peace? peace. peace!

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the prospect of peace seems to be everywhere.  I see peace signs, people giving the peace sign, the word written out in home decor seemingly everywhere you look.  Yet I also witness lots of evidence of judgement, anger, hate, and lack of true compassion which is to the contrary.  In my daily life I make it a practice to be mindful of my thoughts, actions, and feelings.  ( I am not perfect, notice I said practice)  I ask myself am I really seeking and promoting peace?  Taking a quick look around the house...









I strive to walk the walk not just talk the talk.

Like so many things I believe that peace begins at home, and before it fills our homes, it is found in our hearts.  I also believe another part of this is to be self love, are we truly loving of ourselves?  Do we have peace with ourselves?  Can you really love another if you don't love yourself?  good questions!  I do feel it nourishes our mind and spirit to be truly happy and loving of others.  How often are we quick to find jealousy, resentment, anger, defense?  I encourage you when you do find that to acknowledge it and let it go, seek to turn it around into true happiness and compassion for both others and yourself.  Happiness afterall can be a choice, you can choose it.  So from feeling love and peace in our hearts we can truly spread it to others in our daily lifes, and it can spread out further to more and more beings.  If we all really want world peace I think we can begin by loving eachother, supporting eachother, surrounding ourselves with positive people and giving love to the less positive, embrace eachother, be kind to strangers and loved ones alike and animals, practice compassion in all ways that you can, sincerely wish well for others.

I would like to share a few quotes that I find very inspiring:

'Peace comes from within, do not seek it without.' ~Buddha

'A candle looses nothing by lighting another candle.' ~James Keller

'You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.' ~Buddha


'If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.' ~the 14th Dalai Lama



'Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.  Happiness never decreases by being shared.'  ~Buddha

'It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love, or how you love, It matters only
that You love.' ~ John Lennon

'When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.'  ~Jimi Hendrix

Thank you for letting me share what's been on my mind here =)

I've spent much of the past few days with my Momma and Daddio and now I'm home tonight missing them a bit =)  I'm so grateful for my parents, my cup runneth over.  This past fall Mom and I attended a screening of FoodMatters together, here we are early for the event enjoying our green smoothies.







Love you Momma, you better be resting ;)  xoxo

Thank you for reading!

Practice kindness, be well xoxo

cookies and Angelica Cornbread

While searching for gluten free bread recipes recently I somehow found my way to this youtube video.  I started watching her make her favorite bread from The Angelica Home Kitchen , a cookbook that I have!



On our next trip to the co-op we picked up some organic MI grown and milled cornmeal and I got started.  There are just a few ingredients to this recipe, it's super simple to make.  Cooked brown rice is an ingredient, so you will need to save time for that. 

Here's the blurb on angelica cornbread in the book:

'This is another of Angelica's signature dishes.  One of the restaurant's great traditions, it's been on the menu since Day One.  Despite the name, it is not what most people expect when they order bread.  It's a lumpy, moist, chewy, fiber-filled whole-grain loaf that featured cornmeal, brown rice, and rolled oats.  If you want energy to burn, have it for breakfast.  We get letters from all over the world asking for the recipe.  Some people consider it more of a curiousity than anything else.  We strongly suggest you try it yourself and find out where you stand.'  ~The Angelica Home Kitchen

I wanted to find out where we stand...

ingredients



mixing



prepping bread pan



a very full loaf pan with a little overspill on the way in the oven ;)



baked



I would suggest waiting for it to cool for a while before getting cutting and removing pieces.



the first slice came out like this



tastes the same though ;)  Once it had cooled I cut the remaining loaf and they came out perfectly.  Where I stand on this bread is that it's kind of peculiar and yummy.  To me it's like a cross of rice pudding, french toast, and a corn casserole.  I really enjoyed it again today with a leftover piece out of the fridge cold today after work, it's dense and will fill you up on these cold winter days. The only changes I made was using olive oil instead of corn and long grain rice instead of short.

Here's The Angelica Home Kitchen





Over holiday break I was digging around for a new cookie recipe to make which I had the ingredients for and found the almond anise cookies from Angelica as well.  Oh my were these cookies good, we came to the conclusion that they taste a lot like biscotti.  I also got to use our new cooling rack.



Now on to a raw cookie that is stashed in our freezer, these rock of course as I knew they would from Ani Phyo.  They're the Trail Mix Cookies from Ani's Raw Food Desserts.  You know I had to go ahead and gojis!  My supply is dwindling, I think a run to Zerbo's will be warranted here soon, as I'm running out of other raw supplies.  They are pretty much like a trail mix larabar that I keep in the freezer ;)  So good and cheaper (and less package waste) to make myself.  I can also make them organic which Larabars unfortunately are not.



lots of goodness in these.



they also travel well for a power packed snack on the go



Speaking of power filled things, I needed a power nap last week and look who was curled up next to me, the Macaroni =)  I took a couple of cute pics before I nodded off...



haha big yawn, she was tired too



a calico kitty paw, love.



Have you all seen this video?  It is especially sweet. 



They were also on NPR's All Songs Considered today.
A commenter on NPR left a link to this article. What an inspiring story, it will make you smile. 

yogurt trial #2

Over the holiday break I tried out our yogurt maker for the first time and by trial #2 I think I made some very liquidy yogurt ;)  So trial #1 resulted in what was probably yogurt as well, I think my choice of using sunflower seeds was a bit different than I was expecting.  My body didn't really want to eat it past tasting it.  So I wasted some seeds...trial #2 I (which is not raw) used a can of full fat coconut milk and stirred in two PB8 capsules that I opened.  I believe it was in the yogurt maker for about 10-12 hours.  Anyway, I am not a yogurt expert, and I'm not sure if it's good practice to open any ol' probiotic capsules to use, so do your research first.  My goal is to make a raw seed or nut based vegan yogurt.  This did however smell nice and tangy like yogurt and tasted really great.





it was thin, kind of like the consistency of kefir



I ate it with chia, leftover canned pineapple, and thawed strawberries.  It was actually really delicious.



Moving on to something that was a bit more of a success...kale chips and cheesy ones, oh baby!  I've made these in the oven before, but this was our first time dehydrating them.  I use Averie's Kale Chips recipe and LOVE it.  This time however I did not have a red pepper around so I subbed one large carrot and I don't add any sweetener in the optional part.  I think this batter could be spread on about twice as much kale, but I really didn't mind the extra noochyness =D  I never do! 

Stored away so I didn't just eat them all at once AND I even saved some ( it was hard) for my Momma to try because I know she loves them too. 



yummola



My other bunch of kale went into an experimental kale chip which as I was afraid, didn't turn out awesome.  I wanted to try some with ACV even knowing that it softens the kale, now I know for sure.  They got wilty before they dried and I used too much oil...no pictures.

Something that has been turning out pretty well is our homemade bread.  DDH's wheat bread turns out awesome.  I however like to make it wheat free, so this loaf was spelt flour, brown rice flour, and buckwheat flour.  We just do a basic vegan yeasted bread recipe and use the dehydrator to proof/rise it.  You know what smells great when it's baking??? yeast bread does, good grief.  You have to watch because if you're hungry you may just eat it all warm right out of the oven. 



A toasty snack with apple butter and our friend's raw local honey.



One of the chores we accomplished over break was to dust/clean the tops of our kitchen cabinets and walls.  Exciting, right.  Chores go so much quicker when we do them together!  It's so nice to have them dust free and until I find a good place for our smoothie glasses they'll be there too ;)







In honor of Nelson Mandela today (just because) I'd like to share some of his words that I love.

'Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. '

'We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.'

'For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.' 
~Nelson Mandela

getting to know our dehydrator

So way back around thanksgiving when we opened our dehydrator these were a couple of the first treats that we made. 
We both love sweet potato chips ( I actually fell in love with sweet pot fries working at a local bar and grill so the evolution began...fries at work...baked sweet wedges at home...now raw sweet potato chips in the dehydrator =)  We used Bitt's recipe for Curry Sweet Potato Chips.  They turned out delicious!  We have decided we will practice patience and let them dehydrate longer next time, ours were still a tiny bit chewy ;)  I think I'm figuring out that it would be really hard to over-dehydrate something. 

Here they are going in.  DDH (my hubby) sliced these nice and thin on our mandoline.  Our mandoline is one of his favorite kitchen tools.  He added exactly 3 items to our wedding registry:  1) a crock pot  2)  this mandoline  3)  a deep fryer, oh brother (don't tell him we could probably make sweet potato fries at home)  Item #3 I tried selling at our garage sale (we've used it one time).  DDH : "  you can sell it if you get $75 for it"  I tried...only had one interested lady and she said " he can keep it"  $75 was too much for her to spend on heart disease, good call lady. 



and magically chips are created!



They were yummy and sweet with curry!  Thanks Bitt for sharing your recipe. 

Next up were the Pure 2 Raw Twins Holiday Macaroons.  How ingenious to use gojis as the peppermint candy red, love it!

adding the 'candy'



It looks like it, but it's not black pepper ;)  I used raw wild-crafted vanilla which is a ground powder for the vanilla flavor.  I also used less agave, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup, I guess that would be about a 1/3 cup ;0  haha.



We did dehydrate them for about four hours, I love macaroons and part of that is the little bit crunchy outer shell which dehydrating created on these raw vegan ones =D  Yummy!  We took these to share to one of our Thanksgiving gatherings. 



So remember when I was loving how pretty the neti pots at the co-op were?  Well, not too long after that I dropped a Kanteen out of the cupboard and it landed on my neti pot and broke it...my mind went right to Aunt Jett or Aunt Frances in Practical Magic saying 'be careful what you wish for'.  I didn't really want to buy a new one, but I guess that's what I get.  Anyway, I picked out this pretty one. 



These from Baraka are handcrafted in the US and are lead free and dishwasher safe.  I really love it for how cute it is, but I also like that it has a larger capacity and the neck is easier to hold on to during use while pouring. 





This is a once a day habit I'm glad that I have ;) 

While all our ourside snow here is gone from our rain storms and 50 degree temps last week (what?) there is still a glass snowman on our kitchen sill.  Isn't he groovy?  He's one of my favorite holiday decorations. 



Hope the sun is shining where you are too. xoxo

birthday and NY cheesecakes

So we've been branching out from our standard raw strawberry cheesecake to a couple of new recipe flavors.  All the recipes have come from our Sweet Gratitude recipe book. 



My Momma's birthday was a few weeks ago and we made her a Mint-Chip Cheesecake.  The crust was made with almonds, raw cacao, and coconut, yummy!





I couldn't find fresh organic mint that I wanted to buy (ok I did find an organic plant at WF, but it was a 'mint julip' type, I really wanted something more like spearmint) so to make the green color we used one scant teaspoon of spirulina and to make the mint flavoring we used 1 Tablespoon of organic mint flavor.



I think we did pretty well with our swirls.  I'm looking forward to swirling some more, it was fun. 

 

We were lucky enough to get to share some with Mom and Dad on Christmas Eve, here's my piece.  It was delicious.



This morning we filled our first order with a lemon and wild blueberry cheesecake.  We only taste tested the batter, but kind of think this is our new favorite!  This crust is mostly almonds, some walnuts, and a little coconut (I liked the addition of coconut to the mint cacao crust).



We layered lemon batter (I used about 1/4 cup less almond milk in case the frozen blueberries brought much extra water with them) with organic wild blueberries.



and finished the top with more blueberries and shredded unsweetened coconut



Hoping this turned out great for our first customer! (my Momma ;)

So you don't think that we're living off cheesecake alone, this was my lunch today:
Romaine, broccoli, Bubbie's pickles, avocado, and dulse salad with dressing of ACV, olive oil, cumin, mustard powder, and S+P.



and this morning we started off with green smoothies:



green curly kale, spirulina, blueberries, banana, dates, pineapple juice, and a red navel orange



blended in the unwashed (from the cheesecake) Vitamix, yum.  A great way to start the day =)



Hoping your days are starting well in 2011!
We are again watching some football and waiting for the cats to try out their new beds...so far they still like to hang out with us on the couch and our bed...