UnCooking 101 Recipe Index

POST #984
Are you looking for some new recipe ideas?  One of my hobbies is reading other people’s ideas (yes, and sometimes making them)

UnCooking101 has been trying out several different things over the past year or two, but I think her collection of recipes is the best reason to go to her website — of course, you might some other things that interest you there – I’m still working my way through the recipes.

Advertisement

HURRICANE ALLEY: What do I do when there’s a hurricane outside?

POST #847
What do I do when there is a hurricane outside?

Well… first, I watch the weather for too long, and, then, when I cannot take it anymore, I get up and go to the kitchen and make stuff. Today, that was kale chips and sunflower seed crackers.

After I did that, I raced back to the computer, just in case the power might go off, and found a new cool site, Nouveau Raw, with great recipes, read them all, then sat around and thought about making something else. [I really really liked Nouveau Raw. It is almost like a raw food training. Who knew there could be so many things to address on such an attractive blog?  I’ll be going back there soon and often]
That brought me up to now.

Time to hop in bed. The hurricane can wait or go away.

30 FREE DEHYDRATOR RECIPES

POST #774
The blog Healthy Blender Recipes is offering 30 free dehydrator recipes this month.  You have to go to the blog every day to get the recipes, but the first few I have seen look luscious.  As the blog mentions, some of them look too fancy or expensive to mess with on a whim, but some of the ideas inside of the recipes I will probably never make are useful for things I would make.  Hey! Free recipes are nothing to scoff at.  If you don’t want to make one, don’t download it, or else, do download it on the off-chance that you might make it one day, or that you might use a technique for something else.

QUINTESSENCE GROUPON: raw vegan restaurant: if you are in NYC, or going to be

POST #769
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!  I have just received a Groupon offer for for a meal at Quintessence, in the East Village, in Manhattan, in New York City.  This coupon offers a $40 dining experience for $20.  I am so there!  I haven’t been to Quintessence in a while, but I expect that $40 would provide an amazing repast (in the past, I’ve been able to escape, with scrupulous control, for under $25, so I expect that this opportunity would likely tax my powers of food combining, but in a pleasurable way). Raw Chef Dan creates fabulous recipes (he also offers yummy recipes on his website, and offers food prep training as well)

This offer is available for but 4 more days.  Scramble over there to take advantage (I looked into the fine print, and the coupon is good for a year.  Quintessence has been around longer than any other raw restaurant in the City –  we have but 2-1/2 — I say 1/2 because Caravan of Dreams does offer some raw repasts, and Quintessence is also the most price-accessible/affordable, but, hey! Sadly, raw restaurants come and go, so don’t wait the whole year!  Go enjoy 1/2 price meal at Quintessence soonest)

Nobody is paying me to tell you about this (Okay, being broke, I did check both places to see if I could get a kick-back, but nothing was available). I just got an email, and am passing it on.

FREE RAW VEGAN FOOD PREP E-BOOK GIVE-AWAY CONTEST

POST #755

Suzanne Kristin is holding a contest to  give away free raw vegan recipe books.  Check here to find out how to participate:

Kristin Suzanne Raw Vegan Recipe E-book Give-away Contest

Good luck!

ARE THE OATS YOU ARE BUYING RAW?

The subject of the rawness of steel-cut oats  recently came up on the frugalraw mailing list .  It got me thinking, and I ended up spending a couple of hours roaming the Internet and learning quite a bit about oats, commercial oat production, oat farming, and oat sprouting.

As much of what I learned was eye-opening, I’ve decided to include the results of my research here, in an expanded form of my original post to the mailing list.

Are steel cut oats raw? Good question!  I googled oats and steel cut oats, and found that most sources tend to pussy-foot around the issue.

Wikipedia states that hulled oats ” pass through a heat and moisture treatment to balance moisture, but mainly to stabilize the groat. Oat groats are high in fat (lipids) and once exposed from their protective hull, enzymatic (lipase) activity begins to break down the fat into free fatty acids, ultimately causing an off flavor or rancidity. Oats will begin to show signs of enzymatic rancidity within 4 days of being dehulled and not stabilized. This process is primarily done in food grade plants, not in feed grade plants. An oat groat is not considered a raw oat groat if it has gone through this process: the heat has disrupted the germ, and the oat groat will not sprout.”

Does this mean that oat groats and steel-cut oats which are sold as food products raw or not?

Wisegeek.com says “Just as with all types of prepared oats, steel cut oats are made from oat grains that have been hulled and steamed. Generally the finished oat groats that are destined for preparation as steel cut oats are also roasted, helping to release an enhanced flavor in the oat groats.”

Companies which produce and package oats and steel cut oats do not say that their oats are a raw product.  The closest that any such company comes, per my research, is McCann’s claim that other companies’ oats undergo extensive heat processing, which affects the flavor.  McCann’s does not state, however, that their product is *not heat processed*)

Bob’s Red Mill, which offers both flax seed meal (known to go rancid quickly) and steel-cut oats, cautions consumers to keep the flax meal refrigerated for freshness, but does not offer similar advice for its steel-cut oats (what does this say?)

Sprouthouse.com lists “Oat Groats Raw Organic” but says “These are NOT oats for oat grass.”  (and why not?  This statement does beg the question.)

Sproutpeople.com lists oats for growing oatgrass “these are the same seeds we sell for Oat Sprouts.  Hulless Oats do not usually grow a great crop of grass.”  Under the sproutpeople.com listing for sprouting seed, “hulless Nebraska oats” are listed as “Hulless, tender and very quick to sprout. These are a wonderfully tender grain with a mild sweetness. Raw, not cooked, not heated, not hulled.”  The claim is very clear, here, however confusing — if these oats are not hulled, how are they hulless?

The question of how those Nebraska oats got to be hulless is answered, at length, in Katherine Czapp’s article “Naked Oats”, on the Weston A. Price Foundation site , which suggests that “hulless oats” (avena nuda, as opposed to the more common avena sativa) were once commonly grown in America:

“Naked oats, so called because the kernels thresh free of the hulls, have been grown for centuries ….can also be easily used as porridge or other food for humans.

The nutrition profile of naked oats is quite impressive, with contributions rich in minerals and vitamins and a fat content rivaling that of corn, along with high-quality protein similar to that found in soybeans…… Naked oats also supply unsaturated fatty acids that contribute to the production of higher quality eggs, milk and meat products.”

This article also tells us that early colonists  grew “silpee”, also known as “pilcorn” and “peelcorn” (avena nuda), which they sometimes referred to as “corn,” both to feed their livestock and to make the traditional Scottish porridge “sowens.”

Seedsofchange.com, an on-line organic seed supplier, says of its avena nuda  (listed as hulless oats) “produces oats without a thick hull, easy process [sic]  for home use. ”

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT:  If your steel-cut oats have been made from “naked oats”, then they may well be raw.  If the oat groats you buy are from “naked oats”, then they may well be raw.  Pointedly ask your supplier/food market if the oats you are interested in buying can be sprouted.   If your oats are from “avena sativa”, the most commonly available oats in America and Europe, their rawness must be suspect. If this concerns you, you should track down the producer and pin them down to a specific yes/no answer on the question of heat-processing.

Online DataBase: Know How Long Your Comestibles Will Last

Raw Foods Right Now has just published an article about Still Tasty an online data-base which tells you how long your vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and oils (among other things) will last. I could re-write the article, but why re-invent the wheel? Go to RFRN and read their extensive review, or else just go directly to StillTasty.com

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY RECIPES

I have an ample collection of Christmas holiday recipes on my Holiday Recipes page.

I will also include a few more new recipes in the next day or so.

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!!!

NEW LINKS TO VISIT: two cool places I found by accident

I don’t even remember now how I found these two sites tonight… I think it might have been googling for a particular recipe that I still haven’t found… regardless, these are nice sites for raw recipes and other stuff…. you can mess around on the site when you get there, yeah?

VegWeb Raw Recipes… this is a link for the raw recipes.. the site has all sorts of recipes and information for vegetarians and vegans.. it is interesting to explore. I will be including it in the links on my LINKS page.

A site related to VegWeb, somehow (I got to VegWeb from there), and the vegweb homepage links to it) is VeggieBoards
This is a vegetarian site, but, with a little searching, you can find good raw food information and recipes.