as you want, or romaine, baby romaine, spring mix... u get the point.
A few forkfuls of raw, unpasteurized sauerkraut (you can even get some with carrots and ginger or caraway seeds - what a party!)
very finely sliced onion of your choice (however much you want)
A handful of sunflower seeds
A few pinches of raw sesame seeds
A few hefty pinches of pink sea salt
Lots of freshly ground back pepper
...and the magic ingredient... Highwood Crossing Organic Extra Virgin Canola Oil.
This oil is like liquid gold, strong nutty flavour, rich deep yellow colour, grown and made here in Alberta! It is very much unlike any canola oil you've ever had, mainly because it has FLAVOUR! I know there is a lot of bad press about canola, but I feel good about this one. Organic, unrefined...anyway...


Mix it all together und essen.

They Say It's Your Birthday

Happy Birthday!
I made a cake for you. Aren't you excited to look at the pretty pictures?

Normally I only write about recipes that I make up, but when it comes to birthdays you have to surprise people - SURPRISE - I didn't make this recipe up!

The recipe comes to us from Sarma Melngailis' book Living Raw Food. I changed a couple of things but I still don't think I should post the recipe, cause it ain't mine.

It is 'Milk Chocolate Mousse Layer Cake', and it is freaking awesome. The mousse part calls for 1 cup of young coconut meat, and I didn't have time to drive an hour away to get coconuts so I replaced it with about 1/4 - 1/3 cup melted cocoa butter. I knew this would make it more stiff and would give it a bit of a white chocolate flavour. Turns out it was a great idea!

The original recipe has the cake in a square/rectangle shape but I like round birthday cakes so I did just that - made three separate rounds in the dehydrator. I also thought it needed icing to make it look like I made it, not my cross-eyed cat Eddie. I melted about a pint of 'so delicious' brand vanilla coconut based ice cream and about 1/3 cup or so of raw 'artisana' brand coconut cream and added vanilla bean scrapings and some agave and blended it all together to make a random, quick and easy icing. I would have made a truly raw icing with cashews except I used them all up in the mousse part of the cake... plan ahead people, plan ahead.


Mixing wet + dry ingredients, mostly almonds and walnuts in different forms, raw cocoa powder and maple syrup.


Spreading the batter into 3 rounds on parchment-lined round metal things I borrowed from work...


After about 20-22 hours of dehydrator time the cake batter was fudgy cake. I flipped one upside down and spread 1/2 of the mousse on top. (Mousse was mostly cashews, agave, cocoa powder + cocoa butter...)


Put another cake layer on top, the rest of the mousse and then the final cake layer. Oh yea, saved some mousse for filling in the gaps. I eye-balled the rounds so I did a little trimming once everything was in place.


I added one layer of icing, let it drip all over, put the cake in the freezer for 20 mins and then poured a second layer on. Great technique. Topped it all off with some shaved cocoa butter and a few flicks of cocoa powder and popped it in the fridge for a couple of hours.





This cake was very easy to make, you just need a dehydrator, a high speed blender (like a Vita Mix) and time to plan ahead.

Thanks for the recipe Pure Food and Wine, the birthday boy was very happy!

(Also very excited - a friend is visiting NY and I told her to go to PF+W and One Lucky Duck and bring me back some goodies!)