Thai Food Raw Style

                                                         
Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines, so when I started eating vegan raw I was afraid that would be the end of my love affair with Thai food, but I have learned how to have my cake and eat it too! I started experimenting with the basic ingredients of Thai cuisine and have come up with some recipes that satisfy my taste for Thai.

One of the main stumbling blocks to creating authentic Thai dishes that are vegan is that so many of the dishes use fish sauce in them. To omit the fish sauce in Pad Thai wouldn't leave much as far as taste goes, but I have come up with a recipe for vegan "fish" sauce that has all the taste of the sea, but is 100% vegan and raw to boot! The sauce requires a little forethought since it needs a day or so in the fridge to assume its full character. It is a good idea to make it at least a day ahead, when time allows, to let it mellow a in the fridge before using.

Raw "Fish" Sauce

1/3 cup shredded seaweed, ( I use a combination of Wakame and Dulse)

1 1/2 cups water

2 fat cloves of garlic

1/1/2 tsp.peppercorns

1/2 cup Nama Shoyu or Braggs, or Tamari sauce.

1 Tblsp. Miso, red miso or barley miso

 Juice of 1 lime

1/1/2 tsp. organic sugar, (or comparable amount of alternative sweetener)

1/2 tsp. ground ginger or 1 1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger

1/2 tsp. garlic granules

1/4 tsp. chili powder

2/3 cup shitake mushrooms, fresh or dried and soaked

Srirachi sauce, chile paste or cayenne powder to desired level of heat

Soak the seaweed in the water, if using dried shitake then add them to the soaking water as well. When the seaweed is hydrated, pour into a blender and add fresh shitake, ( if using dried shitake, when they are softened by the soaking water cap them and discard stems, then add to blender), blend to make a thick slurry. In a small personal blender place peeled and mashed garlic cloves, peppercorns, your choice of soy sauce equivalents, miso, lime juice vinegar, sweetener, and spices. Blend together to a fine paste, then add to the mushroom/seaweed mixture and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings if desired. Refrigerate and allow to mellow a few days before using.

With the "fish" sauce problem solved I went on to convert some of my favorite Thai recipes to raw/vegan and invited friends to dinner to test my recipes. The dinner started off with Thai Tomato Coconut Soup, then we had Thai Spring Rolls with dipping sauces and Pad Thai. The meal went over well with our friends and I was happy with the results. As with any foods that are converted from cooked to raw, there is the whole "but this food isn't hot" thing to get past, but then the raw food begins to speak for itself... it is clean and fresh, the textures are interesting, the flavors complex and the colors vibrant. You are getting all of the food's nutritive value, satisfying your mouth and your stomach, you can eat until your heart is content and have no guilt or fear for your waistline... Seems like a pretty easy trade off to me!

This coming Tuesday I will be giving a demonstration for the preparation of a raw Thai Food meal at a raw food group I belong to. I am posting all the recipes for the demonstration here on my blog so that you and anyone who attends the meeting can have access to the recipes if they want to try them at home, so this post will be a little longer than usual.

Raw Pad Thai

2-3 servings

1 pkg. Gold Mine raw kelp noodles, (available at Earth Fare or Amazon.com)

 or
Happy Pho brown rice noodles with seaweed, (available at Whole Foods)
1 cup bean sprouts

1 tsp. Sriracha or other chile paste, (optional but adds character)

1 Tblsp.Nama Shoyu, (soy sauce or Braggs depending upon your preference)
1/2 tsp.Chili powder

1 Tbsp. Uma Plum vinegar
1 scant tsp. sesame oil
1-2 clove garlic, pressed or minced

1/2 tsp.garlic granules

2-3 green onions, cut into thin strips

2 large Medjool date, pitted and soaked in scant 1/4 cup water

2 Tblsp. tamarind

Several sprigs cilantro

Juice of one lime

Carrots, shredded

Zucchini, shredded or julienned

Broccoli cut into small pieces

Red bell pepper, cut into thin strips

Peanuts or almonds chopped

1/3 cup "Fish" sauce

2 Tblsp. almond butter

  Combine the "fish" sauce, the tamarind paste, Sriracha,(optional), chili powder, fresh and granulated garlic, sugar, vinegar, Nama Shoyu or equivalent. If you are using the Happy Pho Brown rice noodles, soak 3 balls of noodles in 115 degree water for at least an hour. Drain well. If using the kelp noodles, drain well. Toss the noodles with half of the Pad Thai sauce and reserve the rest. Refrigerate several hours to allow the noodle to absorb flavors. Right before serving, toss noodles with remaining sauce, the carrots, zucchini, broccoli, and then top with bean sprouts, green onion strips, red bell pepper strips, cilantro and chopped nuts.

Spring Rolls

Happy Pho Brown Rice Wrappers, (can be purchased at Whole Foods or online at Amazon.com)

Shredded, Carrots

Shredded, Zucchini

Kelp noodles or rice noodles

Napa cabbage, shredded

Pickled daikon radish

Basil

Cilantro

Bell pepper, cut in thin strips

Place a container of  warm water near your works surface. Take one of the rice wrappers and soak in the warm water until it begins to soften. Place wrapper on clean work surface, smooth out until completely flat. Add small quantity of carrots, shredded zucchini, Napa cabbage,pickled daikon, basil, cilantro and bell pepper. On side of the wrapper closest to you, arrange the vegetables evenly over 1/3 of the wrapper, starting in an inch from either end to allow room to fold ends in. Add small quantity of kelp noodles to the vegetables if desired , then fold the side in over the vegetables. Carefully fold the side closest to you over the top of the vegetables and begin rolling the vegetables up "egg roll style"  in the wrapper. Keep a gentle but firm grip on the roll and tuck the vegetables in as you roll to keep things tight. If using the Happy Pho brown rice wrappers it will be necessary to soak and wrap the roll in a second wrapper, since the whole grain wrappers split fairly easily. If using regular rice flour wrappers, only one wrapper is necessary since there is no bran to make it less elastic.  Right before serving cut roll in half on a diagonal and serve with dipping sauces.

"Peanut" Sauce

 1 cup raw almond butter

1/4 cup coconut milk, make your own, (go here for recipe, or you can make it from young fresh coconut pulp(not quite as rich as milk from mature coconuts), or if you aren't concerned about it being 100% raw, you can find canned coconut milk and coconut creme in most grocery stores.

1/3 cup water

Juice of one large lime

2 Tbsp. Nama Shoyu or soy sauce

\2 tsp. "fish" sauce

1 cloves garlic, minced

1/8 cup cilantro

2 tsp. Srirarchi, chili paste or heaping tsp. red pepper flakes

2 tsp. Uma Plum vinegar

In a blender, blend all ingredients well. Refrigerate.

Spring Roll Dipping Sauce 

1 red chile, (fresh cayenne or ripe red jalapeno)

1 Thai bird chile

1 Tblsp. minced garlic

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup organic sugar, or comparable quantity of sweetener of your choice dissolved in
1/4 cup 115 degree water

1  Tblsp. "fish" sauce 

1/3 cup vinegar. (equal parts Uma Plum vinegar and rice wine vinegar)

1 large mango

Blend ingredients well in a bullet blender and serve with Thai Spring Rolls.

Thai  Tomato Coconut Soup

This is a great way to start off a Thai dinner. This creamy soup only takes a few minutes, but it has a complex flavor and just enough "heat" from the chipotle to make you feel  like you are eating hot soup!

Serves 4 as first course or 2-3 as dinner

3 cups cherry tomatoes

3 Tbsp.coconut oil

Juice of 2 limes

1/2 cup cilantro
1 Tblsp.agave, maple syrup or honey
2 tsp. minced fresh ginger

1-2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1 Tblsp. tomato powder, (optional but really adds something to the soup! You can find dehydrated tomato powder here, or make your own using sun dried tomatoes blended to powder in a bullet blender.)
1 tsp. salt
1/3 cup chipotle en adobo or 1-11/2 tsp. chipotle powder

1/2 cup basil shredded thinly, (reserved for serving time)

1/2 avacado, cut in cubes, (reserved for serving time)

1/2 cup chopped cucumber, (reserved for serving time)

1 Tblsp.agave, maple syrup or honey

In a blender, combine all ingredients with 1/4-1/2 cup of water, (depending on the consistency desired. start with 1/4 cup water and ad up to 1/4 cup more if needed), and blend until smooth and creamy.  Divide avocado and cucumber into individual bowls, spoon soup into bowls and top with basil strips.

Blog Hops this post is linked to:
Clever Chicks Blog Hop #53

A Day at Heart's Ease Cottage

The weather is cooling and the outdoors beckons...I love the fall. I hate to miss a minute of it by having to be inside, but there are lots of things that need doing this time of year, so this day was spent inside. I tried to make the inside feel like it was outside by opening all the windows and doors so that the cool breeze could waft through and the bird song could keep me company while I was working. My husband worked from home so that he would be available to help out with the "heavy lifting". It was great fun to work together!

We recently went on a trip to the mountains, while we were there we picked up a bushel of apples. The apples are beautiful this year! All the rain we got made the large and juicy. We bought 1/2 bushel of Zestar, a tart/sweet crunchy apple, that is good for pies and dehydrating, and 1/2 bushel of Honey Crisp, a sweet, juicy firm apple that is great for eating out of hand. Our first task of the day was to get the Zestar apples pared, cored, sliced and in the dehydrator. Fortunately, we have a handy dandy tool that does all of that in one operation! Da welded the apple gizmo while I soaked the prepared apples in citric acid for a few minutes and loaded them onto the trays.

Some of the apples were too soft to use as apple rings, so I made them into fruit leather...yum! I will post a "how to" and a recipe for Apple Pie fruit leather on another blog entry, so if you are interested check back in a few days!

The next task on the list was to make some spiced purple sauerkraut. I have been wanting to test out a recipe I thought up months ago, but I wanted to wait until the fall when all the produce I needed for it was in season. The technique for making raw sauerkraut is discussed in depth here, so for this post I will not repeat most of the instructions for making sauerkraut, but I will show you what it looks like and give you a recipe.

Da is squeezing the cabbage for me.

This is what the cabbage should look like when it is ready for you to add the other ingredients.

Spiced Purple Cabbage Sauerkraut

4 pounds of purple cabbage, shredded

1 tsp. salt per pound of cabbage

2 apples cored and shredded

1 red beet scraped and shredded

1/2 tsp. ground alspice

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp.Turkish  Garam Masala ( any Garam Masala will work fine, or if you can't obtain it you can omit it, or make your own).

Prepare red cabbage, (follow the directions on my tutorial for preparing the cabbage and putting the prepared kraut in the jar to ferment.), once the cabbage has been prepared, add the apples, beets and spices. Work the added ingredients into the cabbage until uniformly distributed, then pack the 1/2  gallon capacity jar (or two quart sized mason jars), with the kraut mixture as directed in the above link to the tutorial. Pace jar in a bowl or other glass or plastic container, I often use a plastic shoe box, no lid required), to prevent an overflow mess. Gasses being released during fermentation may carry some of the liquid out of the jar as they go. The kraut will be ready 5-10 days after fermentation. Check at 5 days, if the kraut isn't sweet/tart enough for you then leave until you get the desired level of tartness. Refrigerate once you have reached desired flavor to prevent further fermentation.

Serving ideas:

Top your salad with the kraut and skip the dressing

Make a raw salad of cubed apples, thinly sliced celery, craisins, chopped walnuts, and the kraut.

If you eat cooked food and meat, this sauerkraut would be a tasty side dish, for broiled turkey keilbasa, with baked apples and pumpernickel bread. It would also be great in a mushroom or turkey Reuben, with Honey Mustard dressing instead of Thousand Island dressing and Pumpernickel bread instead of Rye bread.

So with the sauerkraut on to ferment and the house smelling deliciously like baked apples, (the scent of dehydrating apples and fruit leather), I am on to my next task... tending my indoor garden, which today includes rinsing clover sprouts, starting another batch of Kefir for my hubby, checking on the progress of a batch of Kombucha I started a week ago, and fermenting another batch of pickled Daikon radishes.

My kitchen counter is always in use to produce the sprouted and fermented foods we eat every day. The things that are growing may change from week to week, depending on what the menu for the week is, but you can always find something sprouting or fermenting to add nutrition, interest and probiotic goodness to our diet!

Well, it was a busy and happy day, but now I am beat... I hope that this post will encourage you to try making your own fermented foods to add to your diet! Have a great day!

What Happened to My Summer?

I looked up from "life happening" the other day and was shocked to realize that it is the end of August already. Where did my summer go?? Well, upon consideration I have decided that we never really had summer here. It was cool late into May which set the gardens back, and then it rained literally for the entire month of June, most of the month of July, and part of August. I think Washington State got less rain this year than we did!

The sun is shining now and it hasn't rained for a week so things in the garden are trying to make a come back. We enjoyed some zucchini before the vine borers finally took their toll, so I was happy for that! The okra has been going strong. The plants are about 7 feet tall... we almost need a ladder to pick them! I don't think anything will disturb the growth of Malabar Spinach, it is almost frightening how well that stuff grows. The flowers have been beautiful, so bouquets of paint box colored zinnias and sunflowers have brightened the gloom inside the house on rainy days. I am grateful for what we received from the garden, but hope that we have a better fall garden, since we lean very heavily on what we produce for our daily meals.

The rest of life has been a blur. My husband was very occupied with work and I have had more to do in his absence, so that accounts for some of the time that has disappeared, but really... I just don't know what happened to the time. I feel like I fell asleep in May and just woke to discover the whole summer has gone by. Did anyone else have a summer like that or is it just me?

I have lots of possible subjects milling around in my head for future blog posts, I am now trying to decide what I want to write about most. I have a raw food demonstration coming up in late September. I will be posting a step by step tutorial and the recipes for that demonstration on the blog, so that my blog followers can see the demonstration as well. But that is in late September... so I need to figure out what I want to talk about now. Maybe I'll talk about what we do to extend the production of our summer garden, or chat about
saving seed from this years garden to use next year. I could  do a tutorial on making stevia extract for use as a sweetener... or show you how to make raw/vegan sushi... hm.-m-m... I can't decide. Do you have any suggestions?  If something I mentioned interests you or you have a suggestion, I would love to hear from you! Why don't you leave me a comment let me know what you are interested in.

Well, I think I will go outside and take some time to enjoy the butterflies in the garden... 

                                        Take care and be well! Elle

What is going on at Heart's Ease Cottage

This summer has been an unusual one. We have been deluged with rain. We had rain every day for almost 30 days. Not just a little rain... constant rain, heavy rain, more rain than we usually see in a a whole year! One of my four 25 foot beds of tomatoes drowned, many other crops fared poorly as well. We lost the cabbages to an onslaught of slugs that used the rain to cloak their activities, the kale and chard rotted from all the moisture... sigh. But the constant rain seems to have passed, and the ground has dried out a bit, so there is hope for what is left in the garden.

I am harvesting blueberries and tomatoes regularly. As I sit here writing I can smell the tomatoes in the dehydrator, they smell wonderful!  I dehydrate all of our veggies at 115 degrees, so that they remain "raw", with all their enzymes and nutrients intact. I will vacuum seal them as soon as they come out of the dehydrator to protect them from moisture. These tomatoes will be used in many of our meals during the colder months when fresh tomatoes are not available.

The blueberries have been plentiful on the bush but sadly, we lost a lot of them during all the rain. Many of the ripe berries were knocked to the ground by the rains before I could get them picked. Even though we lost a lot of the berries, I still have picked 25 lbs. of berries and have probably that many more still ripening on the bushes. We should have plenty for the table, some for the freezer and some for sharing with friends and neighbors. Even if it is not as many as we usually have it will be enough.

The flowers and herbs have survived the wet conditions and I have been making lovely bouquets for us to enjoy, (yes, I used herbs in my flower bouquets!). I have been cutting the parsley every couple of days for adding to our juicing and as soon as the Sabbath is over I will pick basil to make pesto. The tarragon has pretty much taken over one end of the bed it is planted in, while waiting for it's permanent home to be available, (we are doing some long needed foundation work on the east side of the house where the herb garden resides, so some of the plants had to be temporarily relocated, more on that project later in this post).

The kitchen herb garden is in full bloom with the Rudbekia taking center stage. This garden has been a little hard to access since we have dug out a fair chunk of the walkway access and have supports and plastic sheeting up to protect our 3 foot deep trench from filling with water from all the rain. But I have still managed to keep it weeded, and snip and pick herbs for eating, even with all the construction mess in the way. The comfrey that I planted this year seems to be happy and I have harvested our first batch of stevia. It is in tincture and will be ready for use in a couple of weeks.

The butterflies have shown up in force this year. They spend their days sailing over the gardens, snacking on nectar from the zinnias and buddleia. They look like floating flowers from my vantage point on the deck.

As I was cutting parsley the other day to be juiced with the carrots and other veggies, I noticed this little fella munching away on my parsley. It is a Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar. They show up every year to help keep my parsley and dill well pruned. With their voracious appetite they can make quick work of a patch of parsley, so I always try to plant double the amount I will use, to make sure that we both have all the parsley we can eat!

 If you gently stroke the caterpillar on the back while he is munching, it will give off the scent of chamomile and little orange antlers will appear out of the top of its head and wave a warning at you. I am not sure what the scent and antlers do to deter predators, but I think they are adorable! I love to provoke them, (just a little....) so that they will "threaten" me!

We have been trying to get some foundation work done since January. Actually we have been trying to get it done since the reconstruction after Hugo in 1989, but there was so much to do back then and afterwards life took over and there was no time for such a project until recently. So Da began digging out the area in January, got the footer form built to pour the cement and shortly after was hit with a huge project at work. This project waylaid his efforts until yesterday. Yesterday there was no rain in the forecast so we jumped at the chance to mix, pour and level out sixteen 80 lb. bags of cement.

 Da calculated that he lifted about a ton and a half  yesterday, between the toting bags in and out of the car and to the work area. I wore the skin off both knees and elbows crawling around in tight spaces, moving , tamping and leveling cement. It was hot, hard work, but it is finally done and so the project can move forward.

  Sunday we will knock the wooden footer form apart and back fill with dirt. After that comes the easy part... paying someone to lay the block and finish off that section of the foundation! That will bring to conclusion a major repair that has needed to be done for a long time. As I am writing I hear thunder, so we must be going to get some more rain. I am very glad we seized the opportunity yesterday and got the cement work done. Who knows when we will have another dry day!

I have a special indoor project that I have been working on, as well as the regular "projects" that take up my days during the summer... weeding, harvesting and preserving goodies from our garden. This is a project I am very excited about, but I will save that story for a blog post of its own!

I hope that you are all well and enjoying a beautiful day! Until next time, Shalom!

About Our Blackberries

It has been uncharacteristically cool and wet this year. Usually at this time of year we are drowning in humidity, but get no rain so that we have to water regularly to keep our gardens from succumbing to the heat. But this year we have had a lot of rain, and the gardens have been drinking it up with relish. Our blackberries are starting to ripen and they are so juicy and sweet! We picked almost 10 pounds of berries the other day and I need to get out there and pick again if it will stop raining long enough that I can!

We planted several varieties of blackberries that we paid a pretty penny for, but the only cultivar that has thrived in our microcosm is one that we dug up from an old an abandoned homestead years ago. We would go there every year to pick the sumptuous, juicy berries that covered an embankment next to the road. One day we saw a sign that advertised that the land was being turned into a subdivision. We saw a bleak future for our summer berry picking and hated the idea of this wonderful, vintage variety of blackberry falling prey to land development. So when the bramble patch started putting up next years canes we took several buckets and dug some of them up, took them home and began the many year long process of multiplying what we saved from the bulldozer. Normally I would hesitate to dig since we didn't have permission, but they were going to bull doze them anyway, so we were pretty sure no one would care. Now when you drive by our favorite picking spot there is a nicely landscaped berm to a subdivision of McMansions... and  the only berry canes that remain from that particular hearty, disease free heirloom variety are in our berry patch.  We will be eating our weight in berries, freezing and sharing for a few weeks and then it will be time for our blueberries to come in. As I eat my fill of blackberries and have plenty to spread around, I recall the sunny days long ago when our family would go out picking, I will think about the homesteaders who lived off the land where the berries grew, and I will smile with satisfaction knowing that we did our part to save an heirloom variety from being wiped out.

These berries are from a heirloom variety  that thrives in our local weather conditions and produces the largest sweetest berries I have ever eaten!

A Trip To Wilmington, NC

Recently My husband and I made a trip to visit friends in Wilmington, NC. Friends we met while we were living in Costa Rica, were in Wilmington for the wedding of their granddaughter. Since Wilmington is only a 3 hour drive we jumped at the chance to get to see them while they were Stateside. We also really enjoyed getting to visit with the rest of the family, that we haven't seen since 2009, when they left Costa Rica with their 5 children and sailed to the Mediterranean.

Wilmington is my favorite North Carolina city. It has a beautiful historic section, lots of good restaurants, Flaming Amy's Burritos is a family favorite, and Indochine is another. Both offer an interesting variety of vegan friendly selections. The WWII battleship North Carolina, is moored across the river from downtown Wilmington. It has been turned into a museum and is open to the public. The New Hanover County Arboretum is a lovely place, it is not large, only 7 acres in total, but it well worth the time to visit. Our time this trip was limited. There was too much going on at home to make it a "beach trip", and spend some time enjoying the lovely light sand beaches that are just minutes away from downtown Wilmington. But we did go for a brisk walk at Wrightsville Beach, between rain storms, just so we could enjoy the ocean view for a few minutes while we walked. Once things settle down at home we will make a trip back, specifically to spend some time at the beach.

Inside the Bottle Chapel

On this particular trip we spent what free time we had walking the extensive grounds at Airlie Gardens. Airlie Gardens is  67 acres of gardens, with live Oaks, ponds, thousands of azaleas and camellias, as well as fountains, statuary, art and other features. On a green not far from the entrance to the gardens stands a 467 years old Live Oak. Just past the Airlie Oak stands the Bottle Chapel, constructed by local artists in honor of Minnie Evans, a long time employee of the gardens and resident artist. The chapel's sunny location brings the color of the bottles to life. What a wonderfully unique way to recycle bottles!

The Bottle Chapel

While we were strolling the grounds we spotted a pair of swans on the lake. Upon closer inspection we also saw that the swans were proud parents of a single fuzzy gray signet. I was totally enchanted and spent the remainder of our available time photographing the swan as they fed.

I was really surprised that the swans let me get so close. Swans are notoriously protective of their young.

 It was a great day and I can't wait to go back to Wilmington, but next time I will actually spend some time on the beach!

Just in Case You Would Like to know...

If you are interested in avoiding Monsanto "Food" here is a link to a list of the companies that are owned by Monsanto: http://www.realfarmacy.com/printable-list-of-monsanto-owned-food-producers/