Mary Ann's Home Kitchen

Mary Ann's Home Kitchen

Gourmet Raw Vegan Cooked Food

Recipe Favorites by Mary Ann Jones

About 101 of the recipes in this book are raw and about 49 cooked vegan recipes.

After speaking to Mary Ann on the phone she said it was gourmet and after reviewing this vegan book I agree.

CedarBrook is a lifestyle center where people spend time learning the eight laws of health. A great place to cleanse, eliminate toxins from the body and restore health and wellness.

"The only hope of better things is in the education of the people right principles…Unhealthful conditions must be changed, wrong habits corrects. Then nature is to be assisted in her effort to expel impurities and to re-establish right conditions in the system." Ministry of Healing, pg 73.

The program at CedarBrook Lifestyle Center consists of rest, exercise, temperance, pure water, sunlight, nutrition, fresh air and trust in Diving power.

CedarBrook Lifestyle Center makes available many nutritional herbal supplements and healthful products for the entire family. CedarBrook Lifestyle Center also offers whole foods, internal cleanse products, kitchen supplies, cookbooks, health resource books and DVDs along with household cleaning products.

I'm throughly impressed with this book. I already know it will be a book I reach for. Some of the recipes include raw ravioli, nut cheese for ravioli, uncooked pizza, peanut sauce without peanuts, raw cabbage roll-ups, raw lasagna, raw garden veggie patties, tacos Italian mostly raw, fill potato dish, walnut loaf, enchilada sauce, potato garlic onion mash, vegetable fried rice with tofu, tofu katsu, raw mango butternut soup, raw bok choy soup, banana soup, tomato soup, raw corn fresh salad, raw broccoli salad, raw cabbage napa salad, raw cabbage blender slaw, raw kale salad, raw tabour, raw carrots, parsley, and walnuts, bean salad three, warm spinach salad, raw cauliflower walnut rice, raw alfredo white sauce, raw pesto sauce, raw carob sauce, raw marinara pasta sauce, marinara pasta sauce, raw barbecue sauce, and sweet citrus sauce.

The you get to the salad dressings and there are some really amazing recipes here such as raw CedarBrook special dressing, Larry's raw lemon avocado salad dressing, raw carrot-avocado soup or dressing, raw cucumber soup or salad dressing, raw ranch style dressing, raw corn-cilantro salad dressing, raw orange dill dressing, poppy seed salad dressing, raw olive green salad dressing, Catalina salad dressing.

In the non-dairy cheese section I found several raw cheeses including a jack, cheddar and slicing cheese.

In the spreads, dips, chips & side favorites some of the recipes are raw tuna mock-like spread, raw almond pumpkin spread, raw hummus sprouted, raw salsa, raw catchup, raw almondaise, raw cranberry relish, raw sour cream cilantro, raw prickles, raw walnut pate, raw spicy red pepper chips, walnut spread, raw tomato sun-dried cheese spread.

Bread, muffin, cracker favorite recipes include raw onion flat bread, homemade whole wheat bread, pizza dough, crackers sesame oat, muffins apple easy.

Breakfast favorites include raw lemon or orange date breakfast or dessert bars, raw apple parfait breakfast dish, raw seed cereal, raw granola, raw buckwheat berry cereal, raw oatmeal, raw apple raisin cereal, raw breakfast patties, apple oats casserole, raw waffles corn-oat, apricot or peach sauce, crepe Suzette, french toast, tofu scramble, and tofu Scramble seasoning mix.

Next chapter dessert favorites you will find so many gourmet recipes such as raw strawberry or peach pie, raw orange honey creme sauce, raw carob cake with raspberry sauce, raw banana cake, raw walnut-raisin cake, raw lemon glaze, raw carob mousse, raw lemon cashew cheesecake, raw lemon pudding or frosting, raw CedarBrook candy, raw carob halvah, raw frozeen fruit creme, raw cherry nut cobbler, raw carob coconut truffles, raw macadamia cookies, raw cookies or dessert crust, raw frosting deluxe for cookies, muffins or cake, raw brownie toostie-like candy, raw caramels, raw piano colada parfait, baked pie crust, carob almond butter pie, pumpkin pie bread, carob brownies, tofu cheesecake, raw whipped almond creme, carob walnut fudge, coconut whipped creme, whipped soy better creme, cookies--no bake, coconut cream pie, raw carrot pineapple cake, coconut cream frosting, raw nut butter donuts, raw maple orange donuts--not fried.

Beverage favorites recipes include raw coconut banana smoothie, raw orange banana shake, raw strawberry papaya smoothie, raw almond date milk, raw pecan nut milk, raw green drink, raw power drink, iron tonic and mango chill drink.

You can find this gourmet cookbook here at Cedar Brook Lifestyle Center

Rod Rotondi's Kale Salad

Hale Kale Salad

This is the basic recipe for a delicious and quick kale salad. You can of course add other ingredients (unless you want them to be mashed in, add them after you have completed the basic recipe). Some of my favorite additions are sprouted wild rice, tomatoes, seaweed, mung bean sprouts, and tahini. Yummy — I’m getting hungry just thinking about them!

Serves 1 to 2

1 bunch kale leaves

1 medium avocado

Juice of 1 medium lemon (about 2 cup)

Dash of cayenne pepper

2 teaspoon sea salt

1. To prepare the kale leaves: Holding a kale leaf by the stem with one hand, wrap your other hand around the leaf up near the stem with your thumbnail exerting a slight pressure on the stem. Glide your thumbnail down the stem, separating the leaf from the stem; once you get the technique, it’s a snap. Using this technique, deleaf one bunch of kale leaves into a large bowl.

2. Now, reach in and grab a handful of kale leaves and rip them into pieces. Continue this motion repeatedly until you have ripped all the leaves into small bite-sized pieces (you don’t want the pieces to be too big because they could catch in the throat while you are swallowing or may just be unappetizing).

3. Cut the avocado in half lengthwise and remove the pit. With a spoon, scoop out each avocado half onto the kale leaves. Add the lemon juice, cayenne, and salt to taste.

4. Okay, now comes the fun part. Remember how I talked before about having a relationship with your food? Well, here is a chance to develop a very tactile and immediate bond! I want you to get down and dirty. Reach into that bowl and start mashing the mixture with your hands. Squeeze the avocado between your fingers. Mash it all up until you have all the kale bits coated in a lovely creamy sauce. (If no one is looking you might even go ahead and lick that tasty dressing off your hands when you’re done.)

SPROUTED CHICKPEA HUMMUS

Okay, I’m going to give it up here — my prized recipe for hummus. It’s so easy, and

it keeps well for a few days in the fridge. Besides being a great dip/appetizer, it also

can turn any salad into a real meal. So make enough for a few days, and you’ll always

have a delicious and very nutritious boost to add to salads or wraps.

Makes 6 cups

6 cups sprouted chickpeas (see chart, page 57)

2 medium lemons, peeled and quartered

1 cup tahini

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and quartered

3 medium cloves garlic

1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves

1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/3 cup cold-pressed olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt, plus additional (up to 1 teaspoon) to taste

1. Put the sprouted chickpeas in a food processor and blend well. Remove to a large

bowl.

2. Put the lemon first, then the remaining ingredients, in a blender and blend well.

3. Pour the blended mixture into the bowl with the chickpeas and mix well. Taste and

adjust the seasonings. Voilà!

MEXICAN CORN CHOWDER

This has become one of the favorite soups at our restaurants. It’s easy to make at

home — but please still come to the restaurants!

Serves 8

Kernels of 8 ears fresh corn (about 6 cups)

1 large yellow onion, chopped (about w cup)

1 medium bell pepper (not green), chopped (about 2 cup)

1 to 2 medium cloves garlic

1/2 bunch fresh cilantro leaves (about 2 cup), plus more for garnishing

3/4 cup lemon juice

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Dash of cayenne pepper

Sea salt to taste

Hot water for heating

1. Set aside 1/2 cup corn kernels for garnishing. Put the remaining corn kernels and

all the other ingredients except the hot water in a blender. Blend until smooth with

some chunky bits, adding water as needed. If you like it chunkier, lightly blend the

mixture, then remove a third of it to a small bowl. Blend the remaining two-thirds

until smooth, then add in the chunky portion and blend just to mix.

2. Before serving, heat the soup by stirring in very hot water in a 1 to 1 ratio of hot

water to soup. Garnish with extra corn kernels and cilantro.

Excerpted from the book Raw Food for Real People Ó2009 by Rod Rotondi. Printed with permission from New World Library. http://www.newworldlibrary.com

Raw Food for Real People by Rod Rotondi

RAW FOOD for REAL PEOPLE by Rod Rotondi

I know there are a lot of readers who in a perfect world would be doing an hour of yoga every morning, meditating during lunch break, thinking only pure and grateful thoughts throughout the day, and eating a 100 percent raw, vegan, organic diet at all three meals. There is a tendency to want to make a resolution to “do it all” at once. And that might work for about .001 percent of you, but for the rest of us, it’s more about incremental change.

What works best for most people is a steady, gradual, and gentle movement toward a healthier, happier you. Setting unreasonably ambitious goals is only setting yourself up for disappointment and disempowerment.

In diplomacy, steps toward resolution are referred to as “confidence-building measures.” Since we’d all like to have more peace, it might be a good idea to think of our own progress this way: small, achievable steps that are doable and help create a momentum in the right direction.

So, how about ten minutes of yoga and stretching every morning? What about a fifteen-minute walk before you start your workday? Perhaps five minutes of meditation before you turn in at night (tuning in before you turn in).

Or how about one totally healthful meal each day? Or maybe set a goal of eating raw only five or six days a week, so you don’t have to face the prospect of life without that Grand Slam breakfast! Start with something achievable. Breakfast, for example, is so doable. Wait till you get to the breakfast section — we have lots of delicious, easy-to-make recipes for you, including smoothies, oatmeal, and granola. Plus, you can make a smoothie any time you get hungry!

Once breakfast is conquered, adding in a salad for lunch is a breeze. You can even learn how to bump up that salad until it’s a delicious and filling nutritional powerhouse — check out chapter 10, Making a Salad a Meal.

And then you are on to soups, desserts, dips, breads, crackers, and more. So have fun, and enjoy your food!

Dealing with Food Addictions

Those of us who have grown up on a contemporary Western diet have food addictions galore. I know I do. Fortunately, my three-year-old daughter does not. She has never eaten foods like refined flours and sugars, highly processed foods, meats, or dairy, all of which create negative addictions. We are helping our daughter create a very healthy and positive relationship with food.

But most of us were brought up with a less-than-optimal diet and a relationship to foods that includes an emotional attachment to eating them. We often have deep-seated and mostly unconscious feelings of giving ourselves a treat when we choose to eat many foods that we now know are far from optimal.

We can help the next generation by giving them a healthier start. But for the vast majority of us, we must begin by recognizing that we ourselves are food addicts — and not getting down on ourselves because of it! It simply is what it is, and now it is up to us to decide what to do about it.

Many people who learn about the incredible benefits of raw and living foods try to use willpower to overcome their food addictions. While this will work for a while, usually willpower alone doesn’t work in the long run. Instead, it’s best to take the opportunity to become aware of our beliefs and attitudes about food, educate ourselves, and be loving and gentle with ourselves as we evolve toward a healthier relationship with food.

I will give you an example. There have been times I have really felt like having a piece of traditional baked pizza. This is not terribly surprising considering the fact that I grew up in an Italian American family, that my dad makes an incredible pizza, and that he also taught me how to make one at a young age. Consequently I have had an emotional attachment to pizza. So how do I handle the hankering?

When I first feel the desire for a slice, I usually think back to when I was giving up smoking many years ago. The trick was not to ask myself “Do I want to smoke a cigarette?” but to ask “Do I want to live life as a smoker?” A single cigarette is not going to significantly harm me. However, living life as a smoker would seriously compromise my health, as well as having many other negative effects on my life. And life as a smoker always begins with the next cigarette.

So, with food addictions I try to do the same thing, changing “Do I want to eat a piece of pizza?” to “Do I want to live life as a pizza eater?” While asking the second question, I envision a very round version of me eating pizza (as I mentioned, my last name, Rotondi, means “the round ones” in Italian). I really don’t want to be round. I like being slim, light, and energized. So this thought often helps me get past the pizza hankering.

However, sometimes the hankering comes back — again and again. What to do? Use willpower to suppress my desire for pizza? If a desire for a specific food comes up repeatedly, I will go out and eat a small portion of that food. However, I will do it consciously. I will tune in to how my body feels before I eat the pizza and then focus on how the pizza smells, looks, and tastes. I will also be conscious of how I feel five minutes after I eat it, and thirty minutes, and an hour later. Usually what happens is that the first bite is okay but mildly unsatisfying. The second bite is really not a treat at all, and I realize that what I am eating tastes a bit like cardboard (keep in mind that when you eat a raw-food diet for any length of time, your taste buds change and cooked foods don’t taste the same anymore). Then after five minutes I feel a heaviness in my stomach. After half an hour, I feel lethargic and already wish I hadn’t eaten the pizza.

The point is that if we try to suppress all our cravings, in the end we get wound so tight that the spring may break and we might run out and eat three large pepperoni pizzas with extra cheese! It’s better to get out of judgment mode and work on evolving our relationship with food. The more we exercise our body consciousness and really listen to our bodies, the more we will replace old food habits, thought patterns, and addictions.

By the way, if you have any other addictions in your life, moving to a raw-food diet can often help in kicking them as well. Once we can control the food we put in our mouths, everything else becomes easier.

Rod Rotondi is the author of Raw Food for Real People. Rod Rotondi teaches about raw food through DVDs, retreats, and online and in-person classes. The founder of the Leaf Organics retail product line and Leaf Cuisine restaurants, he caters events and lives in Los Angeles. Visit him online at http://www.leaforganics.com.

Excerpted from the book Raw Food for Real People 2010 by Rod Rotondi. Printed with permission from New World Library.

Edible Wild Plants Book Review

I want to tell you about this great book from Gibbs Smith called "Edible Wild Plants" by John Kallas, Ph.D. Wild foods from dirt to plate.

This book is from the "Wild Food Adventure Series." John Kallas spent his youth in a suburban midwestern neighborhood fascinated with nature. He taught a senior-level class in edible wild plants at Michigan State University. That continued from 1978 through 1985. He has a Ph.D in nutrition, a masters in education, and degrees in biology and zoology. He trained as a botanist, nature photography, writer, researcher, and teacher. He has a website http://wildfoodadventures.com.

In part one "Understanding Wild Foods"

• identifying and enjoying wild foods
• what is edible
• when plant parts morph into food
• foraging tools.

Part two titled "The Plants"

Foundation Greens

• Wild spinach
• Chickweed
• Mallow
• Purslane

Tart Greens

• Curly dock,
• Sheep sorrel
• Wood sorrel

Pungent Greens

• Field mustard
• Wintercress
• Garlic mustard
• Shepherds purse

Bitter Greens

• Dandelion
• Cat's ear
• Sow thistle
• Nipplewort.

Part three titled "The Potential of Wild Foods"

• Why eat wild foods
• The nutrition of wild foods
• Oxalates and nitrates
• Agriotrophytology
• Crafting a wild paradise
• Feeding yourself and society

This book goes all though all the tools needed. It has maps of region for wild edibles in United States. Color photos of the wild edibles and recipe ideas. This book has 416 pages and a wealth of information.

I can't wait until this spring to start finding and harvesting wild edibles here in the northwest.

You can find it here at Gibbs Smith http://www.gibbs-smith.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=2907

Ani's Raw Food Kitchen

Raw Food Recipes for Beginners

In reviewing "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen" I just had to start trying recipes. One of the first recipes I tried was the baja cheese and I wasn't disappointed. Baja cheese is fast and easy and full of flavor. Right on the front cover is a comment from the Mad Cowboy, Howard Lyman who I've seen several times at health crusades and his testimony is amazing if you have not heard him do a search and listen to him.

In the introduction you will find helpful tips for your health, going to the market, shopping list, and how to use this book. You will also several recipes for smoothies and shakes like very blueberry smoothie, carob strawberry bliss smoothie and vanilla coconut shake and fuzzy navel, blue-green power shake and many more. There are several mylk recipes. Section 2 has cereals, puddings, pancake, syrups, butter and chicken friendly scrambles. Section 3 is full of salads with so many dressings. Section 4 soups and sauces to tickle your tongue along with savory sauces and dips. Section 5 accompaniments and sides such as black olive hummus (bean free), red pepper corn salsa and black sesame sunflower bread that is shown on the front cover sandwich that Ani is eating. Section 6 scrumptious cheezes and pates where you will find baja cheese, nacho cheeze, oregano ricotta, sun -dried tomato cheese. Section 7 is full of wraps and rolls, pastas, more main dishes that make you sing. Section 8 is the dessert section and you will find dessert soups, pies and cobblers, cakes, and icey kreams, sweet sauces. Section 9 is for your furry friends and she gives you Kango's favorite pate, dog treats and black sesame sunflower dog biscuits. If your looking for a easy to follow raw food cookbook with simple everyday ingredients this might be one you want to start with.

Another amazing cookbook from Da Capo Press.