Day Three and Getting Bored!

Today has been tougher than the first two.   I am finally adjusting to eating for nourishment rather than pleasure.   That is the hardest thing for me - I love food!  Maybe I go too far but it is so much harder for me to not cook than to cook - if that makes any sense.   We had the regular glass of fresh  made juice for breakfast and some kiwis and apples for mid morning snack.  For lunch - leftover salad from Tuesday night.    You have to eat like a horse to make this work.   You just do.  You can't have your normal, dainty little salad and stay the course.   We had a HUGE plate of salad today.   People walk by us in the cafeteria and look at us like WHOA!   They pass back by our table after grabbing a bacon cheeseburger topped off with fried onion rings and I want to stab them with my fork - shew!

For dinner we had a bowl of cream of broccoli soup - this was very filling:



Broccoli Cream Soup

Ingredients: 

2 cups coconut milk
2 large stalks celery
1/4"-1/2" piece jalapeno pepper
2  garlic cloves
pinch of salt -- up to 1/2 tsp. (to taste)

pinch of ground cumin
1 large head broccoli

Preparation: 

Put all ingredents except broccoli into blender - blend until smooth.
Cut broccoli stems close to broccoli florets, so you have tiny broccoli florets. Peel the stems if you want (I don't), cut the stems into chunks and put them and remaining florets into blender.
Blend until all smooth and creamy.
Taste - add any other spices if wanted (i.e., more salt, garlic, hot pepper, etc).
Serve.

And then we had Live Lasagna.  This was the best raw food dish I had ever made!  We both loved it.  Now we have no leftovers for lunch so we are going to Jason's for a salad - the way I feel right now I am going to just climb up there like a monkey with a fork and start eating and not stop until I have polished off every raw vegetable on the salad bar.   To hell with running back for a clean plate every time I finish one - I just won't use one!!!

Here is the zucchini "lasagna" with the first layer of the cashew cheese (from Monday's post).

Then the next layer is marinated peppers, red onions, topped with marinated mushrooms.

Then another layer of zucchini and start all over again.   I think I did about 4 layers total.   When all was ready I topped it off with raw marinara sauce.  I served it with "Caprese" salad on the side because I had an extra home-grown organic tomato I wanted to use and a bunch of basil left over from the marinara sauce.  Here is how it looked when it was complete:



Living Lasagna

Ingredients

At a glance

Makes

4-6 people

Tomato Sauce
2 cups sun dried tomatoes soaked for 6 hrs.
7 roma tomatoes
4 garlic gloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbs. red or yellow onion
3 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
2 tbs. lemon juice
2 tsp. dried basil

Mushroom layer
3-4 cups mushrooms (sliced)
3 tbs. or more of raw soy sauce (nama shoyu)

2 tbs. olive oil

Cashew Cheese (recipe follows)

Noodle sheets & marinated veggies
2  zucchini
1/2 small onion sliced really thin
1 red bell pepper sliced really thin
1 yellow bell pepper sliced really thin
2 tbs. olive oil
2 tbs. lemon juice

1/2 cup chopped drained raw olives
1/2 cup fresh basil

Methods/steps

How to tomato sauce: Blend everything together till smooth. Set aside.

How to mushrooms: Marinate mushrooms in the soy sauce for 2 hours. Drain and set aside.

How to noodle sheets and marinated veggies: Cut the zucchini on a mandolin into into wide, paper-thin slices. Set aside. Combine the onion and the bell pepper in a bowl with the oil, lemon juice and salt and let marinate for 16hrs in the fridge.

Herb Ricotta Cheeze
Ingredients

2 C Cashews
1 C Filtered water
1/3 C Red bell pepper, diced
2½ Tbl Green onion, diced
2 Tbl Cilantro, minced
1 tsp Garlic, minced (optional)
3 tsp shoyu, or to taste
1/2 tsp Sea salt, or to taste
Pinch Crushed red pepper flakes

Preparation

1. Blend cashews with filtered water until very smooth. Place in a ½ gallon open-mouthed glass jar. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and secure with a rubber band. Cover with a towel and allow to sit in a warm place overnight.

2. Pour cashew mixture into a large mixing bowl, combine with remaining ingredients and mix well. I pulse mine a few times in the Vitamix

Making the lasagna: Put thin slices of the zucchini on the bottom of a glass lasagna pan. Top this layer with a thin layer of the ricotta cheeze, top the cheeze layer with a layer of mushrooms, then again the zucchini, top that layer with the tomato sauce, top the tomato sauce layer with a layer of the sliced onions, red and yellow peppers, top that with a layer of more zucchini slices, layer on top of that with more ricotta cheese, then top it with a layer of the spinach leaves, top that with mushrooms, and then some marinated sliced onions, red and yellow peppers, then again with the zucchini and then top the whole thing with the tomato sauce and garnish the top with chopped olives and fresh basil leaves. Now, cover (plastic wrap) the lasagna and place it into the fridge to set up, about 3-5 hours.

That's it! It looks kinda hard, but if you break it down, it's really easy. You and your family are worth it! Make it once or twice a week. Add marinated eggplant as one of the layers, or your favorite veggie. You can cut a piece and put it into the dehydrator so it will get warm and then serve it. Raw food doesn't have to be served cold. Enjoy!

So to recap Wednesday - juice for breakfast, kiwi and apples for mid-morning snack, salad for lunch.  Dinner was broccoli cream soup followed by Living Lasagna and Caprese Salad.