Hello Again

(Has anyone ever seen that movie, with Shelley Long? It's probably pretty lame, but I remember loving it as a pre-teen)

Anyhow, it's been a while since I've posted, apologies to anyone who actually regularly checks this blog! We've been up at the cabin and also suddenly obsessed with buying a house, after discovering the most perfect neighborhood and realizing we want in on the $8,000 tax credit.

I'm a total Minneapolis city nerd, I love my city and read community newspapers like a junkie, can tell you where most restaurants are and what they're known for even though I've never eaten there (because we rarely eat out - just not our thing, I prefer stuff I make myself, and it costs way too much considering we like to drink with a good dinner!). Point is, I'm amazed I'd never heard of this neighborhood. It's called Columbia Park and is just north of a golf course on the very northern border of the city, surrounding by somewhat ghetto neighborhoods, but these 5 square blocks are seemingly out of a different era. The people are sooo friendly and everyone knows everyone, a nice mix of old people and families.

I wasn't too excited about buying before because you can't really find affordable stuff in Mpls that's not part of a shady neighborhood - and I was definitely not excited about checking out the suburbs - but Columbia Park has changed our minds. It's been very frustrating because a lot of the potential houses we thought we could get just sold or are pending, but we're still looking.

A home we JUST missed out on that went for less than 100k:

After a long night of searching and disappointments yesterday, we needed comfort food:

MASHED POTATOES with veggies and fresh herbs

1. Boil a large pot of water, peel and cut potatoes. Wash off the potatoes in order to get rid of starch and end up with a more fluffy product. Boil until soft (30 min?). Mix with olive oil, or milk and butter if you eat dairy, and mash.

2. Meanwhile, sautee mushrooms and onions with some olive oil and white wine until golden.

3. Heat up some frozen peas & carrots.

4. Mix everything together with salt & pepper & fresh herbs - we used rosemary and thyme. The fresh herbs make a HUGE difference!!

5. Make a drink, eat, and try to convince yourself that you didn't just miss out on your dream home because you didn't start looking earlier….

Cheers,

K

Yesterday's Food Summary & Book Recommendation

New recipes are fun, but I think seeing a list of what a person actually eats in a day is a great help for anyone looking to change their diet. So the following is what I ate yesterday - my stomach does not follow a schedule, except for that I'm never hungry until a few hours after I wake up and tend to eats lots of small things throughout the day.

-Apple
-Big salad with leftover zucchini alfredo from Wednesday's post
-Lots of carrot sticks dipped in leftover alfredo sauce
-Cauliflower salad (Just cauli and raisins in the food processor with garam masala and olive oil)
-Some pistachos and dried apricots

All of that was before I went to the co-op for cashier training (for my volunteer shifts), and when I got home around 9 I had a very specific craving for oatmeal. I used to eat it all the time, but don't think I've had any since we started the raw food experiment back in February. So I made this:

APPLE BANANA OATMEAL
-1/2 apple, chopped
-1/2 large banana, mashed
-1/2 cup oatmeal
-cinnamon or nutmeg to taste
-squirt of honey

Directions: Combine apple and oatmeal in a bowl, cover with water, and microwave for 2 min, 30 seconds. Mix with rest of ingredients.

Nathan was at his poker night and I was sooo excited to sit down with my food and wine and finish Infected by Scott Sigler. I'm usually more of a magazine & newspaper junkie than a book reader, and I forgot how great it feels to be so absolutely intrigued by a book that you can't wait to get back to it. If you like Stephen King type stuff at all, definitely read this. (Thank you Nathan for convincing me to read it!)




With my 2nd glass of wine I finished my oatmeal and had a piece of sprouted bread smeared with avocado and a bit of olive oil. Yummmm. Now that I'm writing about it, it's sort of disturbing how much I was able to enjoy food while reading the end of this book because it contains really some of the most grotesque imagery ever. But then again, I guess I'm not turned off by gore - here's my adorable hubby:


Cheers,

K

(Optionally) Raw Zucchini Alfredo

I see a lot of recipes on raw sites for "pasta" made with spiralized zucchini. We tried it once early on in our experiment with a tomato sauce and the whole dish turned out to be runny and disappointing.

Tonight I think I got the whole raw pasta thing right. I bought an amazing looking thick organic zucchini from the co-op the other day to use in this recipe. The alfredo sauce is adapted from Choosing Raw.


Alfredo Sauce

-1 cup cashews (optional: soak for a few hours - I think this is supposed to improve how you digest them?)
-3/4 cup water
-1 tsp agave
-1/4 cup lemon juice
-1/2 tsp sea salt
-couple big shakes garlic salt
-couple big pinches of nutritional yeast

Blend everything until smooth, add more water depending on how thick you want it.

For anyone new to raw food prep, here is a description of our spiralizer. I think there are definitely cheaper, higher quality models out there, but ours works fine. If you don't have one you can also just use a peeler to create fine zucchini slices, but it's not quite the same...

I made some whole wheat spaghetti to mix in with the raw zucchini noodles, mostly so Nathan would eat some. (He liked it a lot, even after reluctantly adding the zucchini noodles to the 'real' pasta).

I also threw in some blanched asparagus, but lots of veggies would go well with this - sliced carrots, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc. For lunch tomorrow I put the leftovers over a bunch of baby spinach.

In other news, here's something unexpectedly lovely that happened to me yesterday: I was shopping at the co-op and after the cashier rang up all the beautiful produce I'd just spent 20 minutes choosing, I realized I didn't have my credit card. I rode my bike there, so didn't have my purse (with extra cards & cash), only the little card holder attached to my keychain. Before I could even get extremely embarrased, she said "oh don't worry, we can just do an IOU, pay it next time you come in". What??! Where does this happen in America anymore? She gave me my receipt and wrote "IOU" on the top and that was it. I love you, Hampden Park Co-op!

K

Broccoli Salad and More Zombie Action!

Chain of events leading to the most perfect discovery ever last week:

-I'm casually reading a magazine article about places to go all along Lake Superior.
-I decide we should take a trip to one of these places, on the Canadian side, since Nathan's parents' cabin is only 3 hours away and I've never been to Canada despite living in MN my entire life.
-I google the first city that looks interesting, Thunder Bay.
-On their city's homepage is a feature about Harbourfest, coming up June 20-21. It looks like a nice summer outdoor festival, outdoor concerts, art fair, family fun, and....a ZOMBIE WALK FOLLOWED BY ZOMBIE BALL!

I immediately booked us a room for Fri. & Sat. night within walking distance of the zombie action.

If you know me, you know I love Zombies. I love dressing up, going out in public, groaning "Braaiiiiins", and befriending the fellow undead. We have an annual zombie pub crawl here in Mpls which is great, but this festival is even better:

-It's nowhere near halloween

-It's organized by a local art gallery where everyone meets and can get their makeup done

-Everyone walks from the gallery to an outdoor stage where there's a zombie dance to a rockabilly band

-Afterwards the zombie ball is at a bar complete with "costume contests, zombie sushi chef performance, and zombie go-go dancers".

Read details here and here.

If anyone out there is even thinking about coming, please do, we'd love to meet you!

And....here's a recipe for a really awesome raw broccoli salad:

Broccoli Salad with Creamy Orange Cilantro Dressing

Salad

2 medium size broccoli crowns

1 Clementine (Can substitute tangerine)

2 Tablespoons finely chopped soaked walnuts

2 Tablespoons finely diced sweet or red onion

Dressing

Juice of 1 medium Naval orange

¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon tahini

1 tablespoon honey

¼ cup fresh cilantro

½ tsp orange zest

Blend in food processor or blender until smooth. To get a thicker consistency, slowly pour in the olive oil while machine is running.

K

Real people, real jobs, real....makeup

I just wanted to post the following exchange from the comments section so everyone could see it - and to find out if there's anyone else in similar situations....

Anonymous said...

K, may I say something? On any day that you don't feel like wearing makeup, don't! Make up was fun during teen years and early adulthood, when feeling grownup was still a thrill. One by one, my friends and freed ourselves of the conditioning we experienced, to care about things like that. It says something about what that conditioning did to self esteem when one feels they needs make up on, in order to face the world comfortably. If you find yourself thinking how nice it is not to "have" to wear it, then maybe it's time.

I said:

Hi Anon, I wish I could do that - I don't wear much makeup and am totally comfortable running errands, etc., without it, but I see it as necessary for the office. Without eye makeup I look tired, and I have uneven, oily skin that looks gross without some powder at least. I'm not going to risk my job to make the statement that it's not fair women are expected to wear makeup (and it's not), but that's just the shitty reality. I would not have gotten hired if I went in there in my "natural state".

That leads to another discussion - part of the reason behind the "real people" name of this blog was that we both have professional office jobs - unlike a lot of raw foodies out there who teach yoga or are artists or life coaches or whatever. Like many people, I would prefer NOT to work in an office, in a cube, for the man, doing meaningless (to me) work, but....I wasn't thinking about that, or aware of how much it would suck, when I went to college and racked up tens of thousands of dollars of student loans. I also wasn't about to not marry my wonderful husband because of his ridiculous $100,000 law school debt with 7% interest.

So, I continue working in an office, and wearing makeup, so that we can get out of debt, buy a house, have a retirement savings, health care coverage, security in general, etc...But, my dream is to someday work only part time, have little kiddos, and not give a thought about how professional my face looks.

Anyone with me?

Weekend Recap & Giveaway

Over at the Fitness NYC blog, you can enter to win a package from Blueprint Cleanse (haven't read the details of exactly what this is, but I'd be willing to try it if I won!). I just discovered her blog today, linked from my new favorite, level headed, raw blog: Choosing Raw. Her site is comprehensive & professional, I can't believe I haven't found it until now.

This weekend we went up to my family's cabin for the first time this year. It's so relaxing to be there and just not have to do anything. As much as I love living and partying in the city, that requires planning, money, and looking presentable. It's great to just wear pajamas and no makeup all weekend and the biggest decision you have to make is whether to keep drinking by the fire or try to focus on a game of 500 in the cabin. (After wine at dinner and a couple gin & tonics, I should've stayed by the fire Sunday night…..)



Anyway a big focus of the weekend is dinners. Everyone was very excited about lasagna, shrimp, and prime rib for our main meals. I came prepared with lots of salad supplies for myself, but was convinced into trying just a tiny bit of the other food, partly because everyone asked me to a bazillion times and partly because they were acting like it was the best food they'd ever eaten and I was curious, again, would I still like meat? Nope, not this time. It tasted like dead animal in my mouth and I wanted to spit it out, but didn't. I think it'll get easier over time to eat differently than people around me…..and in a perfect world it won't always be so "different".

I also took advantage of all the free time to try out a new dessert recipe: Hazelnut Chocolate Snowballs, from Kristen's Raw. They were pretty easy and tasty, but not as good as the similar Raw Chocolate Cake recipe I've tried before.

Cheers,

K

Moroccan Gazpacho

This is another of my new favorite recipes - and it's actually "meant" to be raw! Something about the flavors in this were amazing, I couldn't stop eating it.

MOROCCAN GAZPACHO From Kristen's Raw

Ingredients:

1 cup water
4 tomatoes, chopped
1 tomato, diced
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons agave nectar
1 teaspoon Himalayan crystal salt
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and grated
3/4 teaspoon cumin
3/4 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup raisins

Instructions:

Blend all of the ingredients, except for the 1 diced tomato, pine nuts, raisins and cilantro, until creamy. Pulse in the cilantro. Stir in the diced tomato, pine nuts and raisins.

My Notes:

-I used maybe 1/2 cup of water instead of 1 cup, just depends on if you like your soup thick or runny.

-I used a pint of cherry tomatoes because that's what was in the fridge, plus one regular tomato, so this might've made the flavor sweeter….either way, highly recommended!

-Didn't bother peeling the cucumber

-Left out raisins and pine nuts - you really don't need them and pine nuts are very expensive.

-To make this even more filling I cut up some more cucumber into bite sized chunks and threw them into the already blended soup.

Ooooo just wait until cucumbers and tomatoes are really in season, this gazpacho will be even more perfect.

Happy summer,

K

P.s. Nathan the former tomato hater also liked this.