5 Day Raw Food Cleanse: Days 4 and 5

Last Thursday and Friday marked days 4 and 5 of the raw food cleanse. I was feeling great all the way through and staying strong until I went out to eat for lunch and dinner on Friday and kind of splurged on french fries and a quesadilla. From that experience I learned, first hand, how important it is to set yourself up for success! For me I think this means planning a cleanse during a time when I will be home every day making my own meals. Maybe I should call this one a 4.5 day cleanse. Oh well, the rest of it was awesome and incredibly refreshing!


Alright, here is what my menu looked like for days 4 and 5.

Breakfast
Both days I had the same smoothie for breakfast:

• Frozen raspberries
• Avocado
• Carrot juice
• Almond milk
• Lemon
• Milled flax seed

An easy and quick way to pack in maximum nutrients.

Post workout smoothie (both days): Banana, almond milk, peanut butter.

Lunch
Thursday I made a delicious salad:

• CSA salad mix
• CSA cucumber
• Alfalfa sprouts
• Walnuts
• Raisins
• Goat cheese
• Olive oil, lemon and balsamic

Friday, like I said, I went out to eat. But I didn't just eat french fries, the bulk of my meal was an incredible pear salad.  

Dinner

Thursday I was not super hungry come dinnertime, so I just grazed on almonds, blueberries, hot peppers and homemade pickles, along with some herbal tea. 

By dinner time Friday I was ready for some melted cheese, the thing I missed most during the cleanse. So, since I was out to eat, I had a veggie quesadilla. And, I must admit, it was amazing. Next time I will definitely try to make it the full 5 days!

I am excited to have a new way of looking at food that will carry over into my life now that the cleanse is over. I have a renewed understanding of how good foods make you feel good long after you're done eating them, how they give you energy and balance. I know I will try to stick to smoothies in the morning and several raw meals each week, and not just salads but more interesting raw food creations that get me out of my comfort zone. A great learning experience overall! I suggest it to everyone!

5 Day Raw Food Cleanse: Day 3

After completing day 3 of the cleanse, I feel truly great. And I have been experiencing some wonderful things.

First, I feel a serious increase in my energy. It isn't that cheap, fleeting energy you get from caffeine, but a more sustained and complete energy. Very cool.

Second, I am noticing the difference between hunger and craving. I feel truly hungry in the morning, hungry for nutrients. I feel my body's need for nutrients being satisfied when I drink a smoothie or eat an apple. It is different from craving a big fat breakfast sandwich and an ice coffee. And because I have noticed this distinction between hunger and craving, I have learned that you should eat whenever you feel hungry! Simple! For instance, yesterday morning I was really hungry, so I ate more then I did the day before at that time. But in the afternoon I was not hungry at all, even though I thought that I should be because it was "lunchtime". Instead of just eating because I was craving something or thought I was supposed to, I waited until I actually felt hungry. Very simple yet supremely awesome in it's simplicity.

Ok, here is what I ate yesterday.

Breakfast

An apple
A Smoothie: So delicious! A blend of:

• Frozen raspberries
• Half an avocado
• Almond milk
• Carrot juice
• Milled flax seed
• lemon

Post-workout smoothie: My new absolute favorite thing in the world - banana, almond milk and peanut butter. 

Lunch

I had a late lunch of a little cottage cheese and some leftover bean salad. 

Dinner

An incredible salad! 

Since I miss the time and art of cooking, I decided to get really creative with the presentation of this salad. Having an attractive plate of food is one of the qualities that enhances your enjoyment of that food! And since raw foods don't have the aroma of cooked foods, which would even further increase it's deliciousness, it is important to craft beautiful plates. 

In this salad:

• CSA salad mix
• CSA tomatoes
• CSA cucumbers
• Red Cabbage 
• Alfalfa sprouts
• Avocado
• Mango
• Pecans 
• Sesame seeds

And the dressing:

• Olive oil
• Garlic
• Grated ginger
• Soy sauce
• Rice vinegar 
• Lime juice 

Here is what it looks like when you cut it all up (as my boyfriend loves to do, very methodically until every component is the same size and shape). Makes it super easy to eat! Yum! 

5 Day Raw Food Cleanse: Day 2

So far so good with the raw food cleanse. Day 1 brought a pretty bad headache in the afternoon, which I attribute to a caffeine withdrawal, but other then that I feel really great.

One of the best things about trying to eat only raw fruits and vegetables is you really slow down and think about what you are eating. It is a more mindful food experience, something to be carried into any diet choices I think. It is definitely worth it and the meals you do eat become more worthwhile and satisfying. Plus you have to get a little more creative, which is always fun!

Here is what I ate today!

Breakfast

Smoothie: Frozen mango, blueberries and raspberries with carrot juice, beet juice, almond milk, lemon and ginger.

Smoothie #2: I exercised in the morning so I need some post-workout nutrients. For this I made the now classic banana, almond milk and peanut butter smoothie (my new favorite thing!). 

Lunch

Bean salad! A mixture of these things:

• Kidney beans
• garbanzo beans
• corn 
• onion
• tomato
• dill
• garlic
• olive oil
• lemon
• lime 

In Place of coffee

I was having some pretty serious coffee cravings, but instead I opted for caffeine-free peach tea with lemon and ginger. Very delicious and satisfying! 

Dinner

Fresh rolls! One of my favorite things ever. All you need are a bunch of yummy veggies and some rice paper, which you can find at the grocery store.

I chopped up some veggies for the filling of the fresh rolls. You can really use anything that you have on hand - a great opportunity to get creative! Here is what I used:

• Cabbage
• Basil
• Avocado
• Radish
• Cucumber
• Carrot 
• Spinach
• Broccoli sprouts

I prepared a bowl of water in which to soak the rice paper, where it becomes soft and malleable and adhesive. Then I set up a wet towel on the counter on which to roll the rolls.

From there, you really just have to go for it! I put the leaves down first, basil and spinach, then I added the sprouts, cabbage, carrot, radish and cucumber followed by the avocado. Then I rolled it all up like a little burrito. As I rolled one, I dunked the next rice paper in the water so it would be ready to go.

I made a little dipping sauce of coconut milk, peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon and garlic powder. Very tasty and very filling!

Kearsarge Mountain CSA: Week 14

Yes yes yes, another week of fresh vegetables. This does not get old! I am looking forward to trying a winter CSA through a couple of my favorite farms, so I will be sure to keep you updated on that!

But it's not winter yet! It is, in fact, still technically summer. Here is what I got in this week's summer share.

• Celery
• Boc choy
• Peppers
• Kale
• Cucumbers
• Tomatoes
• Radishes
• Salad mix
• Squash 

Very exciting! 

It was too easy to store all these goodies - most things went into the fridge. I thoroughly washed the celery and chopped it in half so it would fit into a container. The radishes were put into a bowl of water in the fridge. The squash and tomatoes went on the counter. Done!

5 Day Raw Food Cleanse: Day 1

There are many reasons to want to cleanse the body, and many ways of going about it. Personally, I have been eating too much junk food (pizza, ice cream, popcorn at the movies...) and I have begun to feel it (and see it!) in my body. I am sure there are lots of cleanse diets out there, but I have decided to makeshift my own kind of cleanse by eating primarily raw fruits and veggies for 5 days.

Here are some benefits of a raw food cleanse:

• Boost energy!
• Shave off some pounds
• A general detoxification of the body, ridding the body of excess waste
• Improve digestion, memory and immune system health!
• Cut down on household energy costs - no cooking necessary!
• Learn how to use new ingredients in creative ways

I thought I would share what I make over these 5 days to inspire ideas and also to show how I  incorporate CSA veggies into my raw food meals. 

My meals will be primarily raw fruits and vegetables, with nuts, herbs, legumes and seeds combined in fun and tasty ways. I will not be eating sweets, bread, meat or cheese (no alcohol or caffeine, either!). I am, however, making some small exceptions. I will be using minimal amounts of ricotta cheese, cottage cheese and plain greek yogurt. I have an incredible raw food "cookbook" that I will be deriving lots of recipe ideas from, and many of the yummiest things call for these ingredients. Additionally, some of the nuts I will use will be roasted (but not salted). I will also use small amounts of things like peanut butter, olive oil and soy sauce for flavoring. I want this to be a success so I am trying to be reasonable! 

OK, here is what I ate on DAY 1:

Breakfast 

Herbal tea with lemon, honey and ginger. 

Lunch

"Everything but the..." salad - I had many random leftovers in my fridge that I thought would all go together nicely in a salad

• Lettuce and chard
• Tomato
• Onion
• Pineapple
• Beets
• Basil and Parsley 
• Chopped almonds
• Lemon, olive oil and black pepper

Snack 

Banana, almond milk and peanut butter smoothie (yum! A must try!)

Dinner: 

Stuffed mushrooms - baby bella mushrooms with ricotta dill stuffing

• Clean the mushrooms thoroughly and pull out the stems
• Grind the stems in blender and mix with ricotta cheese, garlic, onion, fresh dill and black pepper
• Stuff the mushroom caps! 

Gazpacho - To accompany the mushrooms I made gazpacho, which is primarily all the following ingredients mixed in the blender, to taste.

• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Onion
• Garlic
• Eggplant (because I had some that needed to be used)
• Some homemade pickle juice with pickled jalapeños
• Sriracha 
• Tomato paste
• Cayenne pepper, black pepper, and a little salt 

I feel nourished but not full. Overall very satisfied! Looking forward to day 2! 

Food with Friends: Part II

I love love love hearing about the creative and delicious meals that friends are cooking, no matter where they are in the world. Since starting this blog, I have been sending and receiving so many good food pictures and ideas, it's like a whole new form of communication. 

One of my most recent suggestions came from great friends and foodies France Hahn and Garrett Bauer, all the way from South America (ya gotta love technology!). They suggested that I try making something I had never heard of: Shakshuka.

Shakshuka is a North African/ Middle Eastern dish that basically consists of eggs poached in a spicy  tomato sauce. Food friends France and Garrett sent me this link to a Shakshuka recipe, knowing that this time of year in New Hampshire there is an incredible bounty of tomatoes that could be used in place of, or alongside, canned tomatoes in this dish.

The first step I took in creating this meal was cooking up some homemade chunky tomato sauce (you can certainly stick to canned tomatoes, but I wanted to try making my own sauce, something I have been meaning to do for a while). I used CSA tomatoes and tomatoes from my parent's garden that needed some love. I kept this process very simple:

• Core the tomatoes and cut big X's into the skin

• Dump them into boiling water for 1 minute
• Transfer them to cold tap water
• Use the X's to peal off the tomato skins (I have learned from my dad, a master cook, that it really is important to remove the skins while making tomato sauce because they will be very tough, especially after freezing the sauce)
• Coarsely chop the tomatoes and throw them back into the pot with some olive oil to cook down to the desired consistency. The longer you cook them, the more they cook down and thicker the sauce will become. I used a potato masher to break up some of the larger chunks as it cooked. 

This made about 2.5 cups of tomato sauce. It is crazy how much tomatoes cook down. This is a great process if you have lots and lots of tomatoes to use up, but not really if you only have a few. 

Next, onto the Shakshuka process, which really could not be easier! I loosely followed the recipe, but definitely improvised as I went along. The great thing that I have learned about Shakshuka is that, traditionally, it is a dish that is made with anything that you have on hand. My kind of meal! 

First, I sauteed chopped onion. After a minute I added lots of garlic. 

Then I added green pepper a couple jalapeños.

And eggplant, because I had some that needed to be used. 

After a few minutes, I dumped in my tomato sauce. To that I added some canned sauce to give it more volume, a couple tablespoons of tomato past, the juice of one lime and spices: cayenne pepper, cumin, ground coriander, chili power, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. This all simmered for about 7 minutes.

Then, the fun part - cracking in the eggs! 

I covered it and let the eggs poach for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the yoke was pretty much cooked. This part is all about preference, whether you want the eggs runny or cooked completely is up to you! I served it for dinner with lots of parsley and feta cheese, along with crusty bread and an herb salad. Lots of CSA ingredients and lots of yumminess!

But I'm not done yet! I had so much tasty Shakshuka sauce left over that I was able to make two more meals out of it! 

Rolling it over to breakfast and another continent: Huevos Rancheros! 

This just felt like the natural next step. First, I heated the Shakshuka sauce with some rice that I had leftover in the fridge. 

Then, I opened a can of black beans and heated them on the stove. 

I baked some corn tortillas until they were nice and crispy. You can fry them but there was a lot going on on my stovetop so I thought baking them would be easier. Either way works great!

I then fried some eggs.

And then I melted some cheddar cheese on the eggs and began assembling the dish: the tortillas first, covered in the sauce and beans, topped with eggs and some parsley, all served with sliced avocado, salsa and sour cream. 

Finally, for dinner that night I made tacos with the leftover sauce and beans. A toasted tortilla with melted cheese, lots of chard and the sauce and beans...

Wow! Making Shakshuka was a huge success. And the whole time I had my good friends, France and Garrett, in mind, even though they are so far away! This is a beautiful thing! 

Food with Friends: Part I

The whole point of this blog is to open up a conversation about food, to get people excited about food again and all of the wonderful things it does for us. Therefore my new favorite thing is getting messages from friends who are sharing what they are cooking or eating. It is such a joy to connect through food in this way and learn new fun things to make from friends. No one is going to be excited to text a picture of the Big Mac they are eating (well, maybe some people), but it is exciting to share delicious and creative homemade meals.

Here are is a meal that was sent to me by great friend and cook, Chris Bodkin: Quinoa with fresh dill, jalapeños and feta cheese.

This dish could not be easier to make or more delicious. 

The only thing that needs to be prepared ahead of time is the homemade pickled jalapeños. I just threw sliced jalapeños into leftover pickling juice that I used with cucumbers a day before making this dish. 

Other then that, it is just a matter of cooking the quinoa and mixing it with fresh chopped dill, the jalapeños and feta cheese. I also added a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Thanks Chris, this is amazing! 

I ate this for dinner with balsamic soaked portobello mushrooms sauteed with onions and garlic and some toasted jalapeño pepper jack bread.

This is the first of many installments of Food with Friends, so stay tuned and keep the food ideas coming my way! 

Kearsarge Mountain CSA: Week 13

Yes, another wonderful week of fantastic vegetables and limited time in the grocery store. Before I detail what I got in my CSA, I would like to give a shout out to farmer's markets that are still kicking despite the feeling that summer is behind us. Many markets are still going strong and some move indoors and continue all winter, like in Warner and Henniker. So check out what's going on with your local market!

I found some great things at the Tuesday Warner market, including soap and eggs from Michelle's Garden and gorgeous carrots and a couple bouquets of flowers from Greenhill Collective farm.

Here is what I got for week 13 of my CSA.

• Tomatoes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Lettuce
• potatoes
• Herbs (I chose parsley)
• Garlic
• Squash (with a side note saying that the skins are edible! So eat 'em up)
• Chard
• Beets

Per usual, when I got home and immediately went about properly storing the items for maximum shelf life.

The parsley and chard went in jars of water on the counter.

The head of lettuce separated into individual leaves, rinsed and stacked in a container and put in the fridge.

Potatoes went into a brown bag in the cupboard.

Onions, garlic and tomatoes in a bowl on the counter.

Squash in the crisper drawer in the fridge.

Once again, too easy to receive fresh local ingredients to be enjoyed all week long! Recipe ideas to come! :)

Holy SOUP!

Soup requires no introduction. It is that comforting deliciousness that makes us all warm and happy inside. And there is no better way to make soup, in my opinion, then to just wing it with what you have lying around. Of course, you have your basic soup structure of, at the very least, onion, garlic, and vegetable broth, but the rest is up to the imagination. Crafting a delicious soup has the potential to serve so many functions, like allowing you to use up items in the kitchen that might otherwise go bad, offering the opportunity to pack in maximum nutrition, and giving you the chance to get creative - all along with being super tasty! 

Here is a truly noteworthy soup that I made the other day: Potato leek lentil green bean soup spectacular. 

I was inspired to make soup because I had a lot of veggies in my fridge and I was becoming concerned that they may not all get eaten in time. Among these were leeks, green beans and arugula. I decided to throw them all together, plus potatoes, onions, cabbage and lentils, into one big delicious sloppy mess. 

First I prepped my veggies. I picked the ends off the green beans and gave them a good rise.

Then I sliced the leeks (I used 3) and soaked them in some water to remove any hidden dirt (leeks tend to collect lots of dirt in their little ringlets).

Next I chopped some of my gorgeous CSA red onion, just for some color and flavor depth (leeks are very oniony in taste, so adding extra onion is by no means necessary).

Then, lots and lots of fresh garlic.

I heated a pot with olive oil and butter (soup is one of the few things that I always put butter in) and sauteed the leaks, onions and garlic. I also tossed in some random cabbage that I had that needed to be used up.

To that I added spices, like celery salt, pepper and a couple bay leaves. I let it cook for a few minutes before adding in the liquid: a jar of beet juice (made when boiling my CSA beets - homemade veggie stock!), some vegetable stock, white wine (dry wines like Pinot Grigio are good for cooking), and lemon juice.


Then I added some beautiful CSA potatoes and chopped green beans.

Next, some lentils. 

Then, after coming to a light boil, I set the pot on low heat and walked away. For an hour and half. Patience is essential to cooking a flavorful soup. Once you have everything in there, nothing but time will allow it all to come together into one tasty entity.

Finally, I spooned about half of the soup into the blender and blended it all together. I then added it back into the pot. This allows the soup to further combine into one coherent whole.

All that was left to do was toast up some of the incredible jalapeno pepper jack bread, that I got at the Henniker farmer's market, in a pan with some olive oil.

And badabing badaboom - a perfectly awesome dinner that is even better as leftovers throughout the week!

Sm00thies: The Basics

For me, making smoothies is usually a "throw whatever I have around into the blender and see what happens" kind of deal. It is a great way to use up random stuff that you don't really want to eat on their own, like a bruised apple or some wilted greens. In terms of culinary bricolage, smoothies reign supreme for most versatile and potentially creative kitchen creations. I do, however, have some basics that I typically stick to that I would like to share. These tips are all about maximizing health and tastiness in any smoothie!

• Use almond milk instead of dairy. There is a lot of very convincing evidence that dairy does not really promote optimal health, contrary to what the Got Milk adds lead us to believe. Lactose intolerance is, at least in my opinion, a very normal response to the odd human tradition of drinking another animal's milk. Not to mention the way we milk cows in giant factories, like a scene from The Matrix, keeping them in constant states of pregnancy so we can steal their calves and their milk (kinda weird, right?). Smoothies are a great place to start weaning ourselves off of the cow's teat. Almond milk is high in vitamins and minerals and low in fat and calories. Boom. Done.

• Add grated ginger. So delicious and great for you, a little grated ginger goes a long way in a smoothie. Ginger root will last for a long long time in the fridge so I always keep it on hand. Check out ginger health facts and try it in a smoothie today!

• Add milled flax seed. As I have mentioned before, flax seed is a wonderful addition to any meal if you want to maximize nutrition. Remind yourself how great it is for you and make the choice to eat some every day! 

• Use Avocado. As I ranted about above, I don't advocate for the use of dairy if you want to be truly healthy, and that goes for yogurt, too. Yes, lots of advertisements are shoving yogurt down our throats, and of course it is always up to you to decide who to believe, but I have found a great yogurt substitute in avocados that is guilt-free. Avocados are a great way to thicken up any smoothie and they pack in tons of nutrition. Try it out!

• Of course...CITRUS. I can't say enough good things about lemons. I add them to everything and they are like little yellow magical entities that make everything OK. Just to remind you, here are some of the benefits. 

If you must eat a hamburger...

...this is how to do it.

I don't usually buy meat and I really don't know how to cook it at all, but yesterday I had an extreme craving for a hamburger (probably because I have been binge watching Bob's Burgers on Netflix...those cartoon burgers just look too tasty).

There is a lot to consider when making the choice to eat a hamburger because a lot of energy and many resources go into producing beef, not to mention the fact that this process requires killing an animal. One of my unwavering guidelines for choosing to eat meat is that we face the process with no delusions about what we are doing. This means understanding exactly where our meat comes from, which, consequently, means having an open conversation about our animal farming methods. This can be an intensely charged conversation, where people get incredibly offended at any perceived attack on the deeply ingrained human tradition of animal farming and meat eating. Even so, we must persist and continue to talk about how we raise our animals, how we slaughter our animals, and how we eat the meat they produce, until we are all comfortable knowing all the details of this process. Additionally, we must choose local meats whose production processes are transparent and legitimate.

Another one of my unwavering principles of meat-eating is that it should be infrequent and considered a treat, not the norm (if eaten at all!). As I mentioned, it requires a lot of precious resources, like land and water, to produce meat, a process that gives us far less energy then it consumes (contributing heavily to pollution, global warming and starvation). Our current meat production and consumption patterns are far from sustainable. In fact I would confidently say that it is the most wasteful and harmful of all human institutions. Not to mention how expensive meat is getting - maybe, just maybe, it is starting to reflect it's true production costs in dollars. So when we choose to eat meat, let's do it on a special occasion or as a special treat.

Ok, back to how I went about making my dream of eating a hamburger come true. I first located the source of my meat. My first choice was 100% grass fed KGF beef, but they were temporarily sold out so I went to my next choice; Eccardt Farm.

In Washington, NH, this farm produces some excellent meats the right way, all available at this adorable farm store that is open all the time and runs on the honor system (you write down what you are taking, tally up the total and leave it in the lockbox). There are lots and lots of goodies in here, so check it out and stock up on some tasty meats for the freezer!

Alright, crafting my burger. First of all, I had my boys spark up the grill and take on the task of actually cooking the patties. Perfect. Then I was on to making a delicious and healthy topping for our burgers: mushrooms, onions and jalapeno peppers, all from the market that day. 

I lightly sauteed these beauties in lots of garlic. 

Of course, you gotta add these incredible farm tomatoes to everything.

And BOOM. A burger worth waiting for and celebrating.

I put it on an organic whole wheat english muffin because it is super hardy and can support a burger with all the yummy toppings. I also added spinach and fontina cheese. MMM!