RAW creativity

I bought the best book! Its called The Raw Truth (second edition) by Jeremy A. Safron, it is 1/3 pure incredible information about nutrition, life and food and 2/3 recipes. Beautiful recipes, that make my brain flurry with happy hormones and chemicals. I finger the recipes like I am touching something so valuable in my hands. Combinations and flavours I have never seen in recipe form. Many of the recipes are for things I buy, paying upwards of $8/ 100g at health food stores. And right there in front of me on the page are the measurements, the instructions and more importantly, the ingredients, all laid out pretty for me. The possibilities are monumental. So much food, so much vitality written in those recipes... and yet the first thing I make to dehydrate, I just wing-it, that's just like me.

Steve says I can never stick to a recipe, and I am sometimes flustered at how strict he follows recipes. I only need recipes for things I can't feel or create intuitively. The food I know, I know very well. Being a good cook means knowing how food behaves when sliced and mashed or cooked and dried. I have created this recipe because its kinda like fruit leather, and its a nice baby step into the world of dehydrating.

Dehydrating is going to teach me patience and hone my prep skills. A good friend of mine, Barbara, runs an amazing business called B Love. She creates many raw, sprouted and dehydrated foods to sustain and nourish. She recently said to me that working with fresh food can, at times, be stressful. When I first heard this I thought it was a funny idea. Fresh food seemed so simple, i thought, simple because there was no cooking involved. At one point we have all ruined something by cooking it too long or too hot, but never by NOT cooking it. I think I just figured out what she meant while planning out a few recipes I want to dehydrate.

As I started writing out the recipe, then writing out the soaking times for each ingredient, and the sprouting times, and the prep time and then the drying time, I became overwhelmed. How can I fit this into my schedule? As a shift worker I don't have alot of time home, other than day's off, how am I going to work so many different prep steps into my days.... Wow, all of a sudden a little thing like making dehydrated carrot cake balls just turned into a big job. There is alot of planning involved, and I am only preparing enough for Steve and I, Barbara makes hundreds of food items a week.

Soaking? Sprouting?

Seeds and Nuts need to be soaked to release an enzyme inhibitor that makes them hard to digest. Why is that inhibitor there? Well seeds are designed to pass through a mammals stomach intact so that the seed can create a new plant once it is sent back to the earth. Makes sense right? You sprout a seed, nut or grain to increase its nutrition. It is a baby plant, full of life force.

It is little things like this that humble me on a constant basis. Like how in Yoga I will never master a pose, I will never stop learning about food. I will always be seeking, practicing and learning about food. Food teaches me about who I am. What I like, how I like to feel, what makes me feel good. By using what I've learned I can make empowered decisions about what I eat. And feel confident about my choices even if they go against the model of the Standard American Diet. Funny coincidence that the acronym would be SAD.

Nothing is set in stone. You can be whoever you want at any age, in any city, in any room, in any world. You can start this very moment. Change gradually, be nice to your self. You need to support your decisions with love and patience. Eat as well as you can as often as you can, and thank yourself when you make healthy choices. When you feel pressured or weak towards foods you know aren't going to make you feel good, learn from those times. Be strong!

Right now my living room smells like cinnamon and banana. The steady fan sound is just a hum but it is different and exciting. Yes, my dehydrator is in my living room, 1 bedroom apartments break all standard rules. My bathroom is also a second bedroom.

I love our little life here in Hamilton. I love our home together with our cat family members and our sunny tree filled views. I like the sidewalks that take me and my running shoes through neighbourhoods, hills and valleys. I love that there are grains sprouting in my kitchen, that I have friends and family at my fingertips and that I have the means to be who I want to be.

This is all Food. Food nourishes my body, which enables my brain the energy needed to create and practice compassion and patience. Allowing my Chi to flow, my muscles to relax and Life to unfold around me and in front of me every day. I feel good because I am good. How are you today? I'm good. Its simple, but to the point. Do you want a coffee from timmies? No, I'm good. I don't know why I find this funny. But I guess, I'm just good, and I love Good.



These babies wont be done until 4am tomorrow morning. So call me at 8am and I'll let you know what they are like! I didn't follow a recipe because I was too impatient to wait a few days for sprouts to be ready. So these are just fruit leather ball things, I gotta work on my marketing! I am not even sure what tray to put them on so I am using 2 trays together, trial and error is tasty. These are expressions of my creativity, they are filled with Love, Life (literally) and a little bit of cat hair, just kidding, kinda.

Sweet Bites

12 Medjool Dates, pitted, and soaked for 1 hour in purified water (not tap water)
1 Banana
1 cup Coconut, shredded, unsweetened, unsulfured
1/4 cup Ground Flax seed
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground Ginger powder
1 tsp Pure Vanilla extract, no alcohol
2 Apples, not peeled, core and grated (cheese grater)

• Drain dates fully (* save water to use later for tea or something)
• In a food processor puree all the ingredients together except for the apples.
• Transfer the date mixture to a bowl and stir in the grated apples.
  
• Using a small ice cream scooper that articulates to release the batter, place balls 12 to a sheet. This gives lots of room between balls.
• Place in dehydrator at 108 degrees F for 14 hours.
• Makes 30 balls.

(This is like 10 mins worth of snacks if we are hanging out with Brittany and Ivan, I'm going to have to make more)

I love branding my stuff. I have written "Oliver and co." on the back of every greeting card I've ever made. I love the world, because now I can look so much more professional! I have had this design created into a rubber stamp, it is in the mail as we speak. I am not creating a business, this stamp just makes me happy. You gotta love the little things, do what makes you happy. Every time I stamp this onto a little paper bag, of my treats, I will feel empowered, and that is a thing of beauty.

What do you do for yourself just because it feels good?