This was one of the most incredible vacations of my life. Not only did I have the most wonderful hosts (thank you so much to the Suarez and Cowell families for opening your home and your family) but I was able to see the ‘real’ Mexico and enjoyed every single moment.

The journey didn’t come without any drama of course, when I landed in Mexico City Airport to meet with my friend Dallas (who was from Australia but 15 years earlier had lived with the same host family as a student on exchange) I discovered I had missed my connecting flight to Tuxtla, with none until the following day and I had no way of contacting Dallas. At the time, all I could think of was a statistic that someone had told me without me verifying, was that someone was kidnapped everyone minute in Mexico City. I cried and begged the airline staff to put me on any flight that day, as people were expecting me, and I even pulled out the “I’m a flight attendant, put me in the jump seat, I don’t care”.

Eventually I found Dallas, and his fluent español put me at ease. And then we boarded our flight for Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

During my time in Mexico

• I lived with the locals
• made friends with 12 Australian blue heeler puppies,
• I partied in San Cristobal and ate hot dogs from a street vendor in the early morn
• bought dried bananas off local children at Agua Azul after swimming in the crystal blue waters
• toured temple pyramids at Tonina and Palenque archaelogical sites
• fell in love with the idea behind cantinas. Pay for your beer, get your food free
• enjoyed a traditional large family Mexican Christmas, that included opening presents and feasting on Christmas Eve until midnight, followed by karaoke
• a relaxing stay at the family ranch to recover from Christmas festivities.
• met the biggest bull in the WORLD
• enjoyed an evening horseback ride
• ate a worm
• had a snooze or 2 in a hammock
• Took a truck drive out to the fields to gaze at the stars with my Mexican family and some wine.

Never did I have a meal I didn’t enjoy whilst in Mexico, and although Mexican was my favourite food prior to my visit, this was AUTHENTIC Mexican and usually made by the family’s housekeeper. Our main meal was usually around 4pm in the afternoon with a light supper around 10pm. Yep, everyday I looked forward to lunch

Holy Guacamole Dressing

1 avocado

1/3 cup of cilantro (coriander)

1/4 tea cumin

2 T lime juice

1/8 tea chilli powder

1 clove garlic

1/4 tea himilayan or sea salt

1/4 tea agave

3/4 cup water

Blend until smooth and pour on your favourite salad. I like romaine, corn, tomatoes, red peppers, cucumber and garnish with organic blue corn chips. It’s creamy and very decadent.

For those of you that don’t already know, I have a day job. One that requires me to live out of a suitcase now and then, and also requires me to be supremely organised – something that is my purpose in this life to master. I never get any better at packing (one of my favourite bloggers, Gillian, has a great video here that helps me out when I get analysis paralysis during packing time) and I rarely enjoy the experience, dragging it out for as long as I can…..

Over the years I have lost countless belongings, being left in hotel rooms, in crew transport and pretty much all over the world. I have tried to learn from it and aim to become more organised with each trip but 8 years of being a flight attendant and it seems to have gotten worse. This trip, it appears I have lost not mine, but my boyfriend’s beautiful camera, my iPhone case, and my ability to hold onto things it seems. I have a feeling the camera may just be on the plane when I get back on it tomorrow (fingers crossed), if not it will be a very expensive month for me I lost my very own point and shoot camera a few weeks back, but with all my moving I am hoping it is just stuck under a pile of dirty washing or somewhere between houses and hopefully will show up!

Do you have any tricks for keeping everything under control, particularly when you travel? I have pretty much mastered the art of being ‘raw on the road‘ and remaining on track diet wise whilst away, but I just cannot for the life of me stop losing stuff on the road!!

In other news, my pal, raw partner in crime and fellow flight attendant, Becci, who moved from Saudi onto greener pastures to Milan recently, has started up a blog of her experiences of being a raw foodie in Italy – the best food place on earth!!! Well one of them. I love that Italians believe in the Slow Food Movement (which is everything opposite to FAST FOOD)  and I enjoyed eating my way around Italy myself in August last year.

Anyway check out Becci’s bloggy here if you want to see how a Raw Foodie copes in Milan. Tell her I say hi. But don’t go just yet Here is a recipe from the archives. In honour of Becci’s new blog, I’d thought I’d share with you the raw birthday cake she made  for me last year (when she was still thinking eating raw was a little strange – but she was such a good friend she borrowed my dehydrator whilst I was away on a work trip to create her own raw cake!) Isn’t she a darling?

Becci’s Raw Vegan Birthday Cake

Bottom Layer
4 peeled bananas
2 cups of dates soaked for 20mins
1 cup of walnuts soaked overnight, rinsed
2 cups of carob powder
1/2 cup of water

Puree all in a high speed blender. Place in a circular cake tin. Dehydrate in dehydrator on 110′ until dry (approx 6 hours) on one side then turn over and dehydrate on 110′ until totally dry (approx 4 hours)

Cream Layer
2 cups of macadmia nuts (soaked overnight)
1 cup of brazil nuts
1 cup of water
Juice of 2 lemons
150g of dried apricots
2 tablespoons of raw honey (or enough to taste sweet)

Puree all in a high speed blender until creamy

Top Layer
1 banana peeled
3 avocados pitted and peeled
1 cup of dates, soaked for 20 mins
2 cups of carob powder/ 1 cup of carob syrup
1 cup of brazil nuts
2 cups of raw cacao powder
handful of almonds

Puree all in a high speed blender then place in the the cake tin on it’s own. Once again dehydrate in dehydrator on 110′ for approx 6 hours on one side then 3 on the other.

Frosting/Icing
3 avocados
1 cup of dates
1 cup of carob syrup
1 cup of raw cacao powder

Blend until combined. Spread on top of completed cake. YUM

With my tasting night around the corner, I’ve just a little recipe to share with you whilst on the run. But first, here some sneaky peaks of what’s going on in my kitchen in preparation

I cleaned out my fridge yesterday and found  two portobello mushrooms which were going to have an incarnation as a burger with some trimmings until I felt hungry and realised they didn’t have much time left whilst I busied myself in the kitchen doing tasting night preparations.

The aroma wafting through my house was reminiscent of my mum’s home made marinataed chicken wings, and the flavour wasn’t far off either.

Portobello Burgers (without the bun)

Ingredients:

2 Portobello Mushrooms

2 T Olive Oil

2 T Nama Shoyu

1 t Apple Cider Vinegar

1 t Maple Syrup

1 garlic clove

Pinch Cracked Pepper

Place all ingredients, save for portobellos in a bowl and mix. De-stem portobellos and toss through mixture. Let marinate for 10 mins. Place on paraflexx sheets and dehydrate in dehydrator on 110′ for 1 hour.

Serve on raw bun with salad or on it’s own, like I did. I pretty much inhaled them both.

I also threw some cherry tomatoes in that had seen some better days in the dehydrator. Such a great way to prolong the life of old fruits and vegetables. I’ll either keep them as dried tomatoes or grind them into a tomato powder for use in seasoning at a later date.

For those of you asking about dehydrators and what are they and what type you should buy, here is an edited review I did last year. Since writing this, I have been to culinary school where we used another model, but I still use this one at home and still remains the most popular in the ‘raw food world’. The dehydrator at culinary school worked as well, just cosmetically looked different.

Which brand of dehydrator should I buy and what kind?

I love my dehydrator! I try to not use it too much when I am concentrating on more wholefoods, but it certainly adds some more variety to a High Raw diet such as mine. You can use it in so many ways, including to make my birthday cake, raw pizza, flax crackers and even COOKIES.

When I was looking around at dehydrators, I consulted some friends who already had theirs and they ALL recommended without fail an EXCALIBUR 9 Tray with 26 hour timer (even though I was interested in a 5 Tray initially). As dehydrating foods can take some time, a timer is a necessity as you may wish to stop the process whilst asleep or away from home. Also, as much as Excalibur offer a 5 tray model, anyone I have known who has ordered a smaller version has wished for the 9 tray after the fact. It has more room to make larger items and easily a couple of tomatoes dehydrating can take up to 5 trays or more.

Yesterday at school saw us continuing on with our own recipe creation (under the fantastic supervision of one of my favourite raw chefs and instructors)

For my breakfast recipe, I took inspiration from my day job. I wanted to create something that my passengers would enjoy. They really like to eat healthily and I am slowly converting them to the raw or living lifestyle, slowly but surely, and one of my favourite things to serve them for breakfast is a mixed berry yoghurt parfait. So now it was time to veganise and rawify

Here is a picture I took for inspiration.

Courtesy of here

And here is my finished product. Coconut yoghurt, ginger mango custard, mixed berry puree, fresh blueberries and sprouted apple & cinnamon rawnola. Yep, it pretty much rocked!

Then I had some leftover yoghurt and puree so I originally mixed it up to make a berry yoghurt, then I thought, “what they hey, let’s see if this stuff freezes into frozen yoghurt in the ice-cream maker.”

I added some more agave and let it do it’s work for just under an hour…DOUBLE YUM.

Half the fun of making your own recipes is being able to present them to the rest of the class. Here are some creations by my class mates.

And here is my lunch creation. Inspired by twitter and real life bud, SkyHighBoy himself, who proclaimed earlier this week:  ”if all raw food looked and tasted this good, why not go RAW?”. He then followed it up with a comment regarding missing spaghetti bolognaise if he did go raw. So here is my raw version of spaghetti & meatballs. Buon Appetito!!!

Raw Spaghetti and No-Meatballs

Ingredients:

No-Meatballs

1 cup of soaked walnuts (soaked for approx 2 hours – then drained and rinsed)

1 cup of chopped and drained marinated mushrooms (reserve marinade)  - marinated in 2 T nama shoyu, 2 T olive oil, pinch of black pepper and I garlic clove. Cover in refrigerator for 1 hour.

1 T lemon juice

1 T nama shoyu

1 T Italian seasoning

1 T chilli pepper flakes

1/2 t cumin

10 sundried tomatoes refreshed in water and drained – reserve soak water

Place all ingredients in food processor fitted with S blade and process until forms a thick paste. Try and leave some chucks for a meatier texture. If you need extra moisture use some of the reserve marinade or soak water to get the blade moving. You want the mixture to be able to be formed into balls reminiscent of meatballs.

Made into desired meatball size and place on the mesh sheet in the dehydrator at 110′ for 8 – 12 hours

Marinara

1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes – water squeezed out

2 chopped roma tomatoes

1/4 cup of chopped onion

10 pitted kalamata olives

2 T chopped fresh basil

1 soft pitted date

2 T chopped rosemary

1/2 T apple cider vinegar

1 clove of crushed garlic

juice of 4 tomatoes and 2 stalks of celery

1 T of olive oil

pinch salt

Process is food processor fitted with an S blade, until smooth with slight chunks.

Spaghetti Noodles

4 peeled medium zuchinnis (courgettes) – I used 4 peeled yellow squash instead – but be aware they are more watery and have more seeds.

1T olive oil

1T lemon juice

Spiralise noodles into spaghetti noodles and toss with lemon juice and olive oil in a bowl.

Top with no-meatballs and marinara and ENJOY

© 2010 Girlonraw.com

Hey everyone! Thanks so much for all your wonderful comments regarding my weekend visit to my newest favourite state of the US of A, Arizona and my pals at the Kristen Household.

Did anyone notice that I ran out of time to blog about Day 10 (Friday at 105degrees?).

In pictures…

Kimchee – expect to see this ALOT in YOUR & MY blogging future  Freakin yum.

Then we made it into a filling:

For it’s future incarnation:

Kimchee Dumplings

A little secret: I actually wasn’t very good at this bit…I gave up and got a bit cranky at having to do something that I clearly wasn’t very good at. Of course I have shared the GOOD photo with you all

Then it was onto making fillings for the savoury tart shells we had made earlier in the week. I decide on Mexican & Italian.

Back in for some more dehydration love.

Then onto today.

Time to check on my chia sprout babies….

Oopsy, they need a bit more water….

Then it was time to get into CHOCOLATE mode. Who knew that today was going to be a chocoholics paradise???

First we began trying to dominate the hunk of cacao butter….

Maybe I will invest in Cacao Butter and not Gold…this stuff is pretty pricey.

Russell made me promise to blog about this, and if I didn’t he would reveal it to the world about my airhead moment when trying to melt the Cacao Butter for our recipe. I was wondering why EVERYONE else’s butter was melting so effortlessly with a water bath, then after complaining about it, it was apparent, I had doubled up my bowls so no heat could get to it….

DOH!

Here’s a sneak peek at the chocolate torte we made today as well…more on that tomorrow

See I told you it was chocolate day!

Bit of quality assurance of course (best bit about being a chef me thinks!)

And one of my fellow students, thought it was funny that I took over 2 workstations…lucky the space was free..but more cleanup for me I’ve never claimed to be a tidy cook!

Blonde Macaroons!!!! (Were supposed to be chocolate but we were either all wearing or full or both of the stuff by now – chocolate is messy business)

Lunchtime. I chose the Mexican Tartlet that I had made last week. And ordered a side of Kale Caesar Salad from the Cafe.

Then it was back to work to learn how to make Nut Cheese. We will come back to this.

Then if we didn’t have enough chocolate already, I broke out some of this stuff I bought in Arizona for my kitchen buddies to try.

(What is up with the creepy hand angle???) I think I like this flavour better than the Caramel. Sorry Kristen, but that leaves more for you

Chocolate cookies.

Ready for my tummy tomorrow.

Here’s a sneak peak at a recipe I’ll hopefully be able to share with you tomorrow

And my attempt at ‘Rawnola’

Lots of you have been asking for recipes as would I looking at all the lovely stuff I am learning how to make, well hopefully tomorrow, if my ‘Rawnola’ turns out as I hope then I will be more than excited to share it with you. This is our first attempt at our own recipe creation so I will be excited to see how it turns out. The only requisite on Chocolate Day was, you guess it, it had to have Chocolate in it.

For those of you emailing me with questions on the course and other things lately, please bear with me, I am in my 3rd week of my 4 week course so I may not get back to you straight away, but I will get back to you Don’t forget if you do want more info email me at girlonraw@gmail.com

]]> http://girlonraw.com/2010/04/who-doesnt-like-chocolate-day/feed/ 15 http://girlonraw.com/2010/03/video-how-to-make-nut-milk/ http://girlonraw.com/2010/03/video-how-to-make-nut-milk/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:38:37 +0000 Girlonraw http://girlonraw.com/?p=1148 Good morning guys, hope your Sunday is a rockin one.

I’m back in Saudi now for a little while but am fighting off the beginnings of a cold – the flying has finally caught up with me. After a 16 hour journey from Texas to the land of the sand, I finally got to my own bed and have rarely left it to try and keep this cold away. Advice I have been given is to keep hydrated and not to eat, but will see how that goes. Plus I’ve been pumping in the vitamins (C, Echinacea, Zinc etc)

In lieu of a post today, I’d thought I’d share with you a basic video on how to make nut milk. Most raw foodies are all over this process, but this is for my non raw foodie friends who been asking me how/what is nut milk. Enjoy!

I wish it were for longer, but it is a tiny one night only, so enough for me to catch up with 3 of my favourite girls (I used to live in London before I moved to the sandpit) and try out a restaurant I keep meaning to get to – SAF! And even better than my friends get to try out their first gourmet raw food. How cool is that?

Anyway I am sitting in the lounge in Bahrain and my flight is about to board so I’ll share with you a quick meal I made for my friend the Voracious Natasha and our very own Sushi Chef Danica when they came over for a girls brunch and catch up last week! I had meant to blog about it, but with this little thing called work, it didn’t happen

Tasha blogged about our girls brunch here.

I made this ‘Un’ stirfry from The 30 Minute Vegan by Mark Reinfeld & Jennifer Murray available here so I cannot really share the recipe but the ‘rice’ was made with cauliflower and macadamia nuts and seasoning and the veggies were marinated and I elected to dehydrate them for half an hour to soften them up a bit. This was my first ever attempt to recreate the cooked favourite, and I was pretty impressed with it’s close resemblance (taste & texture).

Well my flight is being called so I had better race off and I promise to update you more in much colder London. Ooooh I wish I had longer there!

Byeeeeeee

See you tomorrow with some more great eats! Am off to a walk/run the dog before movie night and pack my bag for an overnight trip I have tomorrow night

Jaffa (Choc Orange) Pudding

serves 6

3 avocados (yes avocados)

1/3 cup of agave nectar or raw honey

1/3 cup of raw cacao powder

2 T nut better (I used my favourite of almond butter)

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of himalayan salt

zest and juice of one orange

Combine all ingredients in a high speed blender or food processor until smooth. You may need to stop the blender/food processor periodically to scrape down the sides until you have a smooth and mousse consistency. Add water if it gets too thick as it will set again once in the fridge.

Place into small souffle bowls to serve (I used larger bowls and had to half each serving as this recipe is quite decadent!)

Garnish with a slice of fresh orange when serving (I didn’t have time before taking this photo and EATING)

Here is another (with great HOLIDAY HAIR I just noticed!!!! Please excuse me, I am in holiday mode!).

Hope you are all enjoying your last few days of 2009.

How are you intending to see in the New Year?

Chat again soon

Thanks so much for all your comments re what you like to eat for a quick dinner, you have certainly given me (and plenty of others I’m sure) some great ideas for quick on the go, healthy eats. Such great ideas.

I was so tired yesterday with a high workload at the moment, but it was nice for a change to be in bed before midnight actually. So I missed dinner and I also missed my workout for the day. Thank goodness Becci took my puppy out for a walk whilst I was at work before the rain set in for another day. One of the benefits of living in compound community like this one

Sunday night’s dinner was another something quick and easy again as I only got back from Bahrain quite late. I’m becoming quite the quick dinner expert. This was pretty much the view all across the causeway back home to Saudi before dinner:

It has not rained like this in such a long time!!

By the time I got home I was ready to eat the leg off the table, so I looked in the fridge and this is what I came up with:

Funny that the meal had a Lebanese flavour, so after all my whinging about being sick of their food from my recent trip there,  I certainly must have had a hankering for it. 2 days later I am still raving about it. I was so proud of my throw together dinner I had to even post it up on Facebook for all to see It certainly hit the spot.

The cooking was a bit messy haha, can’t you tell how hungry I was with my lack of  grace?

Felafel Wrap with Garlic Tahini Sauce

4 felafel patties

mixed salad veggies including tomato & cucumber

*I used these – matchsticks of brocolli and carrots* and 1 tomato and 1 sm cucumber

1 wrap (I used a garden spinach and herb)

juice of 1 lemon

4T of tahini

1 crushed clove of garlic (I used 2 as I was sleeping alone that night!)

First I baked the ready made felafel patties in the oven on 400’ for 10 minutes or until a little crunchy, whilst I got the salad veggies ready. (for those of you on camp I got the felafel easily from the commiscary in the frozen food section)

Garlic Tahini Sauce – mix juice of lemon and garlic and tahini up (you will find the lemon juice will thicken the tahini but just keep stirring til all mixed up. This will be your garlic sauce!

Place the felafel on your oven warmed wrap then top with a little of the sauce, then pile your salad veggies on. This day I used the broccoli slaw I had on hand with tomatoes and cucumber. This is when I piled the rest of the sauce on top. Don’t be shy with the sauce, it is delish.

Then roll up like a burrito and enjoy! (NOT VERY LADYLIKE EITHER HEHE)

Yesterday’s eats were actually not that exciting as I got up a little late and has to rush out the door for a flight so I just ate some fruit on the fly!! And by the time I got home I crashed and slept for 12 hours straight. Must have needed it.

Just a quickie post day everyone, whilst I go off and help the new girl settle in. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more healthy eats