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R and I just finished some epic Spring cleaning and a Spring juice cleanse.

(Markets have been a little sparse after the winter, but we were able to use a lot of local sprouts, carrots and apples. Sprouts from Windfall Farms, carrots from Garden of Eve.)  

Robert’s fasting and I’m making ICE CREAM ?  

Hehe, I’ve been playing with raw grass-fed dairy from a Pennsylvania Amish farmer lately. The raw cream I received is amazing- the richest I’ve ever tasted. So I decided to make some ice cream, vanilla for the first go round, but perhaps I’ll be making mint cacao chip by tonight. The ice cream is made with raw cream and raw egg yolks. Only make something like this if you have really high quality ingredients; I highly recommend making friends with some farmers. 

My friend Hugh likes to say that when you eat something really really good, or ‘transcendental’ as he says, it should teach you what all other things like that should really taste like. Eating this ice cream, I kind of had the sensation that I finally had some idea of what ice cream should really taste like. And the ice cream is so rich, I can only eat about 4 spoonfuls in one sitting. 

The most basic vanilla recipe:

3 cups best ever raw heavy cream 

1/4 cup or more raw honey

3 raw egg yolks from pastured happy chickens

1/2 or 1 T. vanilla to taste

1 T. arrowroot powder, if you’re going to store in the freezer

Whisk honey, egg yolks, vanilla and arrowroot together. Add cream and whisk until well combined. Process in an ice cream maker. Yum!

(Source: g0lubka.blogspot.com)

‘Colour Wheel Wraps.’ It seems every outside food repost of mine comes from g0lubka, but seriously, everything she makes is incredibly beautiful, delicate, creative and healthy. I also love her inspiration.

I never learned to cook, prepare, or even taste food ‘properly,’ so when I started preparing virtually all of my food from scratch, there was (and still is) quite a learning curve. For anyone who’s curious, I do own a number of cook books, mostly vegetarian, vegan, raw and anything that’s just too aesthetically pleasing not to have. When I get a craving for a particular something, I reference these books and google- I’ll take a few recipes that are close to the ingredients I have or want to use, and make something in between these recipes based on a curiosity I might have, or just because of my own preferences. I like doing things this way and not following line by line from a book. It makes things seem a little more experimental and it usually works out great- baking might be the exception here, but there’s not tons of baking done here in my kitchen, anyway. Definitely a big inspiration to me always, is g0lubka, and her truffles look amazing as well, but have many more ingredients than I ended up using.

There’s also no normal sweeteners in my kitchen right now, or sweet fruits. It’s a kick I’m on, to keep things extremely low glycemic, as there are a lot of potential benefits health-wise (anti-cancer, anti-candida), and I just feel better eating this way, right at this moment. So all that’s cool, right? Yes, but there are no ‘sweets’ that I can buy, and so I have to make my own using things like stevia leaf extract or occasionally birch tree sweetener (like xylitol). And, these ingredients are different than sugar or agave, so there’s much experimenting to be done. 

I’ll write up the recipe for the truffles soon. These came out amazing, but I’m going to continue experimenting and see what I can come up with. The truffle filling here is made of raw cacao, coconut oil, stevia extract, ceylon cinnamon, a touch of celtic sea salt and finely processed walnuts. Coatings are either finely processed dried coconut, cayenne and cacao powders, finely processed pistachios or finely ground walnuts. 

-L

An afternoon pick-me-up: two different diversions from a raw hemp milk and coconut butter base. R added raw cacao, peppermint extract and shredded coconut. I added coconut cream, almond extract, a few drops of stevia and cinnamon. 

(source: g0lubka)

I am consistently amazed at the intricacies of g0lubka’s creations. These ‘ginger and lemon pyramid cakes’ are incredible! And for those interested, completely raw/vegan.

-L