Monday, April 26, 2010

Green Up

Hi Space....I am back again...to fill in my blog space this week..been busy feeling a bit low the past 2 weeks... Unfortunately sometimes I let myself get attatched to the animal cruelty cause too much and don't look at things as I should in a positive light...!!

It is difficult sometimes our lives....we are 'supposed' to feel happy and positive all the time, whilst as we look around there is so much on this planet that needs "fixing"...and it is easy to let yourself drown in unhappiness and unfairness..... and I guess the ego too..! And you are not supposed to admit these things either...just be happy, be delightful, smile, enjoy, and don't allow yourself to feel sad!

However I just let it be there and now it's gone! So, chin up, get over myself, do what I can in my life and be happy and thankful!! I know to 'do' these things, feel 'happy and thankful' that is, but sometimes I allow myself to get lost in deep deep thought...and you can't get much sense out of me as I am kinda, as my partner might describe.... "outerspace"
But I am back now!!................. Hello!! hehe

So...little update....we are hitting our first school tuckshop this week with an extra quick powerpoint on how to "Green Up" the tuckshop area for schools...cows farting and all that to show the effects all the factory farming has on our environment, so I will keep you updated with the principal's reaction...we have a lovely vegan lady with our first school contact so cross your fingers for us!! In the meantime, as promised, I have a FANTASTIC new recipe for 'Ginger Pudding"

Did your grandma used to make you this?? Well it is my partners favourite, and I got the "non-vegan" recipe from his mother,passed down from the grandmother, and I "greened" it up, and I do not tell a lie, maybe a white one to my partner, but he does not know the difference between vegan and non vegan ginger pudding! He even liked the soy custard!!
Hopefully his grandma is smiling at me from the heavens......here it goes...It is SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO good!!!

STEAMED GINGER PUDDING
2 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp nuttlex margarine (or any non dairy margarine)
1 heaped tsp powdered ginger
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 cup soy milk warmed
Mix with blender/mixmaster and put into a steamed cake tin...if you don't have one of these or you don't know what they are, then ask any lady born before the 1970's and then head to a lifeline shop in the cake tin section. Fill the tin with mixture and steam for 2 hours! This is an awesome dessert!! Don't forget to drown it in the next recipe!
SOY CUSTARD
1 tbsp cornflour
1 1/2 tbsp raw sugar
1 cup cold soy milk
/2 tsp vanilla extract
Mix cornflour tosmooth liquid with little cold milk
Heat remaining mild with sugar
WHen near boiling, remove and stir in cornlour
Return to heat and boil, stir constantly for one minute, and add vanilla
Bon Appitite Friends
And remember, be happy and thankful!! hehe

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Mr. Vince Spirooli

The most exciting thing happened to me today...my Spirooli arrived. "Spirooli?" I hear you say, as though I've gone a bit loopy. Yes ladies and gentlemen....SPIROOLI (or, as Dave has named it, Mr Vince Spirooli - our new best friend). It is a vegetable slicer that is nothing short of awesome.

When I was thinking about going raw I never wanted to buy tools to be raw. To me, that kind of defeats the purpose of eating whole foods in their natural state and keeping things nice and simple. BUT, on other raw websites I keep seeing recipes for zucchini pasta and I have been craving it. I love zucchini and my attempts at trying to simply slice the zucchini thinly to create "pasta" failed miserably - I just had long zucchini sticks that didn't remotely resemble spaghetti.

So, now that Dave has put me on this 3 week challenge, I decided it was time to look around for something that could do the job a bit better than I can and make my raw food exciting!!

You may not get as excited as me over spirals of zucchini pretending to be pasta topped with a cold sauce...but, to me, this is the best purchase I've made in a very long time. (Note to skeptics: don't burst my bubble - this looks EXACTLY like pasta and when you leave the sauce marinating in the 'pasta' for a while, it goes all soft... just like pasta!)

Here is the recipe for a lovely "pasta" I made:

Sauce (adapted from one I found at
Raw Food Punk):
½ red capsicum
1 clove of garlic
½ cup packed fresh basil leaves
3 tomatoes
¼ cup olive oil
cayenne pepper
handful of black pitted olives

Directions: Make pasta using a spiral slicer. Put all ingredients of sauce into a food processor or blender. You can also add mushrooms for a chunkier sauce. Serve sauce on top of zucchini ‘pasta.’
Optional extras to serve on top include:
marinated artichoke hearts
more olives
halved cherry tomatoes
(I added all of the above!)

It was scrumptious and my main man Vince is definitely earning his keep!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The RAW Journey

I thought it was time to give you a bit of an update on my attempt at going raw. I have stumbled a few times and, to be honest, I have not really put any pressure on myself to stick with it wholeheartedly; rather, I have decided to eat as much raw as possible but if I feel like something cooked then I make sure I have it. Otherwise I will go crazy and stress out about it. Who wants to stress about something as glorious as food?

Below are some of the delicious creations that I've had
over the last week or so...

Big fat fruit smoothie (see above)...This has a bit of everything - watermelon, banana, pineapple, sunflower seeds, spinach, frozen berries, pink grapefruit and some water. So refreshing and very very filling!


Nori rolls filled with veggies. Even without the rice, this attempt at sushi was
really yummy. I filled the nori sheets with avocado, sprouts, capsicum and asparagus.






If I do say so myself, this was an awesome salad. I bought a jar of marinated artichokes and a jar of olives from the supermarket and tossed them with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado, sliced zucchini, parsley, and topped it off with a homemade hummus dressing on top.


Dave has upped the anti for me and challenged me to go three weeks completely raw without any faltering. This was inspired by him seeing a program the other day which featured a doctor talking about how adapting a completely raw diet has proven to heal, or at least assist in the healing, of many diseases, including cancer.

He has encouraged me by promising that if we do this, we will then treat ourselves by going on a little journey to Lismore and the surrounding areas in Northern NSW. Dave just got back from a trip there over the weekend and cannot stop raving about it. Apparently the Channon Markets down there are huge and full of goodies and there are a couple of vegan restaurants and even a vegan ice-cream parlour down there! In fact, he said the best restaurant in the ENTIRE WORLD was down there, called 20,000 Cows. Apparently the owner is a food scientist and knows exactly which foods complement each other to bring out the best flavour. Dave particularly liked the beetroot chocolate cake...sounds interesting!

So this is my challenge, but I'm sure with such a great treat at the end I'm going to be able to do it easy! Although it is cold this morning and baked beans have been on the brain...

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Lessons From Nauru

Over the weekend I was chatting to someone who had traveled extensively through Europe and he was saying that he spent ages in a country called Andorra. I had never heard of this country and he explained that it is the smallest country in the world other than the Vatican. It's not, Monaco is (just as I suspected) but researching this country, that I had never heard of, led me to a list of the 5 smallest countries. (There is a point to this so stay with me....) In the list of the 5 smallest countries (in which Andorra didn't actually feature, but hey we can't all be right all the time) Nauru was one of them.

I found the description of Nauru really interesting as it is an island nation and you can almost look at it as a small sample of exactly what will happen to the world if we keep going the way we are going.

You may have heard of Nauru because it is home to an Australian detention camp. Anyway, this is what the site said (and please note that I didn't go searching around to find out if this is all actually true, I have copied and pasted directly fromThe 5 Smallest Countries in the World).

"Nauru is the world’s smallest island nation, the smallest independent republic, and the only republic in the world without an official capital.

Nauru only has one significant source of income: phosphates from thousands of years’ worth of guano or bird droppings. This proved to be both a boon and a bane for Nauruans – for a long time, its residents enjoyed a relatively high level of income as the country exported its phosphate like there’s no tomorrow.

The government employed 95% of Nauruans, and lavished free medical care and schooling for its citizens. Most didn’t take advantage of this offer: only one-third of children went on to secondary school. The adults didn’t really work, either – office hours were flexible and the most popular pastime was drinking beer and driving the 20-minute circuit around the island. For a while, Nauru was a paradise – for a brief moment in 1970s, Nauruans were even amongst the richest people on the planet.

Nothing lasts forever and sure enough, Nauru’s phosphate reserves soon dried up and left 90% of the island as a barren, jagged mining wasteland. Wasteful investments (like buying hotels only to leave them to rot) and gross incompetence by the government (former presidents used to commandeer Air Nauru’s planes for holidays, leaving paying customers stranded on the tarmac!) didn’t help either.

As if that’s not bad enough, Nauru is also beset by obesity problem. Decades of leisurely lifestyle and high consumption of alcohol and fatty foods have left as many as 9 out of 10 people overweight! Nauru also has the world’s highest level of type 2 diabetes – over 40% of its population is affected.

So now, Nauruans are poverty-stricken and fat – but they are trying to turn things around. With no natural resource left, in the 1990s, Nauru decided to become a tax haven and offered passports to foreign nationals for a fee. This attracted the wrong kind of money (but a lot of it): the Russian mafia funneled over $70 billion to the tiny island nation. Things got so bad that most big banks refused to handle transactions involving Nauru because of money laundering problems.

This led Nauru to another extraordinary money-making scheme: it became a detention camp for people applying for asylum to Australia!"

Between this little look at what was once paradise and the movie Avatar, I think this planet could be heading for destruction if we don't change our ways....