LifeIsn't it amazing how sometimes you're just happily going along, doing your thing, living your life and then WHAM! you get faced with a whole lot of stuff all at once? Two days after my last post, when my grandad died, my beloved darling cat Asante Sana (Sana for short) had to be euthanaesed. I was utterly devestated. I don't believe there is a word for the excrutiating pain I felt, although I'm sure many many of my readers who love animals very dearly, know what I'm talking about. Making that decision to have that needle stuck in the leg of your best friend/baby is beyond horrible. It was very sudden and unexpected, which compounded the problem - last time I had to make that decision, my beautiful girl had been suffering with a brain tumour for several years and I knew it would be coming but this was totally out of the blue. Finally, to make it even worse, there was a drug which would possibly have helped her but because we had to fly across the country for my Grandad's funeral so I couldn't be with her to try it out.
But enough about being sad - not one to be without a cat for long, while in South Australia I returned to a lovely but very very VERY under-funded no-kill shelter that I used to volunteer at before we moved for my university study. I went wanting to get an old, sick, pathetic cat that no one else would want... what I wound up with was Ruhsa (which means Liberty in Swahili). She is an 11 month old ball of fluff that was shy-er than any cat I've ever met at the shelter - she would not come out from behind a large steel drum where she was hiding in a fluffy basket and so I decided that she was not likely to get to go home with anyone else since they wouldn't even know she was there. When she got home (after a three hour plane trip!) she turned out to be friendly, playful and loving. It took a couple of days but she even gets on amazingly well with Casper the dog and even seems to be okay with Bliss the rat. Enough talk - here's some pictures:
Ruhsa making herself at home on my bed
Play fighting with a stuffed dolphin.
We think she might have Ragdoll in her breeding - what do you think? Anyone know much about ragdolls?
Okay now, enough about life - this is a food blog and food you shall see. On the day in between the day that my grandad died and the day that my cat died, I had organised a raw picnic. It was a huge success with lots of great people and delicious food.
Here's the spread.
Dani's delicious contribution, a fruit pie - I think I ate about 1/3 or even 1/2 of this myself! :-)
Here was my contribution, angel hair pasta (aka zucchini from the spiraliser) with spaghetti bolognaise. It was devoured although I think the chocolates (pictured in my last post) were perhaps a touch more enjoyed :-)
May bought a Mumbai Curry - everyone said it was really delicious but it was waaaaaay too spicy for my little tongue! One mouthful and I was just about running away.
Here is everyone: Dani, Me, May (back, left to right) and Rachan, Tracey, Kathy (front, left to right). May's husband, not 100% raw by any means unlike his lovely wife (who was attending her first picnic), was behind the camera. Tracey (a friend of May's, also at her first picnic and feeling excellent having lost 6kilos!!! in only 3 weeks of raw) bought a scrummy fruit salad while Kathy's contribution was a durian and Rachan bought a salad that everyone but me devoured - major dressing ingredients were coriander (cilantro) and ginger, both of which I hate and make me feel ill.
And quickly before I go, I have dinner from two nights ago - it is called 'The Gratest Salad in the World' and is from Shazzie's
Detox Your World. I didn't grate as much as it calls for - I didn't have any zucchini so that was gone altogether and I decided to do my pumpkin on the spiraliser to make it pretty! Yum.
A tough time in Blog LandIt seems that bloggers haven't been having the best time of it lately, so I would like to extend my deepest condolences to
Don't Get Mad, Get Vegan who recently lost a baby she never had the chance to meet and also to
Tania who lost her father suddenly. Big cyber hugs to you guys!!
Yesterday morning my Grandad died. It was, however, not a shock because he had lung cancer and his condition has been steadily decreasing for the last couple of months although everything happened so much faster than I could have imagined. That's the circle of life I suppose - he was 72 years old, he had lived a good and very interesting life. Although I don't support armed conflict at all I am still proud to say that he fought for his country despite having three young children, and he was also present at the going up of the Berlin Wall and was able to help civilians cross it whilst they were being shot at. I loved him dearly, here is a picture of us at christmas 2005.
Now lets get onto food! Here we have some 'rawviolis' as I like to call them. Thinly sliced zucchini is used in place of pasta and the filling is a blend of avocado/mushroom/garlic/lemon juice/maybe some other things.
You all know how much I love durian but last week I was very excited to discover these little guys (considerably smaller than durian's you've seen here in the past). They are D-24 variety durians from Malaysia, as opposed to the Mornthong variety from Thailand that are most widely available. These did have quite a different taste, I'm not sure I like them as much but what I did like is that these are 'naturally grown' aka uncertified organic. I hate the fact that durians are one of the only things that I ever eat that is conventional.
Lastly two photos to really get your mouth watering, these are little (raw vegan, of course!) chocolates I made for a raw picnic we're having today. I did make more than this but only photographed these ones. I can post the recipe on my other blog for you - it requires some slightly unusual ingredients but I think its worth it. I can't eat more than one at once, they're too sweet, but they are very good and taste very much like 'real' chocolate.
From another angle:
I'll come back later with picnic photos!
I have lots of Food!Hello everyone! I finally have lots of yummy new pictures to share with everyone so please sit back and enjoy!
Firstly, I showed you some of my fruit from the market last week so I thought this week you might like to check out some green stuff. THere's broccoli, parsley, corn, cucumber, sweet potato leaves... YUM!
This is a recipe from Shazzie's 'Detox Your World' (I know, I know, I haven't made any Shazzie recipes for AGES!!) It is simply called
Cucumber Salad and the ingredients are actually only supposed to me cucmber, raw tahini, lemon juice and paprika. I made the dressing as written (well, mostly - I never ever make a recipe with exact amounts, mainly because they are rarely written for more than one person), however, my idea of a 'salad' is not just cucmber coated with dressing, so I added some other non-sweet fruits, yummy home-grown tomatoes and crunchy organic red capsicum (bell pepper). I very rarely use dried spices in recipes but I chucked in a little bit of paprika, less than called for. Unfortunately, I was using home grown lemons and i tend to forget that they have a MUCH stronger flavour than normal (even organic) lemons and so I had to add more tahini, some water and coconut water to the dressing to try and get rid of the overpowering lemony sourness. It was okay in the end and the salad overall was nice, but it would have been better with less lemon!!
On Monday I was feeling like 'pasta' with an avocadoey sort of sauce. Well no, I 'll be honest - what I really wanted was to eat a big faat bowl of guacamole, which in my mind is actually just a big fat bowl of blended avocado since I don't add much to my guacamole. Sadly, this is not exactly what I wanted. By no means was it bad, in fact it was very nice, but much more tomatoey than what I wanted. I'll post the recipe on my other blog anyway though.
There was a long conversation on the
Raw Pleasure forums the other day about someone craving an apple and cinnamon flavour combination, in any form. Someone suggested just slicing apples and drizzling them with agave nectar then sprinkling cinnamon on top. I wasn't enthralled by this or anything but felt like something a bit different to what I normally eat so I made myself some date sauce (don't use agave) and mixed it up with apples sliced on my mandoline and a sprinkling of mesquite meal instead of cinnamon, plus a few raisins. It was nice but nothing stunning - I would have preferred eating some apples, some raisins and some dates separate from each other. I'll post that recipe on my other blog too though.
