This blog of my 6 weeks raw experiment and ongoing love affair with food and health has found a new home at the-raw-recipe.com Come and visit and perhaps leave a recipe suggestion or two. Let me know how your journey is going too and we can spead the foodie love to all.
Things that make me happy
There are a list of things as long as my arm that make me happy… none of them are to do with consumer items and most are to do with Truth and Beauty.
I am re-reading Brave New World and it is scaring me all over again. It had a profound influence on me in my teens and again it is reminding me again that the things that drive us and determine our world should be examined on a regular basis.
I am not interested in instant convenience at the price of my health. Not for me, not for my kids.
I am passionately interested in thinking for myself, defining my own reality and questioning the current wisdom around everything, especially food. Why are we fatter and sicker than we used to be? Why does cancer hit 1 in 3 people? Why the obesity epidemic?
My youngest girl and I went to a Chef supply store to check out their vegetable spiraliser. What I left with, as well as a spiraliser was a renewed enthusiasm for taking time over food.
My daughter chose a couple of things- a ravioli maker was amongst them so that necessated the purchase of a few ingredients and she made her sister and herself ravioli for dinner. Her sister remarked “isn’t that a lot of effort for one dinner”? Fair comment but the reply came quickly that it was fun. She is 6 and wants to be a chocolatier when she grows up. I just love that she is making food from scratch and not watching the tv. This is one of the little things that makes me happy. She said to me “can you hear the sound the cutter makes on the board when it goes right through the pasta”? These are the distinctions that excite me. When you start noticing the little things, the sounds and smells, the textures and colours… god is in the detail.
Can you bring your child-like delight in the process to your food making. Can you marvel over how amazing carrot is if you turn it into a thousand long thin Angel Hair noodles? Can you be bothered to cut a radish into a rose because someone, even if it is only you will realise that time, effort and love went into dinner and somehow it actually makes the world… your world, a better more loving place.
Truth and beauty my friend… truth and beauty
Le Cru
The newly opened Le Cru raw vegan restaurant 137 Victoria Ave, Albert Park is nestled among cafes and shops at the beaconsfield Pde end of Victoria Ave.
Its morrocan stylings are lush and fresh and include a beautiful courtyard area that seats about 20 people comfortably. Mint and parsley grow beside huge ornate doors that set the scene for a relaxed and enjoyable eating experience.
The menu states that Le Cru offers a raw, organic, plant based restaurant, bar and function experience and it delivers on that promise. The difference with raw food restaurant to a conventional one is that nothing has been heated above 45 degrees to maintain the live enzymes and the retain the optimum nutrient value of the food.
Nothing- that means every little detail from the agave nectar that sits on each table to the nut milk in the coffee to the ‘cheese’ and crackers has been produced with painstaking attention to the values of the raw food diet. This along with the use of organic ingredients means you have an extremely healthy and thoughtful dining experience.
On the day I dined at Le Cru the organic spinach had not been delivered because it hadn’t met the suppliers strict standards so there were a few scratchings on the menu. Starters and mains are reasonably priced at $4 to $15 and include the kind of food that most people would recognise from a non raw restaurant; soup, dips and crackers, salad, pizza, burgers, and lasagna.
I took a non raw foodie along for a perspective from the other side of the fence and we sat in the delightful courtyard on a sunny afternoon for a relaxed lunch. The owner of Le Cru, Caroline was kind enough to serve us herself and answer all our many questions about the menu, ingredients and her cafe in general. There is a clear love of raw organic cuisine and she seems understandably proud of both the cafe premises and the menu.
We started with a juice labeled a blood tonic with kale, beet apple, and ginger which was $8.50 and was delicious. The juice was thick with the ingredients and as Caroline pointed out, much healthier than thin juices where the fibre has been removed.
Our starter was cheese and crackers and I was curious to try the two kinds of cheese on offer. The creamy Alfredo was made from cashew and was like a fresh fromage with a light yellow colour and smooth texture. The Cheddar was a deeper colour and had a sharp tangy flavour that did everything I would want a cheddar to do. It was powerful and tasty with a complex mixture of herbs and spices and a macadamia nut base.
These were served with tomatoflax seed crackers that could have easily stood on their own. They were firm and peppery but not crunchy and were a stand out favorite for us.
Priced at just $12 and serving 2 as a starter we thought these represented great value and if washed down with a glass of red from the great wine list would be just the perfect start to a meal.
Our mains were the pizza $7 and the lasagna $13 and this is where the comments of my non raw food friend were most valuable to me- the Pizza we agreed was amazing. It had a thin crust base similar to the flax seed crackers we loved with just the right amount of tomato sauce and cheese on it along with the fresh vegetable to impart that quintessential ‘pizza flavor’ and the serving size was reasonable for the price.
Then there was the lasagna. Now in all fairness I have never had a raw lasagna before so maybe I cannot compare but I know what I want from a lasagna and it is a comfort food. This was more like layers of a fresh sliced tomato with zucchini and there was some sauce in there and some cheese but overpowering it all was that essentially it was a pile of tomato. It felt like an arranged salad. My friend said this is the kind of thing non raw foodies dread about raw cuisine. A tiny portion of something that doesn’t bear any relation to the thing it was named after.
That aside we had a lovely lunch and were completely impressed by the range of things on the menu.
If we were still hungry we could have followed up with one of the many desserts- ice cream, Chocolate Ganache slice, Mini Tiramisu, Lemon merange pie, cake of the week or raw chocolate block with chili, orange or honey almond. Prices range from $2.50 to $12.
I noticed there was a nice simple kids menu that included guacamole with tomato bread, tzatziki with cut up veges, and soup and for dessert ice cream with sprinkles and cupcakes with frosting.
There are also some takeaway foods including the one cooked item we saw which was a quinoa tabouli.
There is also a lovely range of organic teas, coffee and hot chocolate of course and their wine and beer list which I will be saving for my second visit.
Le Cru was a delightful dining experience and deserves to become not just a raw foodies’ hangout, but one to take their non raw friends to introduce them to the joys of live food.
Hours are
Tuesday through Friday Lunch and Dinner closed from 3pm to 5pm
Saturday Dinner
Contact Le Cru for up to date times and bookings
(03) 9699 1144
137 Victoria Ave
Albert Park VIC 3206
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cheese, lasagna, Le Cru, le cru albert park, le cru melbourne, le cru raw vegan, nut cheese, pizza, restaurant
raw Broccoli Salad
Today I was missing broccoli which is one of my fave vegetables but it just sucks to cook it now… I feel like I killed it and the texture- bleh! So I had a quick look around the internet, as you do and saw a few raw broccoli recipes and armed with a couple of good ideas I gave it a crack and the recipe went like this:
2 big heads of broccoli cut into little bite sized bits
the juice of an orange
1/4 cup of olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 Tbsp sesame seeds
pinch of salt
pepper
Tbsp corriander
and a little bit of chilli if you like that sort of thing.
Mix up the ingredients and drizzle over the broccoli.
Toss it every 5 minutes or so and let it marinate for at least an hour before you serve it.
It is really so yummy- I would put a photo up but we ate it all… the kids loved it
more words of wisdom
Recently I had the opportunity to see the lovely Don Tolman speak in Melbourne. He is a fascinating and funny man and has a lot to say in regard to our current “health care” industry. He is out spoken and pulls no punches… I think I am seriously in ‘like’ with him. Plus he is a cowboy and who doesn’t like a cowboy 
His brand of wisdom harks back to an earlier age before we needed to control everything with drugs… when we understood that rubbish in meant rubbish out and we were responsible for our own health. He relates the story of his quest for “pulse” which took 17 years and had him visiting the worlds museums in search of this ancient wisdom in the scrolls of antiquity.
Don is a big advocate of fasting and once fasted for 40 days on water and then ran a marathon- honestly it puts us all to shame thinking we are going to die if we dont get a chocolate bar at 3pm or we skipped lunch… quick call the paramedics. Don has some gentle alternatives to fasting such as mono eating (apples for days) or juice fasting that might suit the beginner. I personally am going to add one days fasting a month to my diet.
He runs bootcamps for people to get back in touch with the simple truths that they just dont seem to be able to connect with in this high tech age- EAT MORE VEGES! No I am waiting for them to bring them out in pill form.
Sometimes we need to hear it from the right source to really get it in our neurology… this is it people… your life… your body and apparently it is YOU that is driving the bus… embrace it and it will give you power, deny it and you will always be looking for something to save you.
Don’s schedule can be found here and I heartily recommend you get off your butt and see him.
Oh and in case you are following my progress I can now swim half a km pretty easily and am working up to 3km, the biking totally rocks and the running has improved no end.
Life is sweet baby!
Green Smoooooooothies
On Monday I went to an enlightening workshop given by Victoria and Valya Boutenko all about green smoothies.
Victoria’s family have been “Raw” for 15 years and they really know their stuff, plus they were sweet and charming which goes a long way with me.
The upshot of all of the info that they gave us was that if we were to have a diet that was about 50% fruit and 48% green leafy veges with the remaining 2% made up of seeds nuts etc then that would be ideal. I know my diet is pretty heavy on seeds and nuts and has little fruit but lots of veges of the cruciferous variety so this is going to be another challenge.
Their suggestion for getting this massive amount of leafy green into you is to make a green smoothie in the morning and aim for 40% green 60% fruit to start with. I admit I went for 60/40 the other way because I really dont mind the very chlorophyll taste of all that green plus I like my results fast. So no nuts or fats of any sort in the smoothie… just green and fruit. Leafy green to be clear is not broccoli or other veges it is LEAFY! The advantage with making a smoothie is you are making the food the right consistency to be absorbed quickly into the body- again quick result.
Things to remember to do as you get in a routine of making this divine green breakfast is don’t eat anything 40 min either side of your drink. Rotate through at least 7 types of green. Drink slowly. Be happy… actually I just added that because I am so very happy aren’t you?
Honestly it takes me 5 minutes to make the whole thing and wash the blender AND the little peeps will drink it happily so bonus!
Recipes:
Apple-Kale-Lemon
4 apples
1/2 lemon juice
5 Kale leaves
2 cups water
Blend!
Strawberry-Banana-romaine
1 cup strawberries
2 bananas
1/2 bunch romaine
2 cups of water
you guessed it… Blend!
My smoothie fave goes like this
1/2 fresh pineapple
1 cup strawberries
150 gms (thats a biggish bag) mixed salad leaves/rocket/spinich
B-L-E-N-D
See ya
This is the end…
Not really! It is the end of my 6 week experiment but the beginning of a whole new phase. So after today I have a plan to replace a great deal of the family’s food with raw options.
Here is where I am starting
Pasta sauces
kids snacks and biscuits
ice cream
Pie/ cheesecake
soup
humus
pizza
crackers
After I replace a bunch of their usual food with raw food then I am going to introduce some new raw foods and raw ingredients as much as I can.
The kids are already showing an interest in my raw food and tasting bits of it which they usually declare as tasting quite normal so I think the best way to proceed is to get them in the kitchen.
I’ll let you know how that goes.
Dinner for tonight is zuchini pasta with a marinara sauce followed by a chocolate avocado pie I do believe- I better go shopping.
See you later
Recipe
crust:
2 cups almond
6 medjool dates
6 prunes
Blend until crumb texture and then press into pie dish and chill.
Filling:
4 Medjool dates
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup ground sesame
2 avocados
1/4 cup cacao
1/2 cup coconut
cinnamon
pinch salt
stevia to taste
Blend until smooth and then use a spatula to scrape into pie crust- chill
top with strawberries
Chocolate syrup
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 Tbsp cacao
mix together and drizzle over pie
Chill out and put the pie in the fridge for and hour or so
This pie is really rich and yummy
