I’m Trying To Write a Blog . . .

. . . It’s working.

Mr Crow and I just took a bath. Feeling refreshed. Listening to Penguin café Orchestra (Perpetuum Mobile). The Parakeet seems to like it and tries to sing along. I’ve stopped washing my face with soap. I’m recovering from a dozen mosquito bites. No joke.

We biked to the Relator's office to go over some paperwork, then we went a little further to the North Market:

Namaste beer

personal watermelon

white peach

3 avocadoes

a dozen eggs: 10 brown, 1 white, 1 blue

rhubarb, lime, cardamom ice cream

 

We found the recycling bins closest to our new house. . . .

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On the house-front we’re having the appraisal next week. Assuming all goes well, we’ll be in by September. We’re nervous but I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about (as if that makes sense).

I’m already mentally placing the chicken coop to the left of the back porch. I’m reading three books right now:

Chick Days

The Quarter Acre Farm

The Girl With Curious Hair

. . . too bad Mr. Crow isn’t keen on chickens. he’s worried that they’re going to be too noisy. . . I think he’ll live. (He’ll have to!)

 

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Neil is in the hospital. He hadn’t been quite himself since Sunday. The doctor thinks it may be his liver but we won’t know for sure until later. Sadness.

Home Inspection Etc.

The “Etc.” up there is for the two new headbands I bought!

So, the home inspection was yesterday. It went as expected. It’s an old house. It needs some work. Some of it is more important than other bits.

okey doke. Let’s get started:

So, the basement is damp. It’s damp, apparently, because it’s stone and stone is “like a sponge”. Which means, really, that there’s nothing to do here but level out the floor a bit. . .and kill all the spiders.

The roof over the porch is leaking a small bit so we’ll need to fix that. It’s just a little patch on one side so it shouldn’t be too hard.

The gutters need replacing. This issue is what’s causing a lot of the dampness in the basement. Fix that and it’s two problems for the price of one. I’d really like the kind that you don't have to muck out every season but we’ll see.

The forth thing that it really needs is a new coat of paint. To get that done we’ll need to replace some of the broken shingles around the house. Easy enough, I suppose, but what’s on there right now is asbestos. bummer. Fortunately, Home Depot sells a similar looking product called “concrete fiber” that we’ll use to fix what we need to. This is the big papa project. There are some places in back of the house where it looks like they put in a shorter window and just put a big board over the hole instead of reshingling. *sigh*. Also, there’s a door to the kitchen RIGHT NEXT TO the door to the living room. This looks stupid and we want to cover it over. Of course we need to do all this at the same time:

-take out the door

- rip off the boards

- replace all the damaged shingles

Only then can we paint. Good thing we’re young-ish. . .

So, maybe we’ll get all of this done by winter. . . maybe not. We at least want to get the porch and gutters done for sure. . .paint can wait until spring if it has to. . . but the blue is SO UGLY.

AAAAnyway. Now we wait. The underwriter is working on stuff and then it’s go go go until it’s ours.

Adventures are Time-Consuming!

Who knew?

So, I’m married now. That was great! You can check out the details here.

Now we’re in the process of buying a house! HOLY COW! It’s been a kind of whirlwind, really. On Monday, July 11th, I was browsing Zillow.com on my phone. None of the pictures were loading. The map said there was a house in Clintonville that just happened to be in our price range! I got a “feeling”, you know. . . so I sent an email to Mr. Crow to have him check it out. He immediately sent a message to our realtor who, being amazing, was able to show us the house Tuesday at noon. . . we signed our papers at the Taco Bell down the street immediately after that.

Offer, counter offer and here we are, 4 days later waiting for an inspector to check the house out for us (This upcoming Tuesday) and then, barring any major issues, we’ll sign and the house is OURS!

That’s an adventure if ever I heard one.

The current pictures online don’t really do the old girl justice so I’m just going to wait and take my own. We’re also planning on doing a little work to the house right off the bat so there’ll be pictures of that coming up at the same time.

Banzai!

Feeding Time At The Zoo

I decided I was sick of smoothies this morning. Not surprising, I’m sure.

I decided to make banana “pudding” instead. Actually, as I eat this, it’s really more like raw COCO Wheats.

This is a bowl of 3 mashed bananas, some dried, grated coconut, and about 1T of ground flax seeds. I also stirred in about a tablespoon of this amazing junk:

I may not be able to eat the whole bowl but I’m certainly going to do my best. What this yields is a sweet, toothsome mash that You could probably dehydrate into some amazing chocolate crêpes as well. I ‘m just going to eat it.

Oh, I feel I should mention, even though my week of “science” is at an end, that my skin is looking phenomenal. That alone is enough to keep me eating mostly raw. However, the mood balancing, ease of preparation, lack of guilt whilst eating “junk food”, and energy booting magnificence are also good reasons for me to keep it up. Yeay!

I Ate The Pictures

Well, not really, I just forgot to take some but, rest assured, the following raw recipes made quite a splash.

Guacamole Jicama roll-ups Serves 6

6 avocados
2 handfuls of cilantro, minced
1 handful of parsley, minced
1/4 c lime juice
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
1/2 t salt
    - mash all together
1/2 t cayenne
1T lime juice
2C julienned jicama
    - toss in a separate bowl
3 heads romaine lettuce
    -  in a leaf of romaine, place a dollop of guac and some jicama sticks, roll and eat. . .  the whole bowl.

*This recipe comes from Living Raw Food by Sarma Melngailis.

Double Mango Thai Basil Salad serves 4

1c raw brazil nuts soaked for 1hr, thinly sliced
1/3 c agave nectar
1t chili powder
sea salt
4 green mangos (I used 1 granny smith apple) peeled and thinly julienned.
2 ripe mangos, peeled
1 small red chili (I used about 1T siracha)
3-4T lime juice or coconut water
star anise
1 small handful Thai Basil leaves, thinly julienned

in a small bowl, mix the brazil nuts with the agave nectar, chili powder, and a generous pinch of salt. spread the nuts on a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate at 115 degrees for 24-48 hours. (I definitely cheated and tossed these on some silpat in the oven until they were toasted. I didn’t have 2 days to dehydrate these guys. if you are baking them, still buy raw nuts so they’re not TOTALLY overdone.)

place the green mangoes (apples) in a medium bowl an sprinkle with about 2t of salt toss well and lest stand for 30 min or more (I used a dash of lime juice too so the apple wouldn’t brown.)

in a blender, blend the flesh of one of the ripe mangos with the red chili and enough coconut water to make it a thin smooth consistency. Season with a pinch of salt and a pinch of star anise. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and set aside.

Julianne the flesh of the second ripe mango and add it to the bowl with the green mangos. Throw in the basil and toss to combine.

Spread some of the spicy mango sauce onto a plate, pile the mango/apple combo on top and sprinkle with the brazil nuts. Garnish with additional star anise.

Um, I should mention that I completely forgot about the star anise. . it was still great.

*this recipe comes from Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenny and Sarma Melngailis.

Make these. Eat them. Feel awesome.

Day 5: speak of the Devil

Yesterday, some of you will remember, I mentioned that I wasn’t really feeling any of the  detox crappiness that some people talk about feeling once they go raw. . . Well, I may have spoken too soon. Nothing serious, I just had a little trouble sleeping.

This morning, though, I feel fine! I woke up only half an hour later than usual and I don’t feel like I tossed and turned all night. Ah well, that’s the main thing, right?

In other news, I think I need to lay off the cashew dip. I had it last night with carrots and broccoli fir dipping and I kind of had the feeling of a rock in my belly. It was just too heavy for me to enjoy. . . .but it tastes so good! Today I’m having a salad to give myself a break.

in other other news, Mr. Crow invited some friends over for food (or something) tomorrow. Yikes! I feel like I’ve got very little time to prepare/shop for ingredients. Mr. Crow has requested some “raw-violi” from the Living Raw Food book. I’ll be gathering ingredients today and dehydrating tomorrow, I guess. The “pasta” requires young coconut flesh, as well so I’ve got to devise a good way to get into my coconuts fast! this solves that!

Now I’ve got to make a grocery list, do my push-ups and crunches, shower, drink breakfast, go to the library and pick up another recipe book (I think I’ll have every singe one out of the library when I’m done), go to the store (thank goodness it’s cold), and then head to work by 1:30. I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough time.

mood: 9
energy: 9
hours of sleep: 8.5 (time spent in bed)
Appx% of raw food consumed yesderday: 98%
notes: Skin is actually looking better!

Day four: recipes and junk

I think I’ll get the “junk” part out of the way first; and, when I say “junk”, I mean “junk food”. Check it out. The most gorgeous junk food evaaar:

These are cupcakes I made for a New Year’s party. They were devil’s food cake with a peppermint buttercream. Once I frosted them with voluminous peaks of fluffy perfection I did the following:

That’s a dark chocolate ganache, people. And, check out my cute liners! That was a Christmas gist from my in-laws-to-be! So nice!

Next up, I have a cake that I made on Sunday. It’s “my” (Baked’s) signature buttercream frosting (almond flavor) with amaretto soaked strawberries.

See how the amaretto-strawberry juice soaked into the cake!? This was a boxed cake, even! All you do is bake a cake from a box, while that’s baking soak some sliced strawberries in some amaretto and a bit of sugar. When the cake is cool, slice off the top to make it even, pour the strawberry amaretto juice and chopped berries onto the exposed cake, frost the other side and flip it onto the berried cake, then frost the outside for an impressive and impressively easy dessert.

What’s next? Well, it’s not exactly junk food any more but it’s not something I really liked.

 

This is from a recipe called Poivrons Farcis from Urban Vegan. I was trying to make myself like peppers but I’ve never been a big fan. This dish was no exception. The inside was great: Gimmie Lean Sausage, carrots, pepper bits, quinoa . . . I just couldn’t handle the pepper shell with it’s soft layer and the horrible, tough skin. bleck. Ah well, we froze then for Mr. Crow.

Now, on to the most recent of things. So, yesterday I said that I was making kale crisps in my dehydrator and I’d let you know how it went? Well, it went GREAT! Although this attempt was a bit salty for my taste but these were superbly munchable. Kind of like a raw Dorrito. I even passed some around at work where, after some initial trepidation, people nommed them with gusto!

Look how cute it it! I probably ate half a head of kale yesterday as a snack. mmmmm. This is definitely a staple.

Next up is a “cheese” from Sarma Melngailis’ Living Raw Food.

4c raw cashews, soaked for at least 2 hrs (overnight in my case)
1/3c fresh lemon juice
2t sea salt
2t smoked paprika
2T nooch
1/4c miso (white/yellow)
1/4c tahini
1/4c filtered water, plus more as needed
1/3c minced chives (I left these out)

Blend all but the chives in a high-speed blender until smooth, adding additional water one tablespoon at a time as needed, until the cheese is think and smooth but not runny. Transfer to a bowl and fold in the chives.

She uses this recipe to stuff squash blossoms in a fancy-type recipe but, in her everyday recipe section she fills bell pepper halves with it. I further deconstructed it and served it as a dip with red pepper spears and celery to make it all the more portable.

Now, I know I just wrote that I don’t like peppers, but, as I also mentioned, I’m determined to make myself like them. I made a very important discovery yesterday with this. I like, nay, I love raw peppers. When the whole thing is crunchy it’s the finest thing in the world. I ate an ENTIRE pepper for lunch. Raw food FTW.

And now, for the checklist:

mood: 9
energy: 9
hours of sleep: 8.5
Appx% of raw food consumed yesterday: 90%
notes: The buzz is gone and I’m kind of glad. I find myself hard to handle when I’m that way. I still have tons of energy as evidenced by my cooking and blogging. I’ve even been helping Mr. Crow with his chores around the apartment.

They say that you go through an uncomfortable detox period when you eat this way. Supposedly it involves things like: Headaches, nausea, depression, moodiness, nightmares, poor sleep, diarrhea, sore throat, cold/flu symptoms. I’m still waiting for it. . . (^.^)

For now, I’m ready for breakfast. Let’s go see what the cornucopia has for us today!