Happy New Year! Thus begins my journey in raw food.

So, I haven't posted in ages. Reasons being: Busy season at work. That ended mid-November. Then I began sabbatical from work in early December, got sick 3 times since Thanksgiving (my immune system is shot), then Christmas with my husband's family in Kansas and that pretty much brings us to today.

Lots been going on. Namely, I've been cooking some really fantastic dishes, haven't posted about any of them, and I will eventually get around to writing about them, but at this post does not concern those fantastic dishes (although one of which he called "the best he's ever had")

Nevertheless, I have embarked on a new journey- a journey that will hopefully end my chronic winter sicknesses, help me be healthier, fitter, flexible, happier and everything else good you want out of life. My new journey? Raw food + yoga + exercise

Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot stand the thought of yoga. To me it's not exercise, and it sucks because it's all "inner peace" and far too hippieish for me (and for being a pretty ridiculous hippie as it is, that's saying a lot). Yoga is not exercise, swimming/biking/running/rowing/basketball, etc are. However, I'm choosing to do yoga for completely different reasons. It's time I go from mostly healthy (as that's not doing me any favors at this point) to being as fit as I possibly can, and yoga can help me get the meditation and flexibility that I need. Besides, it has proven benefits of helping people in stressful jobs, which I most certainly have, so I really don't see any downsides at this point, except that I hate it. Hopefully that'll change.

Now, I'd like to say that I'm a pretty healthy person- I eat a lot of vegetables, cook almost every dish I eat and abstain from a lot of meat (mostly because I can't stomach touching it to actually bother cooking any of it) and don't consume milk (although I love cheese, eggs and butter). However, I'm clearly not doing enough to get my body in top form, as I've been packing on pounds since my husband and I moved out of the city and no longer walk a zillion miles a day and the farmer's markets are farther away than they used to be.

So this morning I got up and I watched 2 documentaries that have been on my list of things to see: Food Matters and Forks over Knives (both of which are on Netflix streaming). I've also seen Food, Inc., read The Omnivore's Dilemma, Everything I Want to do is Illegal, In Defense of Food, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food, and others. I know more about food than most people my age and all of it has made me a more conscious consumer of the products I do choose to eat. However, I'm not doing enough.

I can be healthier, I can be better. So starting tomorrow: No eggs, milk, cheese, yogurt, animal products, processed foods of any kind. I will eat only raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains. Occasional cooking on my part may be required as I acclimate to this new lifestyle. I will also be abstaining from alcohol. This is no 30-day diet plan, this is not a detox, this is a change in my lifestyle (and my husband is about 65% on board with this).

Thankfully tomorrow is Sunday, which means my Farmer's Market is open where I will stock up on loads of greens and vegetables and fruits and I can supplement everything else from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. When I get up tomorrow I'll take down my weight, body fat, and measurements. I've got some blood work from earlier in the year that I'll use as a basis for comparison for when I next have my annual physical and we'll see how this progresses!

2012 promises to be a very good year indeed.

Update

So, the whole no sugar no alcohol thing has not really been working out.

I've been stressed at work lately, possibly about to encounter a mental breakdown, and have been drinking to cope. No, not alcohol coping, but I had two beers tonight and a liter and a half on Saturday (Al and I went to a German biergarten after all).

I've only slipped up once on the sugar thing when I came home from travel and house a Lavender Moon Cupcakery cupcake in the fridge. They're no Baked and Wired, but since I no longer live down the street from them, Lavender Moon does just fine.

Also- for anyone in the DC area, near H st NE, needs to visit these two places:
1. Biergarten - sit outside. Order liters of beer, pretzel rolls and bratwurst. You won't be sorry. Be prepared to make friends with strangers because you sit German style at wooden tables.

2. Tokyo Underground (Ramen house) - the one hour forty-five minute wait was more than worth it
once we got our ramen. Simply fantastic. I'll never go back to cup-ramen again (although I don't think I've honestly eaten those since college). If you're just looking for a place to eat and don't feel like dealing with a long wait, this is not the place for you, but if you want real authentic ramen this is it.

I would also add the H Street Country Club (beer and indoor put-put, how can you go wrong?) but since I've never been there myself, I cannot personally say how amazingly fantastic and awesome it is. I have heard really good things though.

Making Pizza!

Tonight for dinner we decided to give the pizza stone a try that we got from Williams-Sonoma during the pizza class we went to (where I was horribly disappointed). I've written about how my pizza dough making skills are..... lackluster and thought I should give it another go. We did buy the pizza peel and the baking stone afterall.

I'm happy to report that this time I made excellent pizza! My ability to make the dough into a circle, but that's a skill I'll deal with later. Misshapen dough is... artisan. Or that's what I like to tell myself.

So, we used a recipe for food processor dough, because I didn't feel like spending 10 minutes kneading and still not getting anywhere. My old dough was never elastic or pizza doughy.

The recipe:
3 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 cup warm water (between 105-115 degrees)

Dissolve the sugar and yeast into the cup of water for 5 minutes until foamy. Add the flour and salt to the food processor and pulse a few times. I kept it on 'on' and slowly poured the yeast/water/sugar into the processor and let it run until a ball was made. I knew the second I touched it that I had done it right this time. It felt exactly like how you think pizza dough is supposed to feel like. I was tickled pink.

I then poured 2 TBSP of olive oil into a large bowl, added the dough and put it in a warm spot (I used the stovetop because it was warm from preheating the oven to 500 degrees with the pizza stone). Let it rise until it doubles, about 1.5 hours. (I don't know what the olive oil thing is for, I saw them do it at Williams-sonoma and all the instructions I have say to do it, so I did).

I didn't wait the full 1.5 hours. Once it looked doubled I called it good- I'm a hungry girl you know! I divided it in half and put some cornmeal on the pizza peel to make sure the pizza slid off the peel properly without sticking. I then pre-baked the crust for just a little bit, added my toppings, baked it until it looked good (slight golden brown crisp to the edges with properly melted cheese and yummy toppings). I'm pleased to say that it was delicious!

My messy kitchen

 I forgot to take photos of the beginning process, so my messy 'after' kitchen will have to do.

Dough at the beginning

After a little over an hour of rising

 The dough was a little crusty on top, but that all worked its way out during my attempt to make circles.

My attempt at a circle failed miserably.

Handling dough that's coated/soaked in olive oil is a weird experience. Never dealt with that before and I was a little unnerved at how oily it was, but I got used to it and at the end didn't even really notice.

Added my topping on the pizza wheel 

 We normally do a Margherita pizza (tomato, mozzarella and basil), but we went a different route this time- green peppers, mushrooms and red onion.

Pulling it out of the oven. The pizza peel really does help.

Voila!

Delicious!

I call that a win. If only I had pictures of my pizza fails to show you the difference!

Sugar

I've decided to give up sugar for one month. This is going to be a challenge and I can't guarantee i'll ever manage to do it successfully, but I'm going to give it my all. I'd been reading a lot about the benefits of giving up sugar and I figured 'hey why not,' so right then and there I decided to end sugar consumption for one month.

Timing couldn't be better either, as it is busy season for work and usually that equates to eating tons of sugar in the audit room. Massive amounts of it. So giving it up will be good for me and keep me from snacking on sweets during the most wonderful time of the year that is called busy season.

I've additionally decided to give up alcohol and caffeine. The caffeine will be easy because I like tea and only drink coffee on weekends so giving it up won't be a problem. The alcohol will be considerably harder because there's nothing like the delicious feeling of a beer after a long hard day at the office or after a particularly difficult day like the one I experienced today.

Hopefully this whole no sugar/alcohol/caffeine thing goes well, but it's hard when there's sugar in everything. So I'm going to do my very best.

Wish me luck!

Williams-Somona Technique Class

Today the hubs and I went to a Williams-Sonoma class. They're offered every Sunday (free) at 11 at Williams-Sonomas around the country. Today was the first one we've ever attended and it revolved around pizza crust making.

This is one area I definitely need some improvement on. My dough is not elasticy and comes out soft and a little mushy from the ingredients after being baked. I had no idea what I was doing wrong, as I was using the same recipe my mother uses and hers always comes out great, so when I saw the class I jumped on it. Plus you get 10% off all purchases made that day when you attend the class, so that was a plus.

I must say, I was a little disappointed in the class. I thought it was going to be a class on how to make pizza crust, but it was more of a "watch us use pre-made pizza dough to make pizzas while we tell you about all the stuff we have at the store" I don't want to make pizza from a mix and I don't want to use a bread machine (nor do we have one). I consider that cheating in the world of cooking. The chef lady also made puff pastries from a pie press which confused me because it didn't even revolve around pizza crust.  I knew we wouldn't be making crusts ourselves, but it was cramped and crowded in the store and wasn't near as fun or informative as I'd expected it to be.

We did end up learning a few things (namely that my dough isn't right which is why it doesn't bake well) and that having a pizza stone is the best way to cook the pizza and our current method is not the right way. So we bought a pizza stone and a pizza peel and I'll look for more recipes online that I can use to make better dough and hopefully that'll fix my dough problems.

I also accidentally opened up a jar of pizza sauce they were passing around (I thought it was for smelling since they were passing around everything else for smelling), so we had to buy that too. But no biggie there.

Pesto

So I finally managed to get out to a kitchen store to buy the rest of my canning supplies. Only instead of canning the hubs and I ended up stretching our own canvas to hang over a gaping lame cubby hole that's right about our fireplace. Whoever built this house was not thinking clearly when he put the internet jack in a massive cubby above the fireplace.

So no canning. Instead, we decided to make use of the intense amount of basil we have growing outside. When we re-did the garden we planted some basil along with some chives and mint in two rectangular planters. The basil has now completely taken over the chives and is now growing like a weed.

You can barely even see the chives inside the mess that is the basil.

Before I started this blog I found this recipe through stumble and immediately saved it. The writer recommended buying a mezzaluna to make the pesto over using a food processor (which we own) or knives (which we also own). So we set out and bought a mezzaluna (single bladed is better than double bladed unless you want to run the risk of having your fingers chopped off trying to get the stuff out from in between the blades). We also got the matching bowl that is curved to fit the blade of the rocker to make chopping easier. So, we decided to give pesto making a go.

And we're off! We've got a "large bunch" of basil, pine nuts, Parmesan, garlic and olive oil

I'm not sure what "a large bunch" of basil is supposed to be, so I just kept cutting until I had two packed handfuls.

Add some of the basil, stems removed, and the garlic. Start chopping!

You're supposed to wash the basil, but I didn't. I grew the stuff in my backyard with organic potting soil and nothing else, so I wasn't worried about washing off pesticides, chemicals or dirt.

And the chopping is commenced

Added more basil, kept chopping

Lookimg good!

Time to add the pine nuts (a small handful)

Now the Parmesan cheese (3/4 cup loosely packed)

Once the mixture is minced well, pack it into a cake and put it in a little bowl.

Then you're supposed to add some olive oil (a tablespoon or so)

And there it is! I made pesto! We are going to have it over pasta which I think will be good. The hubs refuses to use the pasta strainer and he accidentally dumped the pasta down the drain when trying to drain the pasta using the lid, so now we're re-making the pasta again.

Pasta try #2. Successfully using the strainer

When you're ready for the pesto you stir it up with the olive oil

Dinner is served

The end of dinner

I shoveled this stuff so fast into my mouth I didn't bother breathing. I've never tasted pesto this amazing before. I will definitely be making this again. The hubs's response: "You can make this again any time you want." along with "That's the best pesto I've ever had" - and I second that. He scarfed it down just as fast as I did. The mixture of the olive oil and the garlic with the basil was amazing. I can still taste it in my mouth. I can see why the article said if you want the best pesto to use a mezzaluna and chop it all by hand. I'm in cloud nine.

Perhaps I'm not such a bad cook after all.

A little introduction

I'm not a great cook. I'm not a particularly bad cook, but not the type of cook I'd like to be. My mom is the type of cook I aspire to be. The things I make I make just fine but nothing spectacular. Follow a recipe and out pops a meal. But I'd like to be a really good cook. One who can whip up brownies or a pie in no time flat. Who can sauté and dice and fry and roast and bake like the best of them. Learning how to blanch and can and pickle and stuff a turkey. Okay, I'll have to work up to the turkey- touching meat gives me the willies.

I see people online like bakerella and The Pioneer Woman and canning blogs and think "well, if they can do it, so can I" so today I set out to buy canning supplies. I'm going to learn to can. I came home with two 12-packs of mason jars, a can of pectin and pickling salt and a jar lifter. Only when I got home did I realize that I also should have purchased the water bath and wire basket. So perhaps canning will start tomorrow, or next weekend. Whenever I can get to the store to get those two things.

In the meantime I'm going to make spinach, mushroom and ricotta lasagna. Yum! I use the Moosewood Cookbook recipe for the lasagna:
12 lasagna noodles, partially cooked, drained and rinsed in cold water
1 lb chopped spinach. It calls for raw, but I couldn't find any so I'm using frozen. (I thaw mine in the microwave)
1/2 pound chopped mushrooms
2 cups ricotta cheese
1 lb mozzarella cheese- shredded
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 eggs beaten
2 TBS Wheat Germ
dash of nutmeg
Tomato sauce (I use two 15oz cans and have a little left over)

Cook the lasagna noodles half-way, drain and rinse in cold water. Mix the eggs, ricotta, mushrooms, spinach, wheat germ and nutmeg together. Get a 9x13 pan, cover the bottom in a small layer of sauce. Put down 1/3 the noodles (4). Then add 1/2 the stuffing, cover with sauce, add half the cheese, then 4 more noodles, the rest of the filling, sauce, the other 1/2 of cheese, the rest of the noodles, the last of the sauce, top with parm and done! Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.