The tabouli was served on a bed of lettuce, with vine ripened tomato and lemon cucumber on the side.  I also added a few olives and some olive oil and balsamic to the lettuce and veggies on the side.

Mom loved it, and she told me that it was very satisfying as well!  Good news for someone who is looking to start a raw food delivery business!    My mom will probably be my first customer!  Now if I can just grow all my own food, I’ll be set.  Speaking of which, here is my latest (small) haul.

I’ve gotten a few Mortgage Lifters, several Green Grapes, a couple of Lemon Pears, and some Violet Jaspers.  There is also the last of my purple beans shown, and the Anaheim that was added to the recipe above.  I’ve also picked a few zucchinis which were promptly eaten afterward in recipes like my Rawsta Primavera.  There are a lot of green tomatoes, and I can’t wait till they ripen up!  I hope all of you gardeners are getting lots of yummies.

Rawsta Primavera

Primavera Sauce

2-4 tomatoes, diced
1/4 onion, finely diced
1 garlic clove, finely diced
4-6 beans, chopped
1/2 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp chopped basil
1 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp honey
1 avocado, diced
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and let marinate for a few minutes. Prepare the rawsta roodles while marinating.

Rawsta Noodles

1 zucchini
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lemon, juiced
salt and pepper to taste

Chop the zucchini into three even pieces. In a spiral slicer, slice each piece to make noodles. My slicer has both linguine and angel hair pasta option. I like the linguine optinon the best. Another way to make noodles is to use a vegetable peeler. Toss the noodles in the olive oil and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Top with primavera sauce, and enjoy!

Makes two generous servings.

Here is the garden before, when all the plants have gone in.  Tomatoes are just babies, as are the peppers, and you can’t even see much of anything else.

Here is my garden how its looks right now.

Quite an improvement, isn’t it?  The tomatoes are even bigger than this picture, as its a week or so old.  Check out my babies!

All of my tomatoes are heirloom varieties, this is a Violet Jasper plant.  I’m very happy to say that all five of my plants have fruit on them now!  I’ll take some more pictures of all my new babies to share.  Here’s a before shot of my squash and beans:

And after:

This zucchini has taken over this whole area.  The lettuce is long gone from the heat, and I harvested what little chard I had left.  Next time, I’ll be sure to plant this monster squash far from other plants so it has plenty of room!  Both the squash and beans are heirloom, too!  The zucchini is a tri colored variety, and the beans are lovely, tasty purple ones!

I ate the last of my beans last night, I’m not sure if more will grow this year or not.  Speaking of monster squash, our mystery compost squash is taking the prize.  Here is what it looked like earlier in the season:

Just a few leaves here and there.  Now look at it!

Heh, it doesn’t even fit in the frame.  I’m think its probably butternut, but only time will tell for sure!  Joe’s butternut is doing quite well, too.  We moved the barrel back closer to the house because it gets more shade there.

Here it is before:

And after:

As you can tell from a lot of these pictures, one thing that hasn’t changed much, is that our cat Shardul LOVES to hang out in the garden with us!

He’s a pretty good helper.  His specialty is sniffing all the plants and looking pretty for the camera.  Here he is early in the season:

And here he is now!

My what a difference!    Well, that’s all for now!  Good luck with all your gardens, everyone!  I hope you are enjoying your’s as much as I’m enjoying mine! 

When we first got to Ashland, we saw some people riding these weird bikes.  We saw them a few different times on our trip.

This is the campground we lived in for two weeks.  It was hot, hot hot when we arrived!

Luckily we were right next Emigrant Lake where I spent some time cooling off.

We were also very close to Crater Lake and we drove through this amazing park.  It was so deep and so blue!

Truly beautiful!

The “Green Show” back in Ashland.  A free concert before the Shakespeare plays begin.

Lithia Park in Ashland.  This park was awesome, I should have got some better pictures of it.

I did get a picture of a sequoia in the park though.  There were tons of these giants here!

Above Ashland there is a trail system named after Alice in Wonderland.  Here I am hiking one of them.

It kind of does look like a place to go chasing white rabbits. 

I also did some solo hiking up by Mount Ashland.  It was SO beautiful up there!

One of these days I want to hike the whole Pacific Coast Trail.

Hiking makes me happy.

So do farm animals that say hi to us as we are walking by!

And of course, so does the fabulous brew samplers at the local tap house in Ashland!  Best deal in town, right there. 

I love Oregon and I love Ashland!  I can’t wait to go back and explore the area some more!  There is certainly no shortage of trees and mountains.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Check back soon for my latest garden update!  Our plants grew a lot in those two weeks. 

I’ll post more about Ashland later.  Today, I really want to talk about tabouli!  On the last day of our trip, we traveled up to Portland to meet some friends for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant.  The food was amazing, and I was very impressed with their tabouli recipe.  They used bulgar wheat for a base, and the flavors were simple and delicious.  I immediately thought that I wanted to create a raw version of the dish, even though I think their version was high raw.  There wasn’t much bulgar in the dish.

I decided to use cauliflower for a base, as it makes a good substitute for cooked grains.  A whole cauliflower is needed for this recipe, because I wanted the “grain” role in this dish to play a bigger part, than the version I had in the restaurant.  Here is the recipe:

1 head of cauliflower
Juice of 2 lemons
1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
small handful of mint
large handful of parsley

Cut the cauliflower away from the stem then cut into smaller segments. In a food processor, chop up the cauliflower until it is the consistency of a cooked grain, such as rice or bulgar wheat. Usually several pulses with do the trick, sometimes it is necessary to remove the processed cauliflower so that the larger pieces can be processed. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Pulse the remaining ingredients in the food processor until the onion and herbs are finely chopped and everything is incorporated. Fold the lemon/onion mixture into the cauliflower, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

This is so delicious, so light and so satisfying.  It’s hard to not eat the whole salad in one sitting!  This is a dish packed full of vitamin C, both cauliflower and parsley are wonderful sources.  Not a bad way to boost your immunity and bring in some vital antioxidants into your diet.  It’s also a perfect dish for all of you out there who are looking to reduce your nut intake.  However, chopped, raw nuts can be added to the recipe to make it more hearty as well.  Pine nuts, cashews, macadamia or even sunflower seeds would be excellent options.  I’m thinking a diced heirloom tomato would be wonderful as well.

Play around and have fun with the recipe, that’s all part of the adventure!  Have a great weekend and stay tuned for a post about my trip to Ashland!

My garden is looking lovely!  Everything is getting so big.  Today I tied up my beans and zucchini to the trellices as they are starting to overtake my little chard patch.

Almost all of my veggies are heirloom!  The beans are a lovely purple variety and the zucchini is a tri colored type.  I can’t wait to taste them!  The beans have grown little purple nubs on them.  I’m not sure if they’ll turn into flowers or if those are the beans themselves.  Time will tell…

My tomatoes are getting HUGE!  All of my tomatoes are different kinds of heirloom, and I even have one little baby tomato!  This is a Violet Jasper.

My mom gave an Anaheim pepper to go with my other two, and its the best pepper plant I have out of the three.  It even has a little baby pepper growing on it!

As usual, Shardul is always interested in helping me in the garden. 

My chard is doing excellent, despite having pushy neighbors.

It looked so good today that I had to harvest a few leaves for my lunch salad.  Mmmmmm so good!

It was amazing!  Such a simple salad with red leaf lettuce, red onion, cucumber, raw sunflower seeds, avocado, and my chard.  I used olive oil and balsamic vinegar with sea salt and black pepper to dress it up. I felt so good from my lunch salad that I just had to have another for dinner.

This salad was a little different than my lunch and definitely more hearty.  It has red leaf lettuce, red onion, tomato, cucumber, shredded carrot, carrot sticks, shredded zucchini, bell pepper, broccoli, raw sunflower seeds, walnuts, and raw pepitas.  I used the same dressing, except I added a bit of apple cider vinegar to the mix.

I’m still full from it!  I love eating all raw all day long.  It feels so light and refreshing, and I always remember why I love it so much.  It will be so rewarding when I have more of my own produce to add to salads like this!  I can’t wait.

Well, that’s all for now.  We’re leaving in the morning and I’m planning on making a stop at the Farmer’s Market for provisions while on the road.  When we get to Ashland, I plan on taking advantage of two farmer’s markets a week!  We are staying there for two weeks (Joe is attending a bike mechanic school), so it should give me a good idea on what they are like.  Here are a few more pictures from the garden, my little seedlings.  They have decreased in number, but increased in size.

Lovely sweet basil.

My two favorite boys.  Joe is very proud of his monster butternut squash.

I’ll update soon from our destination point and fill everyone in on how cool Ashland is.  Happy Gardnening!

1 cup raw cashews

1 cup shredded coconut

2 cups pitted dates

3-4 chili peppers

2 tbsp coconut oil

2 tbsp chia seeds

2 tbsp water

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

Add the water to the chia seeds, stir and set aside.  Process the cashews and coconut until they are a coarse grainy meal.  Set aside.  Process dates, peppers, oil, chia seeds and water, vanilla and salt.  Add cocoa powder and cashew mixture and process until smooth.  Roll the balls in shredded coconut mixed with a tiny bit of cocoa powder and chill until they firm up.

Don’t these just look scrumptious?  It’s hard to go wrong with such healthy ingredients, too.  I can’t wait to take these up on the mountains for a hike.

If you saw my post from yesterday, you may have noticed that my lettuce is looking quite ready to eat.  Well, I’m pleased to announce that I have made my first harvest out of my little backyard garden!  Isn’t my baby lettuce beatiful?

My mom brought me a delicious quinoa cucumber salad that she made, so I put some of that on top with a bit of olive oil and balsamic drizzled on top.  So incredibly tasty!

I have to say it feels very good to be eating food that I grew myself.  Now I’m having fantasies of being a small scale urban hobby farmer.  I would love to grow year round greens and veggies for markets, restaurants and co-ops.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  Well, it might not be too far out of reality.    Happy a great Wednesday, everyone!

With the new tomatoes, I got some cages.  I also got some trellises for my beans and zucchini that I planted about a week ago.

The beans and zucs are doing great!  Other than some leaf eating by pests.

Lettuce and butternut squash is doing wonderfully!

We got ladybugs to get rid of the aphids.

They are so cute!

Shardul likes to help us in the garden.

He also likes to climb on the roof.

Well, that’s all for now!  Happy gardening, everyone!

I walk this land
And none I follow
I wander weaving through the streets
And though I hear
The voices they sound hollow
I wonder will I find some peace

The faces stare
I wonder what they see
The sorrow or the lightly colored shade
Do they want
Or do they need
To borrow this life I have made

Take these hands
And wring them out for me
Take this body far away
Across the lands
As far as you can see
Standing in one place

I walk the streets
Where none will follow
The roads that no one seems to take
And should it lift
That shade of sorrow
I might be saved before I break

Take these hands
And wring them out for me
Take this body far away
Across the lands
As far as you can see
Standing in one place

And on stage.

Other than dancing, I’ve been working more in my garden planting and growing.  Our back yard is cat alley, so I put a bunch of sticks in the ground to keep them out.  We also put up some sun protection, because its getting very warm out there!

My lettuce is getting so big!  I planted purple heirloom beans, heirloom zucchini, and chard in there.  And here are the surviving tomatoes, peppers and basil.

They are slowly making their way along.    I had Joe pick me some of the beautiful flowers from our yard.  I love irises and roses, the smell so good!

Other than all that, we’ve been really enjoying the view from our front porch.

Today I got another 11 lbs of medjool dates shipped to me!  Stay tuned for some more date ball recipes!