I heart Petoskey

Mom and I went on a little road trip to Petoskey recently as our belated Mother's Day celebration.  I picked the town using these requirements:  be able to attend at least one yoga class, natural foods store, veg friendly restaurant, and be by the water.  Petoskey was the destination =)  I was hoping to make some zucchini chips for snacking on the drive and to use some of the extra zucchini we have in the garden...turns out I think it would work better if we actually had a dehydrator ;)  They ended up being really tasty but just very slowly roasted. 

We've been harvesting lots of these babies as I'm sure everyone is right now, zucchini is one prolific grower!



I covered them with some olive oil, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, salt, and Italian blend spice.



a long time later after being in the oven on it's lowest setting, they looked like this. 



We enjoyed them with brown rice pasta and sauce instead of crunching on them in the car ;)



The leftovers were yummy cold too.

Oh well, I'm continuing to shop for our dehydrator, anyone have experience with TSM (if you can get past the name!)?  I really like that it's SS so I'm leaning that way over the Excalibur, I'd love any tips, likes, dislikes.  This week I watched a video of Abeba Wright making BBQ chips on the Renegade Health Show and really really really want to make them, they look so great don't they? 

Ok, back to the trip.  We left at 4am =)  in order to make our yoga class.  We traded turns driving and got out to stretch a few times to stay alert, but it was SO worth it as the class got us all sweaty and was such an amazing flow.  We went to Tiffany's vinyasa class at YogaRoots, she's a really wonderful instructor with a beautiful cozy studio, it ranks as one of my favorite classes!  Here's me outside the studio.



She was kind enough to direct us to  a couple of veggie friendly places in town.  We walked around Art in the Park for a while and then headed to Julienne Tomatoes for lunch.  JT is a really cool quaint place, it's very apparent they are popular in the community, make good fresh food with tons of local ingredients.  I had my favorite Gazpacho ever!  Man was it good.  (I love good gazpacho so much, I made a huge batch that we ate at my bridal shower but this was better (Mom doesn't agree, although I think she may be a little partial since her daughter made it ;) 



and the It's All Greek to Me wrap sans feta, which was super delish as well.  Here's a couple photos I thought were cute inside. 







Mom and I visiting Lake Michigan



and playing on the rocks =)





We stopped at Torch Lake on the way home.  It was a stormy chilly afternoon otherwise we would've gone for a swim, the water is gorgeous!



Can you believe how clear it is?  Amazing.



Mom and I, Torch Lake, really belated Mother's Day ;)  From here we headed to Traverse City and a super cool co-op, that wrap up in another post...



•Breathe deeply and appreciate the moment. Living in the moment could be the meaning of life.
   ~ Lululemon's Manifesto

summer food goodness!

The summer produce is SO great with lots of veggies coming into season, this is our loot from the FM this week. 



We've still been harvesting lots of zucchini, lacinto kale, basil, and green beans from our garden, but this week was the first for one of our tomatoes =)  Yea!!! tomatoes are one of my most favorite foods, have been since I was a kid when my Grandpa and I would sit and literally eat a full sized dinner plate overflowing with sliced summer tomatoes  (this is the time to enjoy them, not during the winter months, totally not the same thing, and WAY more food miles)  I've been known to take them as snacks on the go and eat them like an apple, mmm I love em!  This one is the early producer that we planted at 60 days, it's an heirloom Moskvich.  If you haven't had heirloom tomatoes, be sure to try them soon.  There are lots of different types with their own distinct flavors. 



This one was added to what is now our pretty weekly batch of raw marinara.



We all know how zucchini produces so it's been a staple lately in our meals.  The easiest way I've found is to just spiralize them into noodles to eat with sauce or any kind of toppings you have that you can throw together.  You do not need a spiralizer to enjoy them this way, you can make them into more fettuccini type noodles with a veggie peeler running down the side.  This was my lunch one day, topped with a fresh tomato, onion, pesto sauce that I had made earlier, Bubbie's pickles, etc.  One more zucchini down ;)



Another way to use up some zucchini is in many of the dressing recipes from The Raw Food Revolution Diet.  You can include your garden herbs by making the Green Goddess variation of the Liquid Gold Dressing.  We had a bunch of curly parsley handy and the dressing turned out super yummy.  Another zucchini and some herbs utilized, check!



I've been buying delicious green kale from Beautiful Earth Family Farm.  This week I bought 3 bunches of kale and knew that some of it was bound to become massaged salads. 

It's so easy, all I do is sort of julienne the kale (after you've removed the large stems) place it in a bowl and literally massage it with my hands (clean of course ;)  until it starts to break down some and the smell is so green and yummy, then I just add whatever sounds good that we have available.  This one included red onion, red pepper, walnuts, zucchini (more zucchini, check!)  raisins, and pumpkin seeds dressed with the Green Goddess from above.  Get your jaws warmed up kale salads require lots of chewing!



There was organic watermelon and corn at the market for the 1st time this week, we enjoyed lightly cooked non GMO corn on the cob and the watermelon was eaten in no time, yum, oh and yes it had seeds, we choose seeds here ;)  I don't know why I only bought two ears, I could eat like 4 myself!...I could also eat about 4 of those watermelons too, hee hee. 



a word on local organic garlic, it is the stuff man!  Check out the size of this head, all for $1. 



I soaked a jar of sunflower seeds in prep for a Raw Vegan Tuna Salad of Gena's.  Recipe here.  I added extra pickle juice of course ;)  I've been loving this wrapped in the cute cabbage leaves from the FM with yet another pickle tucked inside.





ok, in my opinion this will not fool any tuna lovers, but I am not looking to do that anyway, it's just a yummy salad full of good nutrition. 

other things full of good nutrients are green smoothies =) 



blueberries and black kale in this pretty purple one!



I've still been loving these Daiya rice tortilla quesadillas big time.  When you don't have salsa or raw marinara to top a little Green Goddess will work just fine =)



Hope you're all enjoying the season's bounty!  If you have any creative ways to use the zucchini harvest please send them my way =)  Until next time, enjoy your days.

Renewable energy in the flesh.

Over the 4th of July we joined my parents for a couple days and a night at their campsite in MI's thumb.  We packed the Jeep with our cooler (of water, fruit, some raw goodies, pumpkin muffins, and a quinoa and kale salad), our bikes, and our tent.  We repaired one of our tent poles, blew up our Thermarests and set up our camp for the night.  I love sleeping in our tent, even when you need to use an arm for a pillow =) 



Enjoying the great weather outside and a beautiful Sleeper State Park



My favorite tree on the campsite, see him? it's a wee little pine.



My Dad had spotted some wind turbines in the distance so we went to investigate and it turns out that this wind farm is where some of our GreenCurrents power comes from to our home!  How exciting to stumble upon this. 







The fields all around were full of beets, I really wanted to eat some greens, but no doubt they were probably sprayed with something toxic and GMO :/  Also I would not steal from a farmer's field.  I think these fields are sugar beets (that's how we make white sugar here in MI )  It was gorgeous anyway to see huge fields of greens. 



Here's a short video I took, you can hear how windy it is too.  The turbines are really kind of meditative to watch.  There are 30 at this farm. 



Driving around we found this too.  A solar project at the school. 



Here is the turbine at the school, this one was more noisy than the big ones and made of different materials. 



and here is the little turbine and solar array powering the superintendent's house, pretty cool. 



on to some food shall we?

We've been loving salads from our garden.  This is our romaine cos, beans, and basil, and FM onion, Bubbie's pickles, and raw olives.  The dressing ( I don't think is on in the pic) is Cumin-Cinnamon Vinaigrette from ED&BV. 



Reading HeatherEatsAlmondButter I wanted to try the pesto sauce she was raving about too.  The recipe is here on MakingFoodandOtherStuff.  I didn't have parsley, but I did have some frozen chive discs and subbed one of those in along with our garden basil.  I also added nooch and no jalapeno (I did have one, just forgot ;)  and no garlic.  I wasn't feelin the garlic and our potatoes that we were having too had a lot of garlic in them.  The sauce was super yummy and creamy from the soaked pine nuts, we loved it!  We used our last bag of kelp noodles (must remember to nose around some new to me groceries soon), a cucumber from the garden that I sliced super thin on the mandoline, and fresh beans snapped from the garden too, oh and a cute little pimento pepper from the FM as our noodles for the sauce. 





I'll leave you with this funny quote from a dairy bottle (it was being used as a flower vase) I saw at Oryana this past weekend. 

The Blueberry Patch

Last week before Mom and I headed North for the weekend we found our way here, to The Blueberry Patch.  I had gone last year at the end of the season and picking was slim.  This year I called way ahead to see when opening day was and that's when we went...blueberries EVERYWHERE =)  These berries are organic and certifiably delicious!  (On a side note the owners make flooring, bar tops, mantels, etc, out of reclaimed local barn wood, really cool, which is actually how I met them and found out about the organic berries.  One of my photo classes were working on images at Parker Mill park on a day when the Toth Brothers were restoring a building there and a couple of us were chatting with them/getting in the way of their work day and he said something like we grow organic upick blueberries, yea!  I was pretty excited to find local ones!    Also if you're local you can see the flooring they made in Zingerman's Roadhouse).



with our buckets ;)  I love this vine archway!





getting started...



beautiful berries



Mom gathering



Me sampling =) 



Having a good time gathering all the delicious antioxidants



Mom proved to be a faster picker than I by a couple of pounds, her giant bowl



My harvest



On the drive home I snacked on this Kelp Krunch bar that was given out in the goodie bags at VegFest this year.  I've been so curious about it and finally tried it.  I really enjoyed it, full of sesame seeds and kelp and flavored with vanilla and cayenne pepper. 





Once we were home my berries got a quick rinse off and layed out on sheets in the freezer before bagging.
These will be great in smoothies and probably some pancakes too over the winter months. 



and found Maggie resting on her catnip lemon pillow ;)



Yeowww is the recommended catnip toy in our house with a four paws up rate of approval! The lemon, fish, and sardines get thrown all over, around, and under everything, they go bonkers for them.  And apparently they are a good napping companion too ;) 

Breathe deep, enjoy the catnip, have a fabulous day!