Eat Dance Live

Sometimes in winter, when your face feels so cold it hurts, you just want to come home to something warm. A couple night ago, that something came in the form of a warm vegan bolognese sauce poured over gluten-free brown rice linguini. Now for your little bit of food history: Bolognese sauce is a meat-based sauce that originally came from... Bologna, Italy, of course! It was first documented in the late 18th century by the father of Italian cooking, Pellegrino Artusi (also the guy who penned one of the earliest recipes for minestrone, which he thought had made him fatally ill until he found out it wasn't bad minestrone, but cholera. No really, look it up.) The original recipe calls for meat, specifically veal (the cursed meat of all vegans), onions, carrots, and butter. Mushrooms were approved as a good addition. The recipe was pretty simple: nicely mince and brown everything, and then cook the whole thing in meat broth. My vegan recipe is almost just as simple... but healthier...

Ah yes, that time of the year has come anew. It's one of my favourite times of the year! It's neither Christmas, nor the first day you can go for a really good warm summer tan... it's pumpkin season!!! Because we're already a few weeks into the pumpkin harvest, the blog world has exploded with pumpkin recipes for all meals and all dietary choices. While I've immensely enjoyed eyeing everyone's recipes, this one particularly caught my eye: it's Ashley at (never home)maker's tri-coloured pasta with a pumpkin sauce of awesomeness. Spiralized veggies? Pumpkin? Broccoli? Maple Syrup? What more could I want in one dish? Despite it obvious appeal, I kept holding off making this recipe because it called for coconut milk and pumpkin puree, neither of which I really use on my high-raw journey. While I know that you can puree raw squash, I'm of the belief that that the squash family is best digested when it has been steamed or cooked to some degree. I find i...

The title of my post seems appropriate given that I started my day with a 3 pear smoothie (aka. blend three pears in a Vitamix), and had a peach and an apricot for lunch, but dinner was really were my mind was at when I came up with the title. Ever since I started making raw pasta, I've always felt the need to come up with some tremendous sauce to have with it, whether it's refining my raw marinara, making a new form of raw pesto, or flirting with the idea of raw alfredo. However it goes, I always look for something thick, saucy, and satisfying. However, I realized today that back in my cooked pasta days (and there were many of those), my go-to recipe was usually just pasta, olive oil, herbes de Provence , salt and pepper. If I wanted to make it fancy I would add balsamic vinegar, and my favourite toppings were some form of flash fried veggie-mix and/or smoke salmon. So all in all, nothing fancy per se. So today, I figured why go all fancy? Let's try the ol' olive oil, ...

I think I've found love again, not since spirulina have I had such a love affair: kelp noodles. The only opportunity I've had to have them were during a number of visits to Java Green . What is there not to love? They're seaweed and they're like pasta! Two of my greatest loves. Problem is I've never been able to find them on my own in any grocery store anywhere... However, just yesterday, they were wonderfully gifted to me . I absolutely love their texture and they made my night! To celebrate what will be the first of many dinner dates with kelp noodles, I turned them into a super tasty raw jobche. Jobche (or japchae or chapchae) is a traditional Korean dish made from cellophane noodles (no, not actual cellophane, they're made out of some bean or yam starch) stir fried with sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, and veggies typically including carrots, onions, spinach, and mushrooms. Understandably, Jobche actually means "mixed vegetables". So were mine... but...

So apparently, I can't survive one day back home without making some form of unbaked good... While it fills our house with yummy goodness, I have to say it doesn't agree 100% with my stomach. This is purely based on my own experience and intuition, but if there is one way I can caution you to stay 100% healthy and happy on a raw diet it's to stick with raw fruits and veggies as close to 100% as possible. On those days I feel fantabulous. The more dehydrated treats I eat, the less happy I find myself in terms of physical well-being (whether it's general health, body image, etc.). Though a handful of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit are a definite necessity, going over that allotment usually has negative emotional and physical consequences for me. I also find them kind of addicting, the more of them I eat, the more of them I feel I need. It's all about moderation, and I haven't been able to keep that in check recently. Obsessive? Perhaps. But I want to feel optimal, a...

Another day, another winner. Easter dinner last night was another delicious success: Meredith's ' Yes Please, Pesto Pasta' , and the name says it all! While we rarely eat seconds on a raw diet only because the food is so nutrient dense and filling, we didn't stop until we had two bowls this time, and my old self could have probably gone for more! I put this together by making Meredith's perfect pesto and mixing it with spiralized zucchini, diced red peppers and grape tomatoes, chopped up sun-dried tomatoes, all topped with her amazing nut cheese . What a delight! I used both the nut cheese and the pesto again today when we went for a picnic with my parents along the Washington Tidal Basin amidst our city's gorgeous cherry blossoms. My mom provided a wonderful spring salad, and I provided them with sandwiches. I made my dad a nut cheese, cornichon (the French version of pickles), cucumber, and peppered tofurky in a baguette. I made my mom a raw pesto, tomato, spi...