Food4Thought is a commentary on the ethics of eating, food justice and contemporary ideas on food democracy as well as recipes. Did I just say the same thing three different ways?

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Raw Chocolate Cashew Pie

Crust:
1 cup dried coconut
1 cup walnuts
8 dates
mix in vita mix and pat into pie pan

Filling (from Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenny)
1 cup cashews soaks a few hours (makes them creamier)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup agave
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (I use www.Livingtreecommunityfoodscom)
1 cup plus 2 Tbls raw cacao powder
3/4 teas hazelnut or almond extraxt
Blend all ingredients in the vita-mix till smooth and pour over crust and refridgerate.
I added mango on top

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Tomato Soup in a minute, really

Tomato Soup in a minute
-boil water
- pour a mug full of water into blender
- 1Tbsp Quantum Nutrition Labs Tomato Concentrate (lots of lycopene!)
-1/4 avocado
- 2 tsp Nutrition Flakes (also Quantum Nutrition)
Puree and sprinkle sea salt and fresh pepper on top

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Roasted Delicata Squash Soup with Sage

-2-3 delicata squash (you can substitute other squash if you cannot find it but right now, they are very sweet!) - cut in half and scrap out the seeds and lay face down in a glass dish with water covering the bottom. Cook at 425 for 20 min. Cool and scrap out in a bowl.
-1 small apple peeled
-1 onion sauteed
-6 -8 cups water with 2 bouillon cubes (I use Rapunzel - the vegan one with sea salt and herbs)
-1 cup cashews (I use roasted no salt but you can experiment)
-Puree everything in 2 batches in a blender (hold the top down tight!) or Vita mix
add back to pot and add sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste and rubbed sage (from a spice store) or chopped sage leaves
note - the sage really makes this!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I have always disliked kale until Stacy Stowers showed me how to 'massage' it with lemon juice, garlic (I use a mashed shallot) and live olive oil (www.livingtreecommunityfoods.com). When I discovered it was the most nutrient dense vegetable on the planet, I had to find a way to like it. Actually, 'massaging' the leaves is kind of meditative.
- 1 head Kale
- juice one lemon, 1/4 cup olive oil, one head mashed shallot and pour over leaves and massage in
- chopped cherry tomatoes
- chopped yellow pepper
- black olives
- feta cheese sprinkled on top
- a handful of pine nuts
I think you'll like it!!

Dehydrated onion olive cracker/bread
This will only work if you have a dehydrator - I ordered mine on Amazon for $150
- 3 onions (sweet) - I usually don't use this many - 2 seems to work fine - chopped thin
- 3/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
-3/4 cup golden flax seeds
- fresh rosemary
- a little sea salt
- 1/2 cup chopped black olives (or more!)
Combine onions (hold about half back), seeds, salt and rosemary and puree in Vitamix. Take out and add the rest of the onions and the olives and spread on the dehydrator sheets and cook at 118 or lower for 12 hours and then remove the sheets and cook another 12 hours. Goes great with almost anything.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Don't be afraid of the purple carrots!

My Cocktail:
A few carrots - purple, yellow and orange- the more colors the merrier
half an apple
1/4 lime

Monday, November 8, 2010

Who's in charge of our food supply??? Say it isn't so!

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/11/08/obama-food-czar-is-former-monsanto-exec-one-of-the-four-horsemen-of-the-food-apocalypse/

A site that I like - it's about attitude - a humane attitude

http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/

Raw Chocolate Mint Pie

My interest with this pie is that I love chocolate and this is a way I can enjoy it everyday if I like, and know it's actually GOOD for me!
Here is the pie recipe:
Raw Chocolate Mint Pie
Crust: 1 cup brazil nuts
1 cup shredded coconut
6 dates
blend in the Vita-mix
pour into pie dish and press flat and up the sides on the dish.
Filling: 2 1/2 - 3 avocados - depending on the size
3/4 cup raw cacao powder
1/2 raw agave or maple syrup
1/2 teas vanilla extract - I use raw vanilla powder from www.livingtreecommunityfoods.com
1/2 cup mint leaves
1 1/2 Tbs coconut oil
3 dried figs (or 4 dried dates)
Puree in Vita-mix till smooth and pour over the crust and smooth till covers.

Sesame butter

Even if your food is cooked like this red quinoa, broccoli, tempeh, shallots and sweet potatoes - add raw sesame butter!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Raj Patel on Supermarkets

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/supermarkets

Raj Patel on Supermarkets

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/supermarkets?page=full&sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4cc82b5087652705%2C0

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Farmers Market Salad
Every Saturday night is Farmers Market night. I prepare a salad plate with whatever was at the market. This market plate is:
-Freshly made tofu and shallots
-live lettuce (root still attached)
-purple potatoes with thyme
green zebra tomatoes with Bufala mozarella and aged balsamic
-handmade spinach pasta with raw manchego
-drizzled with pumpkin oil

Monday, October 18, 2010

Raw Brazil Nut Milk

My philosophy is to introduce more live food where you can. Sometimes I just don't have time to prepare and the best I can do is peanut butter bumpers. But recently I found a way to make it a bit healthier - more live. I made raw brazil nut milk and cut up banana on top - yum! Here's how:
5 cups water
2 1/2 cups brazil nuts
Blend on high
strain through a nut milk bag (amazon would have it)

Friday, July 9, 2010

The TLT (thank you Franco!)
The Tempeh ~ Lettuce ~ Tomato (& Avocado)

- Lite Life Tempeh Bacon
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Avocado
- Veganaise
- Hemp bread or bagel (in the freezer section)

Put tempeh bacon strips in a little olive oil and saute until brown on each side and then assemble sandwich - enjoy a healthy version (and kind) on the BLT!

Friday, June 25, 2010

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/tell_president_obama_keep_your_promises_on_global_hunger

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Live marinara over spelt noodles with raw manchego cheese, pine nuts and avocado

Recipe
2 cups chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
1T lemon
1 date
1tsp rosemary
1 grind nutmeg
dash sea salt
3 sun dried tomatoes
1/4 of a purple onion, chopped
Puree and pour over spelt noodles (I like angel hair) and grate raw manchego over the top, sprinkle pine nuts and avocado.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The DuPuis Group invited Stacy Stowers to speak and prepare a raw meal. The Mediterranean kale salad and raw marinara over zucchini noodles with dehydrated onion rings were a hit but the key lime pie and pineapple upside down cake had everyone thinking "yeah, we can do raw!"
Recipes to follow.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Live Almond Pecan Pie Crust

Awakening our Relationship with Food - Schumacher College Course, Devon, England

Food is a mystery, source, and sustenance, meeting the heart of the matter in meeting the ingredients, oneself and others.

Full & Famished

I thought the following information from the WHO (World Health Organization)was of interest:
At least 1.1 billion worldwide get too few calories to ward off hunger, while another 1.1 billion or more of us take in too many. (Food for Life - The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating)

Friday, June 11, 2010

Stacy Stower's Happy Shake

1.The BASE:
3-4 cups fresh spinach.....GREEN is Glorious!
1/2 cup liquid base.....water, juice, coconut milk. it's your choice...
1T. coconut oil...good fat won't make you fat! This is essential for a healthy happy body, keeping you satisfied and metabolizing the spinach.

2.The HAPPY Part:
1T. Maca....for staminia, endurance, mental clarity and peak sexual performance for both men and women
1T. Raw Cacao (Raw Chocolate)...in it's Raw state chocolate is actually a valuable potent super-food loaded with nutrients and neuro-peptides very similar to the ones our bodies create when we are in LOVE!
1T. a super GREEN RAW powder....GREEN is highly alkalizing. This is crucial! Very important for wieght management and longevity!

I package and sell "The Happy Part"! This makes it one simple and easy step. just add 2 -3 Table Spoons of my premixed "Happy Part". send me a message here at facebook.com/stacyworld or email me at stacyworld@att.net.

3.BLEND!!!!!

4. Now start adding your favorite frozen fruit......bananas, berries, mango, papaya....i like to use bananas and bluberries.....enjoy!

Now go out and have the Best DAY Ever!!!!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Thank you Pepsi

Good News! PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi Solves the Obesity Crisis

By Melanie Warner | Apr 29, 2010

In a Q&A interview withFortune, PepsiCo’s (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi has taken the food industry’s love affair with exercise to a new level. Asked about Pepsi’s role in the obesity problem, Nooyi declared: “If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn’t exist.”

There you have it. Obesity, which costs the nation $150 billion a year in direct medical costs, solved. Now we can move on to cancer.

The problem with Nooyi’s statement — besides its absurdity, that is — is that science doesn’t back up the idea that obesity is caused exclusively by a refusal to get off the couch. In fact, recent studies have shown that food is a much more important component of weight gain than exercise. For instance, despite the proliferation of health clubs across the land and the nearly universal understanding that working out is good for you, exercise levels have remained remarkably flat over the past 20 years.

What’s changed is food. There’s way more of it available everywhere and we eat a lot more than we used to, 23% more calories a day in 2008 than in 1970.

And while exercise can certainly help with weight loss, to really lose significant weight without changing your diet might just require you to register for the Ironman Triathalon. Down one Starbucks(SBUX) venti caramel frappucino after a five mile run and the calorie-burning benefits are gone.

Even if you just want to counter the effects of the 50 gallons of sweetened beverage the average American consumers in a year — many of them sold by Pepsi — you’d have to run 800 miles a year, or approximately 2 miles every day. How many people are going to do that?

To be fair, the vegetarian Nooyi went on to talk about what Pepsi, which critics consider to be perhaps the most proactive and progressive of the food companies, is doing to make its food products healthier, especially in the “fun for you” category. (In the food industry, there are no bad foods or junk food.)

But it may not be a good idea for food company executives to talk about exercise at all, since it just lends weight to the criticism that they’re trying to divert attention away from the problem of too much bad food. As Kelly Brownell, an obesity researcher at Yale, puts it, “These companies don’t sell exercise, so why are they paying so much attention to it?”

While Ronald McDonald sure looks cute in sweat pants, it’s probably best to leave the fitness evangelism to Radu and Richard Simmons.


Marion Nestle

Virtually every food and beverage product is represented by a trade association or public relations firm whose job it is to promote a positive image of that item... It is the interest of food companies to have people believe that there is no such thing as a "good" food (except when it's theirs); that all foods (especially theirs) can be incorporated into healthful diets - which means that no advice to restrict intake of their particular product is appropriate.

Great food action site

www.fooddemocracynow.org/

Wendell Berry quote

How we eat determines to a considerable extent how the world is used.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Wendell Berry on Industrialism

Industrialism, which is the name of our economy, and which is now virtually the only economy of the world, has been from it's beginnings in a state of riot. It is based squarely upon the principle of violence toward everything on which it depends, and it has not mattered whether the form of industrialism was communist or capitalist or whatever; the violence toward nature, human communities, traditional agricultures, local economies has been constant.
I couldn't resist - henna hand decorating tangine.
While I was in Morocco, the Birthday Girl set up a cooking class at the beautiful La Maison Arabe in Marrakesh. Those of us who are vegetarian made a berber tangine.
It was very important to cut the vegetables right and design them in the tangine. I apparently, was not doing a good enough job designing my layout and the berber woman assisting the chef took the knife out of my hand to show me the right way - am I ever grateful!
Please note, there IS a difference between cut, sliced, diced and julienned!!
Ingredients - serves 2
- 2 carrots peeled and cut in half
- zuccini unpeeled and cut in hlaf
- 1 large potato, sliced
- tomoto, diced
- 1 garlic clove, peeled and cut in four
- turnip, peeled and halved
- small onion, sliced
- 1/2 small green pepper, julienned

Spices
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1 tsp tumeric
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp parsley
- 1 tsp coriander
- 2 Tbs olive oil

Cook on low heat in your tangine. If you can find a flat metal plate that goes on the burner and the tangine and it, use that! After half an hour of cooking check to see if you need any water but use sparingly. Good luck!

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.