I've got a few time lapse pictures of the garden at La Casa, to show you how a well-behaved little garden can turn into a jungle very quickly with the kind of rain and heat we've had. It's very surprising to me how much space vegetables need!

I think it's more interesting backwards, so the first set of pictures is from late July, the second from late June, the third from mid May, and fourth from the beginning of April.

Northwest corner:

From the garden bed gates (west side):

As for my life being out of control, I'm learning the following skills this summer: organizing silent hours so I can work with the kids at home, serenity without much time for quiet reflection (mostly from re-thinking household chores as times to let the mind wander), implementing an organic fruit tree spraying schedule (so our fruit trees will actually bear fruit, as the name would suggest), organizing a 3-5 year old class at Heartland Baha'i School, teaching a neighborhood virtues class, dealing with gardening in summer heat, learning how to pick things when they're ripest (which takes more patience than I have on an average day), being a food processor: canning jam and vegetables without expiring from the hours-long steam bath, figuring out sun-dried tomatoes, steaming and blanching pumpkin, green beans, chard and squash, making pickles. It's been beautiful, exhausting, and full of a million little details and delights.

Also, my dear friends and study circle buddies, Frank and Naifen, that I've relied on for two years to give me a forum for spiritual discussions, are moving on in their illustrious academic careers, all the way to beautiful Pennsylvania, and I don't know how to learn to cope with that loss of steadying influence yet. I get really, literally nauseous when I think about it too much.

So let's move on to lighter topics: I easily picked up the habit of hanging out with my sister all the time, since she lives so close, and she has become one of my favorite new recipe testers because she's always so appreciative and encouraging. Yeah for Layli!

I learned what's involved in supporting a child through a summer theater production (a lot of time commitments and driving and hair curling and excitement and nerves and a happy, exultant Georgia).

(with Georgia still camera-resistant, this is the best I could get, but I think others may have better ones- hint, hint!)

I've learned to work through the fear of the unknown vegetable (or storing method) with the great U of I Extension website (http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/directory.cfm), Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and all the great natural foodie/west coast chef bloggers that rave about the flavor of fresh, picked-from-your-garden goodness. I've learned about the taste explosion that happens when you let ripe tomatoes and goat feta cheese meld and marry in a salad together. I never realized how much they NEEDED each other before.

That's all for today, but, you know, once I start talking, it's really hard to stop. Thanks to everyone that reads this webble for checking back over this summer writing hiatus. I'm awfully glad you did. And Grandma, do you like these pictures better than the chocolate tart you've been forced to look at for months? Gardens and grandchildren are good, right?

Dessert.

Fresh out of the freezer.

Yes, those are raw cookie crumbs. And I must say, they were a pain to make.

So far, I've only tasted the batter and cookie crumbs separately, but they were DEEPLY good!

If you've been reading along with this raw food adventure and you're in the area, I invite you to come over and taste this beauty with me. Please, please, please! Just send me a note letting me know when you can come over. I'll be back from mom's Sunday afternoon.

Here's how to make one of your own:

chocolate cookie crumbs from Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenney

4 c cocoa powder
4 c oat flour
1 1/2 t sea salt
1 c maple syrup
1 c agave
2 T coconut oil, melted
1 1/2 t vanilla

(Note: I halved this recipe (4 cups of cocoa!?!), used some honey to replace half of the sweeteners because that's what I had on hand, and replaced about a sixth of the cocoa powder with cacao powder.)

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients thoroughly. Add remaining ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix well with hands. Crumble into small pieces (no bigger than 1/2 inch) onto dehydrator screens. Dehydrate 3 days. After dehydrating, process in food processor until small crumb consistency is reached (mine are a little big). Sift to separate crumbs from flour. Crumbs should be no larger than 1/4 inch. Store crumbs and flour in separate containers in refrigerator.

When that mess is done, the rest is easy. Just press, mix, and pour.

chocolate hazelnut tart

crust
2 c chocolate cookie crumbs
1/4 c coconut oil, melted

Mix coconut oil into cookie crumbs until crumbs hold together (Mine never did, oh well). Press a very thin layer in tart pan and chill in freezer before filling.

filling
1 1/2 c cashews, soaked
1/2 c + 2 T water
1/2 c + 2 T agave
1/2 c coconut oil, melted
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 t sea salt
1 c + 2 T cocoa powder
3/4 t hazelnut extract (I couldn't find this anywhere, but I had a few hazelnuts, so I threw them in with the cashews.)

Blend all ingredients in Vita-Mix (or your blender, if you're like me, and are content to have slightly lumpy tarts) until very smooth. Fill cookie crumb crust and chill in freezer overnight. Remove tart from pan and wrap in plastic wrap. Store in freezer. (Eat with friends.)

First, I picked some little lettuce and spinach leaves and a couple chives and oregano into a bowl of water.

Then I rinsed it off really well, ran it through the salad spinner, and assembled my ingredients.

I rubbed my plate with smashed garlic to get some of the oil on it.

Then the greens, and all the good stuff on top, lemon juice, olive oil, chives, and fresh oregano...yum!

I like eating salad with chopsticks...all the better to stuff large bites into my mouth!

That was a very happy day.

Jenny and I made some fun swamp juice (as she lovingly called it) this week, actually called Sweet Green Juice, but, as so often happens with veggie juices, it turned out the color of a ripe swamp. It was exclamatory in its brisk, sour, fresh taste in that it makes you exclaim loudly after drinking it. Wow!

We also made some yummy Golden Tortilla Chips in the dehydrator. It was hard to keep them crispy, but they had a great sweet flavor from the corn, sort of like Sunchips.

Golden Tortilla Chips (from Matthew Kenney's 'Everyday Raw')

1 3/4 c flax meal
4 c frozen corn, thawed
1 1/3 c water
2 1/2 T olive oil
1 T cumin
3/4 small red onion
1 clove garlic
1/4 t sea salt + more for sprinkling
1 T + 1 t lime juice
Pinch cayenne
2 t chili pepper

Blend everything except the flax meal and chili powder in the blender until smooth. Mix in remaining ingredients and spread thinly on dehydrator sheets. Dehydrate 30 min, then score into chip shapes. Sprinkle with salt and dehydrate 12-24 hours.

Sweet Green Juice

2 cucmbers
2 carrots
2 apples
1/2 c parsely
1/2 c mint
1 stalk celery
1/2 inch piece ginger
1 lemon, peeled

Shove it all in a juicer. Woo-weee! Now that's a juice!

Maya learned to ride her bike really well, and can even pull Teresa in the trailer. Go Maya!

Layli modeling Georgia's crochet creation for Nana. Isn't she lovely?

I'm so happy to be in the garden, digging in, so grateful that it's spring!

Georgia giving Teresa some lap time. Sorry for the smudges, I had to sneak to get this one and actually took it through the window.

Teresa did some dramatic poses in a series. This one's my favorite.

The garden is just starting to produce edibles, so I think we'll get our first salad of the season this week.

It's been really great to expand my repertoire of recipes and start thinking of raw food as more of a main course than a side dish. At the same time, if I'm really going to do it, it has to be really simple. So right now, my goal is to have my breakfast smoothie, and try to get a good serving of greens somewhere in the day. For me, that's a good day's work. Whatever else I have time to make- dehydrated flatbreads, cool dressings, raw desserts, etc. are all extra for when I'm inspired. Hopefully the garden will provide me with lots of inspiration- and main courses!

I also hope we'll be able to get a couple more weeks of this experiment finished before Jenny moves to Bloomington, IN in June. Maybe I'll try a dessert or two at the end. Hmm...

With all the gardening going on, I've only wanted to make simple, fresh, easy foods lately so I can get back to playing in the dirt. So I tried making the summer rolls, and life was good.

Just take your favorite leafy green (collards, chard, lettuce, etc.) and roll up some julienned veggies, of the sweet and crunchy variety (cukes, carrots, peppers, etc.), and some super Spicy Almond Dressing and maybe a sprinkle of chopped nuts and you're there. Fresh lunch heaven.

Jenny takes a bite

Here's the recipe for the Spicy Almond Dressing:

2 c almond butter
4 roma tomatoes
1/2 c nama shoyu
1/4 c sesame oil
3 T lime juice
2 t maple syrup
1 t miso
3 inch piece ginger
1 inch piece lemon grass
6 - 8 Thai chiles
1 t sea salt

Mix it all in a blender till it's smooth.

Now, of course, I coldn't just make it like it says to, and I made some adjustments based on what I had on hand and what I can eat, but it turned out great! I also only made half a recipe, which was still a huge amount. So, let's see... I omitted the nama shoyu and miso because of the soy, I used agave instead of maple syrup, and I just added a few dashes of cayenne instead of the Thai chiles.

Georgia's taught herself to crochet from a book (!!) and now she's ready to offer some of her pieces for sale. So this is a little online lemonade stand experiment for her.

She's got granny squares ($1.50 each)

cute little beanie hats ($5.00 each)

flowers (75 cents each)

and crocheted cord (25 cents per foot)

Here are the colors she's got right now:

burgundy with flecks of other colors, lavender
dark blue with flecks, white, red
light brown, gold, orange
dark brown, yellow

Other colors are available upon request. She's got a variety of yarn materials, some are cotton, some very fine wool, some polyester. She says she's happy to make anything in any color and even with more than one color if you want to have, say, a flower with variegated petals or a hat with several bands of color.

Shipping is $1.50 per order.

Email me if you would like to place an order- bahiyyih@orangecrayon.com

Georgia will be thrilled to crochet for you!

UPDATE: Georgia has moved on to a different venue for her crochet store. She's planning a hat stand (like a lemonade stand) to set up this summer. Don't worry if you already ordered something- it's coming.

We've got some new babies around here. Jenny just launched her career as a health and wellness counselor and put up a lovely website so people can find her. It's http:/wingsandrootswellness.com/. Check her out! She's so fun to be with and we always have a great time talking passionately about food. If you want someone to help you heal and grow around food issues, she's the one to see. Yeah Jenny! She's making her dream come true!

My baby is a new garden plot that's as huge as I wanna make it in the amazingly spacious back yard of La Casa Grande Collectiva, a co-op house I lived in when I was an undergrad. It's a great space with great people. It's my first real community garden experience, so I'm really excited and grateful to be there. I've turned sod, put up a fence, rototilled, and hauled in rabbit manure, and now I'm busy making the beds and rows and pulling out the sod pieces. It's my gym. Good core work and strength training (says Jenny). It's a dream come true for me and I'm learning a lot from many mistakes and adventures. (Who knew rabbit poop smelled SO horrendous?)

Here's my before picture of the grassy place where my garden is now:

Billy showing me how to use the rototiller (which I was first afraid of, then respected, then understood, then used with grace and subtlety, thank you very much):

When we wen't to collect rabbit manure, I wondered how something so cute:

...could make something so horribly stinky?

At least the rabbit barn was pretty:

Now, on to the food! Jenny made some delicious stuff. This is her portobello sausage:

Billy ate it all. It was a little heavy for me, but not mushroomy-as I feared, not being a fan.

And here's her beautiful za'atar flatbread. Here is it by itself:

And here it is loaded with goodness (hummus, sauteed rainbow chard, and sprouts):

This is definitely my new favorite food. If I had a restaurant, this would be my signature dish (not that I invented it, or anything. A girl can dream!). Tomatoes are a great idea for putting in flatbread. Thank you Matthew Kenney!

Za'atar flatbread (from 'Everyday Raw')

6 whole roma tomatoes, chopped
3/4 t garam masala
2 T za'atar spice mix, divided in half
1 T cumin
1/2 t sea salt
1/2 c flax meal
1/2 sesame seeds
1 c sunflower seeds, soaked 4 -5 hours
1 c flax seeds, soaked 15-20 minutes

Blend tomatoes, spices (half of the za'atar). In a large bowl, mix up seeds, add blended mixture and mix till it's like dough. Spread it thin on Teflex sheets and pre-cut to desired size. Sprinkle with the rest of the za'atar spices. Dehydrate at 118 degrees for 24-36 hours.

OK, now if you make them with this recipe, let me know how they turn out because Jenny made many modifications according to what she had on hand (which is so smart and thrifty) so I don't really know what the above recipe tastes like. She replaced the za'atar spices with a T. of lemon zest, the flax seeds with chia seeds because they have a lighter flavor, and omitted the sesame seeds, increasing the sunflower seeds to 1 and 1/2 cups. Everything she did to change the recipe really worked. She's got some magic.

I'll have to quiz her about the portobello sausage because I'm going to guess that a similar amount of switching around happened there.

Mango wraps! Brilliant!
Sweet chili-lime sauce! Dip dip!
Grapefruit cleanser (juice)! Pucker!

That's the short version of last week.

The long version starts with me wanting to make what's on the cover of "Everyday Raw", these crazy looking paper-thin mango wraps around julienned vegetables. Again, I wanted to make the thing that looked the most challenging and unusual, but it was also just what I was in the mood for. Light, juicy and colorful.

The wraps turned out to not be hard at all, just unusual. I just pureed mango and young coconut meat and spread it on the dehydrator's teflex sheets, sprinkled cilantro on top and ran it for 4 hours (practically instant!). And it turned out so pretty!

Here you can see the red pepper, carrots and romaine lettuce all ready to be wrapped up. The sweet chili-lime sauce is in the foreground. Weird looking, I know, but it's so hard to know what to substitute for soy sauce. I just used salted water, but there has to be a better way. I'm going to have to try that again. Anyways, the sauce is for dipping the finished wraps, and it was a perfect complement, flavor-wise, even if not in looks. More about that later.

Here we've cut each tray of wraps into four pieces and layered the veggies on top, with more cilantro.

Then Jenny just rolled it up. Our wraps were a little sticky because I am impatient and we were on a tight schedule that day, so the wraps stayed closed just fine. I imagine if they don't stick to themselves, just a couple drops of water would seal them right up.

Now, here's the thing of it. Dipped in the sauce and popped in the mouth, those things were AMAZING! Oh, yeah! No objectionable tastes. Harmony of crunchy veggies, sweet and creamy mango wrap, limey-sesame sauce...it sang. Laaaa!

So, if you have any inclination toward trying any of these crazy recipes I've been spouting about, make it this one. Someone you know has a dehydrator sitting in their basement. Just put it out there that you need one and it will find you. Make these wraps! They are SO GOOD!

The sauce is practically instant too:

sweet chili-lime sauce
3/4 c nama shoyu
2 T agave
2 T lime juice
1 T sesame oil
Pinch red pepper flakes

Wisk it up.

Here are the wrap ingredients:

Mango Wrappers
4 c chopped fresh mango
2 c fresh young cocnut meat
Pinch cayenne
Pinch sea salt
1/4 c cilantro, roughly chopped

I spread this onto two teflex sheets, but I think making them even thinner (less on each sheet, or more sheets) would have been good too.

Oh, and finally we have the grapefruit cleanser. This is a bunch of fruits, etc put through a juicer. Grapefruit is supposed to be a cleansing sort of food for your body, I guess. I have to say, it was VERY bitter. Maybe I left too much of the white stuff around the grapefruit slices on. It's serious stuff. But it was actually fun to drink! Exciting and invigorating! Really makes you wake up and take notice! Very exclamation point worthy! I failed to take any pictures, but it was pretty weird-looking anyways. You're not missing much there.

grapefruit cleanser
3 grapefruits, peeled
2 apples
2 limes, peeled
3 stalks kale

and here it is after drying.

It tasted a little bacon-ish, sort of a meat-ish jerky. No one is fooled, but I think it's quite ingenious that it has bacon-like 'marbling'. How did they figure out that eggplant would do that? Matthew Kenney and his friends are some serious food artists/scientists. And Jenny is a seriously good cook.

And here's the potato salad. It's not potato at all, but jicama, with an amazing dressing. Where do they come up with this stuff?

I'm not naturally all that brave about trying foods that I'm not sure I'm going to like, so making and tasting all these foods that are new to me has really challenged me to be more adventurous. I'm really proud of myself for that. I was nervous about trying the jicama, but it was very mild and good, like potato salad, and the dressing was sufficiently creamy. Jicama is sweeter than potato and as crunchy as an apple, though, so I might try making it with smaller jicama pieces and let it sit awhile maybe and see if it softened a little. I think if it was just being itself instead of trying to be potato salad, I would like it more- or maybe just call it a cross between Waldorf salad and potato salad.

Potato Salad
(From Matthew Kenney's Everyday Raw)

2 c diced jicama
1/4 c diced yellow pepper
1/4 c diced celery
1 T minced fresh rosemary
2 T minced green olives
1/4 avocado, mashed
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
Fresh parsely sprigs, for garnish

Mix it all up, excpet for parsely, of course, which you artfully place on top at the end. First, mix it up with the dressing below, though.

Potato Salad Dressing

2 T tahini
1/4 t ground cumin
1 1/2 T lemon juice
2 T water
2 t fresh parsely
1/4 t nama shoyu
1/4 t agave
Pinch sea salt
Pinch chili powder

Blend it all up in the blender till it's smooth. It will be thick. It will be delicious.

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.

One of the reasons I became interested in experimenting with raw food was to get me in shape to participate in the Baha'i Fast. I've had a hard time fasting since I started again after I was all done having babies and nursing. Last year, I got sick after the first few days, and I really wanted to be healthy enough and have the stamina to do it this year. The fast was such a special time for me pre-babies and it taught me all I know about obedience and submission to God. The fact that I still have a long way to grow in these virtues really motivates me to get my body ready for it, so I can keep working on those and whatever other virtues I feel I need to grow in this year.

Two aspects of the raw food movement have really helped me handle the fast better this year than last. The first one is mental. There's such a lot of knowledge out there, talked about ad nauseum by raw foodists, about how the body digests raw vs. cooked food and especially how to get the most nutrients out of foods and choosing the most nutrient-rich foods out there. Basically, it's about optimizing the eating experience for efficiency, while keeping and even enhancing taste. The effect this had on me was really liberating because I didn't feel like I had to worry so much about trying to get all the nutrients I need every day from the guidance of the USDA food pyramid. Trying to follow that guidance always left me feeling like nothing I did was good enough- I could never succeed in having a healthy, balanced diet- it was just too hard, partly because I'm allergic to half the foods on that thing. But I got the feeling from both how the food science was pursued and also the focus on simplicity in the raw food movement that if I ate certain simple raw foods, I could get all the nutrition I needed without having to even encounter my allergens, in practically any recipe. It gave me an attitude of suffiency instead of lack. My efforts are enough, I am enough, and if I eat fresh and simple and follow some basic science of nutrition, I will get enough good food to not have to worry about food all the time. I can move forward and focus my attention on the life I want to live! That attitude has been a God-send for me during this fast. I don't feel deprived by not eating food all day because I know that the food I eat before the sun rises will keep me going and healthy all day. Even if I feel hungry, I know, deeply, that I am nourished.

So the other aspect that's helped me through the fast is the raw food itself. Is it a placebo effect where I've decided that I'm getting enough of the right things to eat to keep my spirits up or is it really what I'm eating that's making the difference? I have no idea, but it sure is working. And the food that's helping the most is the smoothie I have for breakfast every day. First of all, it's just easier to digest liquids than solids because your body has to do less work. Because it's so easy on the system, I can drink a smoothie even if I'm really sleepy or even sleep deprived, as I often am during the fast. Second, I put enough protein in them that I feel like it's a substantial food, not just a fruit drink. I've posted my smoothie recipe already and there are infinite varieties out there, but I have learned a few things that are especially important to include for my particular body. I gotta have seeds for protein- I like sesame, hemp, flax, and pumpkin so far. There's gotta be coconut oil to make it smooth and rich. Just a tablespoon or so really makes it a meal, and that stuff is just so darn good for you! It's gotta have a couple servings of fruit, especially a banana, again for smoothness and also sweetness. And it's gotta have green superfood powder so I can get all those minerals and great proteins from algae and seaweed and grasses. Also, I really love goji berries, and always put just a few for their taste, although I've heard they are a nutritional powerhouse too. Those are the highlights. Read anything by David Wolfe if you want to know which foods do what for you and why. He's a fun teacher.

Just though I'd share my experience. I still eat plenty of cooked food for dinner, just so you know. I haven't eliminated many foods so far, just added on.

Hello and welcome to week four of experimenting with raw food recipes. Above, you can see Jenny tasting the almond milk (yum) which was really easy to make (yeah!).

I just soaked a cup of raw almonds overnight, then rinsed and drained them and threw them in the blender, along with:

4 c water
2 T coconut oil
1/4 c agave
1 t vanilla
a pinch sea salt

and mixed them up in the blender for a few minutes and strained it through a strainer lined with a piece of cheesecloth. That's it! Simple and good. Matthew Kenney's recipe above also calls for 1 t lecithin, but I don't know how to get ahold of non-soy lecithin, and honestly, we didn't miss it.

And the almond mash that's been strained out is quite good mixed with a little with a little honey and chocolate sauce, according to Billy.

The other lovely food that we made (well, Jenny made, I watched) was Thai salad with creamy thai dressing. It's an exotic and beautiful salad. Billy and Jenny really liked it. It wasn't quite to my taste, but I find my tongue a little sensitive during the fast. It was really fun to make, though. And the point of it is to be a salad that's a whole meal, which I heartily approve of. Usually I make mine mild and tame compared to this lovely thing. Here's Jenny showing us how to take the top off of a young coconut (also called a water coconut).

Here's the lovely Thai salad. I was really excited that we got to put the curried cashews on it that I had made a few weeks previous.

2 handfuls mixed greens
1/2 c finely diced pineapple
1/2 c soaked, finely diced sun-dried tomatoes
1 avocado, sliced
sea salt
black pepper
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into strips
1/2 c thinly sliced young coconut meat
1/2 c chopped curried cashews
1/2 c creamy Thai dresing
cilantro leaves, for garnish

Layer greens, pineapple, tomatoes and avocado, add salt and pepper to taste. Add a layer of bell pepper, coconut, cashews, dressing and cilantro.

creamy Thai dressing
3/4 c sesame oil
1/2 c nama shoyu
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c lime juice
1 T maple syrup
4 Thai bird chiles or 3 t red chili flakes
1 t sea salt
1/4 c. chopped cashews

Blend it all in a blender till smooth. (All recipes are from Matthew Kenney's "Everyday Raw")

Jenny didn't care for the dressing. I think if we made it again it would have less sesame oil and I wouldn't put any shoyu-type thing in it, of course, since I'm allergic to soy. I imagine the lime and olive oil w/cashews and salt would make a good creamy dressing all on their own, in my bland little world.

I'm trying to figure out how to make interesting dinners with raw foods. So I really wanted to try something breadlike to be a good building block and base for spreads or beans or whatever. I REALLY like cumin so I picked cumin flatbread from "Everyday Raw" and it was really easy. Yeah!

Teresa like it too!

Here's how:

1 c flaxmeal
1 T dried basil
2 yeallow squash, roughly chopped
1 1/2 c walnuts, soaked 6-8 hours
4 t ground cumin
1/4 c olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1 T nutritional yeast
2 T agave
1 1/2 t sea salt
Black pepper

Set flax meal aside and process the rest of ingredients in a food processor until it's smooth-ish (I used my blender cause I don't have every durn gadget...yet). Mix it up with the flax meal, spead out on Teflex sheets and dehydrate (if you don't have a dehydrator, you can spread on cookie sheets and put in an oven on the lowest setting with the oven door propped open- innefficient, but fine if you want to experiment). Dehydrate at 115 degrees for 6-8 hours. Cut up and transfer to dehydrator screens, dehydrate for 24 hours. I stored mine in the freezer and they stayed crisp and deeply flavorful.

Here's the flatbread after I've cut it up and spread it out to finish dehydrating.

The great news (and no bad news follows) is that they are delicious! Like a cracker but SO full of onion-cumin flaor. Mmmmm....here's how I ate them last night...topped with black beans flavored with onions and cumin too and sweet little tomatoes. SO GOOD! Kale salad and homemade sprouts on the side were perfect complements. Eating this after a long day of fasting (it's the Baha'i fast now- where we don't eat or drink while the sun is up so our lives can come closer to being ruled by the spiritual intead of the physical) felt deeply nourishing.