Adventures in Raw Food

Category: Appliances Devices

  • Spiral Slicer Reviews: And the Winner Is…

    A spiral slicer is a device which literally cuts your vegetables into long thin spirals. It’s what you use, for example, to make curly fries from potatoes.

    Anywhere you look in the raw food world you’ll see a recommendation to get a spiral slicer, and pretty much everyone recommends the Saladacco spiral slicer, by Joyce Chen.

    Raw food folks use them on things like zucchini, using a very fine-toothed angel hair blade, to make an angel hair “pasta” out of the vegetable. It’s quite spiffy, really.

    But the thing which is amazing is that everyone recommends the Saladacco, and by all accounts – and reviews – the Saladacco, well, sucks.

    Every review site which offers customer reviews gives it two big thumbs down. Yet nearly every raw food site recommends it.

    Here are some representative reviews, from Amazon (more…)

  • Tips for Making Crackers and Flatbreads in the Dehydrator

    If you want to make crackers or flatbread (such as the fabulous raw corn tortilla recipe), you will need to have some Teflex sheets, as all recipes call for them. Teflex sheets are thin flexible sheets which you put on top of the dehydrator screen, so that goopy or drippy things don’t end up falling through the screen, or so that, in a case such as crackers and flatbreads, you can smooth the dough on to them.

    Nearly all recipes I have seen for raw crackers and flatbreads call for dividing the dough onto two or more Teflex sheets, and spreading the dough out to the edges of the sheet, using either your hands or a spatula of some sort.

    Now, I have discovered three things which make the process of spreading raw cracker or flatbread dough onto a Teflex sheet a snap (more…)

  • ‘Sauteed’ Mushrooms in the Dehydrator

    This is one of our favourite raw food recipes using the dehydrator. These mushrooms are delicious, and truly taste as if they’d been sauteed, only somehow better! And are so much better for you, packed with all of their vitamins and nutrients. Did you know that mushrooms are a good source of protein?

    This recipe comes from my favourite raw food cookbook, Raw Food/Real World, and after trying it, you’ll understand why it’s my favourite!

    You’ll need:

    2 cups mushrooms
    1-2 Tablespoons olive oil
    2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
    2 teaspoons soy sauce (Raw Food/Real World recommends Namu Shoyu)
    fresh rosemary
    fresh oregano
    salt
    pepper

    Cut the mushrooms (Raw Food/Real World uses oyster mushrooms, but I have used all kinds, and they are all wonderful) into bite sized pieces or slices. Put them in a bowl.

    To the mushrooms add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, the soy sauce, and a bit of salt and pepper.

    Mix well, and add in a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary and a couple of sprigs of fresh oregano, as well as teaspoon or two of each well minced.

    Turn this out onto a (more…)

  • Creating Natural Pesticide with Your VitaMix

    In addition to being able to make compost with your VitaMix, you can also make natural pesticide with your VitaMix!

    Many vegetables contain substances which work as pest repellants, for example tomatoes and hot peppers.

    Says Vita-Mix, “hot pepper sprays have been known to work especially well on leaf eating pests as well as root maggots, ants and soft-bodied insects. Best of all, mixing up a hot pepper pesticide is easy! Simply throw a handful of hot peppers into your VitaMix with a quart of water, mix well (about 2 minutes), strain thoroughly with cheesecloth before pouring in your spray bottle, and use this mixture to spray on affected plants.”

    Interestingly, Vita-Mix says that you can also use their salsa recipe (more…)

  • VitaMix Composting – Composting with Your Vita-Mix

    I haven’t done this yet, but I’m very keen to try it! It’s so simple! You just keep a spare wet blade VitaMix container in your kitchen, put all your kitchen scraps in it, and whiz it up and pour it on your garden once a day!

    According to the folks over at Vita-Mix “pouring pureed kitchen “trimmings” into the soil is a form of slow composting. It is generally agreed that “coldâ€? (slow) composting produces more microorganisms in the soil and retains more nutrients compared to “hotâ€? (fast) composting.”

    Ordinarily hot composting kills weed seeds while cold composting allows them to flourish, but of course kitchen scraps cold composted in the VitaMix have no whole seeds at all. Plus, fruits and vegetables from your kitchen also provide more trace elements to the soil than regular compost.

    VitaMix cautions that you must get a second wet blade container, and use this second container for your Vita-Mix composting. Do not use your main container for composting, and do not use your composting container for anything else otheer than VitaMix composting.

    To make your VitaMix compost, says VitaMix, “loosely fill the 64 ounce VitaMix container to the 6-cup mark with leftovers such as egg shells, vegetables, orange peels, stale bread, coffee grounds, etc. Next, add enough water to completely cover the ingredients (also to the 6-cup mark). Finally, add 1/4 cup of cottonseed meal (CSM) per 6 cups of liquefied compost. The addition of CSM helps to ensure the proper carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Secure 2-part lid. Select VARIABLE speed #1. Turn machine on and quickly increase speed to #10; then to HIGH. Run machine for 20 seconds or until smooth.”

    That’s it! Voila! You have perfect, no-seed cold compost for your garden!

    To use it, just pour the liquid compost onto the soil around your plants. Let it soak in for a day and then work it into the soil by taking a rake or hoe and gently mixing it in to the top one or two inches of the soil. If you are feeeding earthworms, you don’t even need to mix it in!

    Also, says VitaMix, “depending on your geographic location, you may also want to cover the liquid compost with a double layer of peat moss mulch and burlap. This will prevent the liquid compost from drying out and forming cracks. This problem is particularly prevalent in the extremely hot and dry southwest.”

    That’s it! That’s all there is to it!

    If you do this, let me know how it goes!