Friday, June 1, 2012

Food Revolution Update!

Whenever the weather starts getting nice outside the amount of posting I do on here tends to go down considerably! I have been meaning to update you on our Food Revolution Day for the past couple of weeks, but I just keep getting sidetracked! So here ya go!

If you remember, myself and 3 other local food bloggers got together on May 18th to support Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day. We all made homemade organic dishes to share at a big buffet style get together. It turned out fabulous!

It took me about 5 hours to prepare my dishes! Sooooo worth it though!! I soaked the nuts the night before so they were ready to go. I made raw lemonade, Baby Bok Choy Salad with Asian Ginger dressing, raw taco boats, and two desserts, raw cookie dough and cacao tarts! 

Click on the items below to see my previous posts with the recipes: 

Almonds and cashews.

I'm not going to lie, it took me forever to make all of this juice!

I LOVE this juice in the summer!
I cleaned and washed all of the baby bok choy for the salad.
Before I put the juicer away I juiced the oranges, lime, and ginger for the dressing.
 
This dressing is so good. I think I like it because it's different. It's easy to get into a rut with dressing or just pour it out of a bottle because it's easy!
Ingredients for the dessert.
These little cookie dough bites were actually quite a hit! My husband loves them, but the tarts I made are my favorite.

I added cabbage and carrots to the salad. I was going to add sugar snap peas, but I ran out of time.
Raw "cheese" for the raw taco boats. It's super super easy to make a raw taco meal! I think I lost my picture of the raw taco "meat" but it consists of almonds and looks much like regular meat does.
The finished product of cookie. I put them in the freezer so they didn't melt. They contain coconut oil!
Laura and Derek Distin hosted, which was perfect because they have an adorable house! Homemade pasta and veggies, muffins, homemade ricotta.......
Freshly made homemade bread.
Freshly made bread and quinoa salad.

Ellen and I enjoying the beautiful weather outside!
Romaine lettuce leaves for the taco boats. There's also some frittata's back there that were delicious.



Homemade salsas, asparagus, and fish for little bruschetta type appetizers! Yum!

My raw desserts. Love love love those little tarts! I usually make 6 large ones and I get pretty protective of them, meaning that I dislike my husband to eat them. I know it's a bit selfish, but they are SO good!
The best part was watching all of the kiddos play in the back yard! They were so cute!
I claim the one of the left here!


Andy and my husband.
Becca and I. Becca does the homemade family style cooking.
Yes, that's my little man with the pink golf club. I'm so proud!





From right to left: Ellen Jordan, Derek Distin, Becca Voeltner, and me. And a big thanks to Laura Distin for helping to host and support us all! Click on the names to view their own personal food blogs! I highly recommend that you visit their blogs. They are all much more consistent with blogging and do a wonderful job!! Derek takes an "Italian fusion" gourmet approach, Becca and Ellen focus more on home cooked family foods, and of course I do the raw thing!

It was a complete success and we are all looking forward to doing this again next year. Hopefully we'll have a bigger crowd next year too!!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Raw Homemade Lemonade!

RAW HOMEMADE LEMONADE!!



I absolutely love a glass of lemonade when the weather is warm, and it can't just be any ole lemonade!! This raw homemade version is super delicious!! Not sure if you've ever read the label on store bought lemonade, but it has a lot of ingredients in it. For example, here's the ingredient label on one store bought version that actually claims to have no artificial sweetners or flavors. 

Ingredients
Sugar, Fructose, Citric Acid, Contains Less than 2% of Maltodextrin, Natural Flavor, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Citrate, Magnesium Oxide, Calcium Fumarate, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Color, Yellow 5 Lake, Tocopherol (Preserves Freshness).

It's too bad they have to throw in artificial colors! So, skip the chemicals and try this super healthy 2 ingredient recipe!! 


INGREDIENTS
1 whole lemon unpeeled
3 apples (I used gala)

This was enough for 2 small glasses. (this will also depend on how much juice your juicer yields too) If you are serving a large group, just adjust the amounts above in the 1:3 ratio. If your taste buds prefer it a little different, play with the amounts and adjust it to your liking. This has just been my favorite ratio so far!!
 Here's my kid version! I added about 4 carrots to the recipe above just to add a little veggie, but without drastically changing the taste. Gabe loved it, and Eric drank the rest. He was surprised at how much it actually tasted like lemonade despite it's

 orange color!