Last Friday was the eve of my juice feast. (I'm getting a separate blog organized to document that.) As luck would have it, we also had our friend, Germaine, visiting from L.A., and she's dabbling in raw food these days. The Lovely Boyfriend and I decided we should go all out to provide her a delicious meal on the road, and to kick off my feast.
We set the table on the deck, brought out the organic wines, and spent the evening under the stars. (Apologies to any neighbors we kept up with our late night talk and laughter.) It was such a great meal!
What better to start with than red pepper soup? With the cost of organic peppers, we haven't been able to indulge very often, so we were happy to share this simple blend of raw red peppers with seeds, miso, olive oil, sea salt and white pepper.
No meal is complete without something leafy and green. We made our version of this raw Ranch dressing, and topped the mix of veggies with raw eggplant bacon.
Most folks who are sort of new to raw foods tend to go for things with familiar names and flavors, so we chose the raw lasagna from Matt Amsden's Rawvolution. Never content with what's on the page, we tripled or quadrupled the amount of mushrooms and played with the seasonings. So good!
Avery was kind enough to whip up the dessert while I went to hear Dr. Joel Fuhrman speak at a free lecture on Friday afternoon. He chose Sarma's Strawberry Tarts, from Carol Alt's second raw food book, The Raw 50. We hadn't tried them before, but we'll absolutely be having them again! So good! I could only watch Ave have a leftover tart for breakfast the next morning while I drank my juice. No sympathy--he sat right next to me and devoured it! (No worries, Ave.)
Much to our delight, Germaine enjoyed the meal from start to finish. I was thrilled to learn that she's signed up for a raw food delivery service, and will be receiving weekly prepared meals. Go, Germaine!
This was the kind of meal we could serve to our friends who have no concept of raw. You know the ones. They call us the tofu-eaters, but they would love all of this. No tofu involved.
P.S. Day 4, and I'm loving my juice feast!
