Decatur Farmers Market

Oh farmers markets, how I love thee! Check out my spread today :) Nice bunch of daikon, Romaine/butter lettuce melange, 2 enormous zucchini, and 14 peaches! Can anybody say peach cobbler?! Mmmmmmmmmmm

Potluck excursion

Our Potluck Family decided to take a field trip to Lov'n It Live, a raw food restaurant in East Point Atlanta! Hooray for a successful outing!!

Sweet potato pie. We devoured it before we could get a picture! It was super creamy and delicious :)

Lasagna:

Pizza:

Quesadilla:

Strawberry cheesecake:

Our (mini) potluck family! :-D

Videos!

So I created an account for RawKu on YouTube but turns out I can post videos directly on here! Much better to have it all in once place. Be on the lookout for more videos!!

Wahooo!

Finished my juice fast yesterday and exercised a BUNCH! Wasn't planning on it all, but I biked, did yoga, and step aerobics. I spent some time on the elliptical Wednesday night also. So, quite a way to finish off my fast! Anyway, I'm back to solid food, wahooooo!!

For breakfast, I had a banana-spinach-coconut water-cinnamon smoothie, my fav. So creamy mmmmm.

Lunch was a lovely kale salad with spicy pineapple and scotch bonnet peppers (courtesy of El-Mahdi), dried coconut, raisins, coconut oil, almond slivers, and hemp seeds. Thanks to Joseph for the inspiration of pineapple and coconut in a kale salad! Don't think I woulda ever thought to do that :)

And finally, dinner. I've been wanting to make this for awhile and now I have!! Here we go... wait for it..... are you ready yet?! Raw vegetable Moroccan tagine! The base was, of course, couscous! Just soak raw couscous for 15 min in water and whaBAM! My couscous was a bit wetter than I prefer, but that was due to an issue with my strainer. For the sauce, I blended carrot, tomato, garlic, onion, olive oil, turmeric, saffron, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, molasses, salt, pepper, a Moroccan spice blend I have from France, and I'm sure some other various things that I can't recall at the moment. I poured that over cut up carrot, zucchini, tomato, raisins, and dates and tossed well. Spooned that beautiful mixture onto the couscous and added a few chunks of dried figs for garnish along with celery leaves. I know I know, there's no celery or figs actually IN the dish, but they made it look pretty and were nice flavor additions.

I am very pleased with this dish. If you can get past the fact that this tagine is a bit crunchy at times rather than mushy, it's actually quite pleasant. Nice and light, but with enough exotic flavors and umph to leave you quite satisfied. The more I ate it the more I liked it, I love sweet and savory combinations yummm. I love discovering new things, so rewarding! Ahh, my life is full... and now so am I ;)

And the juicing continues

Day 2 of my 3 day juice fast. Over halfway done! Way easier than 10 days, I must say. However, I will admit that I was rather shaky and actually felt downright horrible this morning... I was only drinking warm salt water from 7am-11am, you know, to *cleanse*. I did it a few times in my 10 day fast and was fine. While juicing a pineapple I thought I might lay down afterwards for a nap (I worked from home today) but I guess I just needed a lil suga'!

I was still surprisingly productive even though I was feeling quite horrid. I was thinking to myself, "Maybe this whole juicing thing isn't very good for me..." but I feel wonderful now! Had coconut water then made an elixir of garlic and lemon juice, which is supposed to be very healing. Finally I juiced 2 candy-cane beets and an apple. So, a fair amount of sweets today but I will juice more veggies tomorrow.

Even though I seem to feel a bit off sometimes from juicing, I think it's overall a good thing. It's kinda like giving blood: I've almost passed out on a few occasions, but I don't think that justifies not doing it anymore. So onward, juice!!

Another plus is that I come up with the most BRILLIANT recipe ideas during my juice fasts! I won't unveil it yet, but I will post pictures when I make it (Friday). I'm SO pumped, it's gonna be rawmazing!!

Here is a picture of the apple, carrot, lime, ginger juice from dinner last night. I used 2 granny smith apples, 1 pink lady apple, 1 large carrot, 1 lime, and a 1-inch chunk of ginger. Thank you to Amanda for recommending the delicious combination!

I added dried coconut and raisins to the pulp and formed fruit bars. Dehydrated them for a bit and then stuck 'em in the freezer. I'm excited to try these as little breakfast treats in a couple days :)

RAWK ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

Juice fasting, Take 2!

I haven't been very good about my eating habits lately... Still stickin to my parameters of no meat, eggs, and dairy (with the exception of seafood) but I've been eating out a lot, which is bad for my wallet and bad for my health! Decided to break the cycle with a 3 day juice fast. I'm gonna try to get back to better habits and eat at home more. I love going out to eat and the whole social aspect of it, but my body doesn't. Plus I've missed working in the kitchen, so I'm excited to give some more attention to my food and knives and appliances.

I'm looking forward to the Decatur farmer's market tomorrow afternoon. Since learning that couscous can be eaten raw (just soak for 15 min) I have been ALL about some couscous!! I want to make a raw Moroccan veggie tagine... I think it will be really good so I hope I can successfully create what I'm manifesting in my mind!

Anyway, no pictures today. Just had coconut water for breakfast and am about to have carrot, celery, yellow bell pepper juice for lunch. Planning on just aloe juice for dinner but I may need a little fruit juice burst. I'm thinking apple ginger, yummm. Toodles!

Ok ok, I can't post a blog without pictures, I just don't feel right. So here are a couple pictures from my album Obsession with Food: The Early Years :)

Potluck in Decatur!

We had a change of venue tonight because it was too chilly for Piedmont! Started out with just 4 but grew to 7 as the night went on. Here are some of our goodies!

Ok so I didn't cut any of these for the potluck but thought I'd share this cool little picture. It's of a beet! Got some at Morningside, turns out they are sometimes called candycane beets. They are pinkish/reddish on the outside and what I particularly like about them is no staining!! But apparently they are less nutritionally abundant. Still fun to mix it up sometimes :-P

My butternut squash "rice" with dried fruit, walnuts, and sage:

Kim's sprout hummus and flax crackers:

Rosita's papaya shake, so rich and creamy!

Michael's peanut/hazelnut/cacao butter-- Move over, Nutella!

Not raw, but didn't want the greens I had from beets and kohlrabi to go to waste, so I sautéed them with some sweet onions, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of nutmeg.

Kim's avocado/lemon/jalapeño/tahini salad:

Damage was done!

Doesn't look like this was a successful attack of the scarf!

Our Potluck Family 05.15.2011, minus Kim! We remembered just after she left :( But I could totally Photoshop her in!!

I think I'm going to do a 4 days juice fast this week. I need to reset myself into some better habits. And now off to bed! Thanks for stoppin by :-D