March 21, 2010
week 5 - pizza and strawberry banana smoothies
This week I wanted to go all out and make the most interesting looking thing in the book to see if I could do it. I wanted to take a big learning leap. So I decided to make raw pizza. The instructions take up a whole page because there are many parts to a pizza, raw or cooked. I'll just give you the gist of it all here.
From back to front, first there's the crust, very much like the cumin flatbread from earlier in the adventure, but with oregano instead of cumin. Then there's the ricotta cheese that's made of macadamia nuts, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, etc. The pizza sauce is made dark and cooked-like by the addition of sun-dried tomoatoes. Then there's spinach tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and tomato slices, tossed with the same ingredients as the spinach, but then dehydrated for a couple hours. Each part of the pizza was pretty easy to make, nor did it take very long; it just took some coordination to time everything to finish at the same time, what with soaking and dehydration taking hours and days to complete.
Here it is, all assembled:
I learned a whole lot from making this. Each part taught me something. Making the crust taught me that a thicker flatbread is going to take a lot longer to dehydrate, and that it tastes much better crispy than soggy, so best to leave it in until it's done and not get impatient like I did. The macadamia 'ricotta' taught me that cheese is a very salty sort of thing- I would probably put less salt in next time. Also, I think I'm a little sensitive to macadamias; even soaked they made my throat swell up a little. There are other raw cheese recipes made with different nuts for me to try soometime though. The tomato sauce taught me that if I don't like the main ingredient in a dish, I'm probably not going to like how the whole thing tastes. In this case- I'm not fond of sun-dried tomatoes (they're too sweet, like a tomato-y raisin) so I didn't like the sauce very much. The tossed spinach taught me that that is an excellent way to prepare spinach for any reason, and ditto with the tomatoes. I want to toss and dehydrate all my tomatoes, every day. Thank you. I couldn't stop eating them! I just kept eating them off the top of the pizza over and over. Yum! They balanced the saltier, more intense flavors of the sauce, cheese, and crust very well. To balance it just right for my salt-sensitive palate, though, I would have had to eat a whole bowl of the tomatoes, with just a taste of the other pizza parts scattered on top. Hmm...pizza salad...not a bad idea.
I figured out that while the fast is on, I don't want anything salty or dry. My body is begging for juicy foods with all the water left in them. So perhaps pizza was not the smartest thing to pick, but it sure was a lot of fun to make!
The other food I tried was strawberry-banana smoothies. They were heavenly!! The ingredients are simple: frozen bananas, frozen strawberries, and almond milk. Done. I just made a batch of almond milk, added the fruit and blended it up. The kids loved it! I made some with just the bananas and almond milk and added a little cinnamon (good thinking Jenny!) and those were very popular with the kids too, especially Ava. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the smoothies. Fasting is not so good for the afternoon mental functioning.
Executive summary: tried a complex recipe- learned a lot but found the flavors fiddly and difficult to get right, tried a simple recipe- everybody was happy but I didn't learn anything new. A very satisfying week in all.
Posted by Bahiyyih at March 21, 2010 11:17 PM