Reunited with my Kitchen

After a rejuvenating trip on the Continent, I'm back and ready to start my new life in Canada for real this time! The way I've been eating over the last little while has totally justified my recent choice to adopt a more LFRV lifestyle (that being Low Fat Raw Vegan). That means a focus on living raw fruits and veggies, while treating nuts, seeds, and dehydrated goodies as goodies not every day foods. Having inadvertently followed a LFRV diet over the last little while, I've been feeling amazingly energized and happy in ways I haven't in quite some time!

However, that hasn't stopped me from getting right back into the game since my return. After all, I still have a
hungry monkey loving partner I take joy in feeding. First, as you may have noticed from my stay in Santorini, I've been most recently obsessed with the Santorini Salad. I loved it so much that I exported some of its main ingredients from Greece into our home. Already, I've made it twice with authentic black olives and caper leaves.

Like the original salad, I layered romaine, green cabbage, cukes, carrots, green peppers, then sprinkled the top with sundried tomatoes, caper leaves, and olives. All that mixed in with a dash of olive oil and pepper to taste (no need for salt because of the sundried tomatoes and olives). I think mine was pretty authentic tasting!

Next, I've also been trying out all sorts of breads since that's the thing Andrew always says he misses the most from our non-raw days. In honor of that, I most recently attempted a flax & sunflower bread inspired by Averie's Gluten-Free Vegan Sweet Seed Crackers. Instead of making them sweet though, I added sundried tomato, salt, pepper, thyme, and rosemary, and ground the seeds finer than the original recipe recommended. The product was this delicious sandwich that Andrew feasted upon for dinner with some sliced veggies and fermented nut cheese. The sammie had raw hummus, marinated zucchini slices, romaine, and tomato.

Finally, I've been really keen on trying Miss Mer's Sprouted Rye Bread. Though we haven't tasted it yet, it's currently in the dehydrator and already looks and feels pretty authentic. On top of that, I had a lot of extra sprouted rye so decided to make something up to finish it. (Sidenote: Always remember that the yield of sprouted grain is much greater in volume than what you soaked, aka. 4 C of sprouted rye berries means you should sprout less than 4 C of dry rye berries.) So with the 3 1/2 C of sprouted rye berries I had leftover from my "mistake", I decided to make a sweeter muesli-styled bread, inspired by an old favourite, the Pita Break's Breakfast Muesli (my untold secret is that I think it tasted even better when it was getting slightly yeasty with age). Mine were made with:

Raw Muesli Bread

3 1/2 C sprouted rye berries

3/4 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp raw honey

1/4 C sunflower seeds

1/4 C raisins

1/4 C fresh apricot, chopped

1/8 C walnut, chopped

1/8 C hazelnut, chopped

2 dates

cinnamon, ginger, allspice, mace, cloves

1. Blend rye berries in your Vitamix (or high powered blender) until it has a doughy consistency. As Meredith notes, if you're using a blender, do it in small batches because your blender will overheat and go into thermal shock, and you wouldn't want to do that to your Vitamix, would you?

2. In a bowl, transfer rye dough and mix in remaining ingredients and mix well with hands.

3. Form into pitas or into a loaf about 1.5 inches thick and place on dehydrator tray at 110 for about 6 hours.

They're awesome! As always, my kitchen was by far one of the things I missed most. However, reunited once more, I know we will create beautiful things together as we always have.