THANKSGIVING/HOLIDAY RECIPES

Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  Want raw recipes?  In a way, I am proud to say that my raw Thanksgiving/Christmas recipe collection has been copied  by a lot of people in a lot of places (some have not mentioned where they got the recipes, but, I can tell you, if you see these recipes anywhere else, they came from me first).  These recipes are free (if you choose to publish them somewhere, please mention your source, i.e., me, at Pretty Smart Raw Food Ideas

I like to look at other raw holiday recipe collections wherever I find them. Today, I have just found a free Thanksgiving collection from Nomi Shannon, which has some recipes I will definitely try out. 

At Choosing Raw, there is  “Mostly Raw” holiday recipe collection – most things are raw, but some are not. If you want only raw, just squeeze your eyes closed and scroll on.

30 Bananas a Day, a Low Fat Raw Vegan on-line community, has a number of good Thanksgiving recipes.

In the “For Fee” department, The Garden Diet people have a collection of information – two PDFs with recipes and a list of videos for recipes, all for one price (I’m not selling this, I’m just telling you. Go there and check it out. I just did, tonight, and the recipes do look interesting.

Also “For Fee” is  Raw Food Rehab’s Penni Shelton’s book, Raw for the Holidays, a collection of Penni’s recipes, as well as recipes from members of her Raw Food Rehab.  This is a relatively huge compendium of recipes (for a PDF file  – I will have to print it off to be able to best use it, as there is so muh there), which includes recipes for a number of different holidays . (There is even a good matzoh recipe).  Again, I am not selling here. I am just telling you  (I am not even a member of Raw Food Rehab).

 

 

 

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HOLIDAY RECIPES: Christmas & Hanukkah

POST #869
this cute picture borrowed from Hinarera Lambert’s blog

It is always good to find holiday recipes just when you need them. 

Sometimes I go back to my Holiday Recipes page and am surprised that I’ve forgotten about this or that recipe, and it would be perfect.    Sometimes, I find people commenting on this or that blog about some great recipes, and, then, when I go there, I get an amazing sense of deja vu — just before I realize that someone has found my recipes and is helping me spread the word (I would kindly ask that you, at the very least, credit my blog for the recipes you use).

It does give me a very nice feeling to see that other people are enjoying my holiday recipes

— at this time of year, particularly– I’ve got 2 “blind” potlucks (I’ve never met any of these people) this weekend, and knowing that my recipes are enjoyed by others I’ve never met will give me added courage to walk into an unknown environment (I’m terminally shy, so I do this kind of thing as often as I can, because I am confident that most people there will enjoy my contribution, which gives me an easy way to smile and be vivacious — and, maybe, be able to meet some new friends)

HOLIDAY RECIPES HERE

POST #855
Oh my gosh! Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and, following that, Yule, Christmas, and Hanukkah.
These are FOOD holidays. You need food for the holidays. You’re wanting to be raw, or as raw as you can, so you need RAW LIVING FOOD RECIPES for the holidays.

Once again, I would like to call your attention to MY HOLIDAY RECIPES page. There are a number of recipes that you can use (they are mine, so please reference my blog if you want to tell others about them)

At the end of the page is a listing of several “for fee” holiday recipe collections, just so you know that I am open-minded and don’t copy others’ recipes.

PASSOVER RECIPES

Passover beings on April 6, 2012.  Have you got your raw recipes together?  Check out the raw Passover recipes on my holidays page (just scroll down a bit, and you will find them.)

More Holiday Recipe Options

I’ve just learned that Judy Pokras has published a Kindle version of her holiday recipes.  If the recipes are the ones she published several years ago (sorry, she does not share with me, but I did buy her  e-file book once), then they are definitely worth taking a look at.  I understand that she also offers an ebook for download.

I’ve tried to find the Raw Food Right Now holiday recipe book that I remember, on their site, but it is hiding from me. If you want some really nice recipes, go to their site and search around until you find it — you will not be disappointed.

I have already told you about my holiday recipes.  These delicious recipes are still available free of charge.

 

HOLIDAY RECIPES

Once again, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s are lined up, one right after the other, and looming just around the corner. (I know, I know, it happened this way last year, too, but there’s nothing I can do about it other than to give  you some recipes.

If you are looking for something you haven’t tried yet, please do check out my Holiday Recipes, either by clicking here or by clicking on the page title at the top of this page.

Of course, all of the recipes are very delicious.

10/21/10 CSA SHARE: What they say we will get

I am so so so lucky that Tonice S has agreed to pick up my share on Thursday (oops! That’s tomorrow!), while I am down here in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (yea! Vacation central! Ocean air, outlet shopping! Communing with my parents! )

It was so nice of Tonice to agree to pick up my vegetables…. I definitely owe her big-time!

What they say we are going to get:
Carrots……………………1 bun
Dandelion Greens………1 bun
Sweet Potatoes…………..4 lbs.
Japanese Salad Turnips..1 bun.
Broccoli Raab……………1 bun
Romaine Lettuce………..1sm. head
Fennel……………………1 pc.
Sunshine Squash………..1 pc.

Fruit share: Fuji Apples, Empire Apples, and Bosc Pears

With the holidays coming up, we need some holiday recipes. I will be posting some shortly (vacation timing is difficult as I don’t have wifi in the house, so I have to escape and go down the road to get on-line). Meanwhile, you can click on Holiday Recipes and see the holiday recipes I have already posted.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH POTATOES?

POTATOES!!!
What to do with them??? I keep getting potatoes my CSA box, and I am still clueless as to what to do with them – I usually give them to Mrs. Murphy, next door. I instinctively want to believe that potatoes are part of God’s bounty, and, so, I keep trying to find a way to use them.

I recently saw a comment on one of the big sites (sorry! I don’t recall which one), where they said that dehydrated potato would taste like roasted potatoes, but they did not give any recipes.

My friend, Jim Carey, sent me a long story about how potatoes are a genetic thing, and, if you come from a potato-eating tribe, potatoes are good for you, etc. and so forth, and yada yada yada.

I will go there, no problem. Okay, so how do you prepare potatoes to eat raw? A long time ago, I saw something somewhere, about preparing potatoes for raw consumption, but I cannot find it now. As a result, I keep experimenting.

One recipe I found, on some guru’s site, suggested grating raw potatoes and soaking them in Bragg’s. Too salty for me (and Jim informs me that Bragg’s is bad – I don’t know about that, but, regardless, it was way too salty for me in that recipe). Anyway, I did not like the taste at all.

Jim Carey says he puts the potatoes together with some concoction from one of the Boutenkos (friends of his) in his VitaMix and makes a soup which he finds very satisfying. I simply cannot go there, because I have seen three Boutenkos in person (at a presentation in New York City) and they did not look all that healthy to me, so I am not inclined to follow any of the Boutenkos’ suggestions.

So….
I am looking for potato recipes. If I don’t find any, I will get over it, but, secretly, I really would like to find one or two, if only to share them with the world so other potato fans can enjoy them.

Last night I worked with about 3 lbs of pretty yellow potatoes (they were yellow after I got the skins off). I thinly sliced 4 of them and placed them on the dehydrator screens. I grated up the rest of them in the food processor, and mixed them with a healthy amount of garlic, a little olive oil, some onion, and some herbs. I dropped the resulting potato glop by the tablespoon on teflex sheets to make patties in the dehydrator. I put all the trays in the dehydrator, set it to 105 degrees, and walked away.

When I went back about 4 hours later, the slices were all curly but still too leathery – I was hoping for crunchy.
The patties (my hoped for latkes) had turned black, but were still not in any condition to turn over yet.

I went to sleep.

This morning, I checked and nothing was ready yet, bu I could turn the patties.

When I came home this afternoon, I found crunchy “chips”, and crumbly potato patties… most of them had turned from black to white.

I tasted the chips. They do not taste like roasted potatoes or any other kind of edible potato I have ever eaten. I don’t want to eat them, but I will save them, rehydrate them, and throw them into something else that might help them taste good.

I think that, if I marinate the potato slices for chips in vinegar for an hour, and then coat them in spices and herbs, they might taste good.

The potato patties (made from ground potato) were rather bitter (I had added onion, garlic, and herbs in the vain hope that I could make them tasty). I think I could cure that with the addition of vinegar to the mix. Ketchup makes french fries taste better…. maybe I should mix the potatoes with tomatoes and vinegar before I dehydrate them?

Regardless, in my opinion, whoever said that dehydrated potatoes taste like roasted potatoes had never actually eaten dehydrated potatoes.

I continue to look for raw potato recipes (I mean the kind that actually use potatoes, not the kind that substitute other things for the potatoes.

If you have any raw potato recipes that you like, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I will receive another CSA box this coming Thursday. I expect it will contain potatoes. I will give half to Mrs. Murphy, and experiment with the other half.
M

BEWARE OF HOLIDAYS

Duh! You knew that! Holidays are the times when we want to fall back into old eating patterns and chow down on the stuff we know, the holiday food that means it is holiday time! So… we come up with raw versions… and we never stop to think about what we are doing! (to make a raw version of most holiday foods, in all likelihood, we are going to want to add sweeteners (agave syrup, dates, etc.), and we are probably going to be heavy into the nuts (how can you make shortbread if you don’t use nuts?) I don’t know about you, but what I miss most are the desserts... and what goes into the raw versions??? nuts, dried fruit, sweetener…..

So…. if we succumb to making raw substitutes, we are highly likely to find ourselves putting on weight.

The fact of the matter is that with many of the “transition” type recipes,we will not escape holiday weight gain simply because we are eating raw food. which offer us “the taste of the past”, are likely to help us maintain an unhealthy weight, or else gain weight unexpectedly. Yes, the ugly truth is that you can gain weight on a raw food diet.

Ideally, we will continue to be vigilant, and eat only properly combined recipes and meals.

If we are normal humans, we may find ourselves enjoying our “traditional-style” raw versions of the holiday foods we know and love, and , then, we will be faced with the need to cleanse and diet in the New Year, just as we would if we were not raw.

Be aware. Be ready.

FALSE ALARM!!! you’ve seen it on other raw food news sources!

I held my breath when I heard the story that the FDA was going to force “pasteurization” of organic vegetables. Of course, I was frightened, because of the forced pasteurization of California almonds, which has raised the price of raw almonds through the roof, but I still held off…. I held my breath…. good thing…

Today, I received an email from Dave Klein, the publisher of Living Nutrition Magazine:
“I was wrong about the pasteurization of greens; the FDA
is not, in fact, proposing to pasteurize greens at all! What happened was someone on the rawfoods board posted a thread that read like there was a proposal to pasteurize greens, telling us to protest on the FDA comment line, with a link to the original article. I didn’t read the article.

In fact, the FDA is proposing regulating growers’ practices, which is probably a good thing.

They’re proposing making growers test their produce at certain intervals for contamination. Also they are looking to make certain regulations about soil conditions, which some groups feel will negatively impact organic growers. I would tend to disagree, as I think a lot of ‘organic’ growers today are faking it and need to be regulated. The real organic growers probably have little to hide.”

I have sat out of this scary notification loop because I wanted to see what would really come around. I understand the panic based on California almonds (what were they thinking of… do they really think that pasteurizing almonds will increase almond consumption, as the world continues to go organic and raw????? They just make us go to outside (foreign) sources, which do not have such ignorant laws (unfortunately, almond prices for raw foodists have just gone through the ceiling, as (sensible) foreign sources have realized that they have a limitless market) The main problem for us here (in the US) is that we must trust foreign sources, which are not necessarily under the same regulations as our local regulations.

Perhaps, our “formerly” raw almond growers/producers in California will be able to organize (oh, but it is California!!! they couldn’t organize when the threat was imminent! )

Meanwhile, it looks like we are safe… stay awake… stay aware!!!