Green Curry Soup

A lot of raw vegans find it difficult to keep warm in the colder months. This soup uses a lot of warming spices to heat you up from the depths of your belly. I made it in the middle of a hailstorm, parked myself by the heater and got toastie.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups filtered or spring water

1 cup tightly packed chopped spinach

1 cup chopped broccoli stalks

1/2 cup chopped leeks

1 avocado

1 carrot

4 – 6 soaked sundried tomatoes

1 clove garlic

1 tbsp miso paste

1 tsp himalayan or celtic sea salt

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp cumin

2 tsp tumeric

1 tbsp tamari or nama shoyu

1/2 – 1 tsp cayenne pepper

Method

Blend the water, spinach, broccoli and leeks in a blender until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and blend again until smooth. You can adjust the spices to taste.

This can be served chilled in the summer or in winter it’s nice to warm it up a little. You can warm it either in the dehydrator for about an hour, or it can be warmed on the stove. If you are warming it on the stove, to preserve the enzymes, keep it on the lowest heat, stir constantly and make sure it doesn’t go over body temperature by dipping your finger in. It should be just warm, not steaming hot.

Sprinkle with cayenne pepper, flaxseed oil and top with some crunchy kale chips.

Kale Chips

Now I’m certainly not the first to post a recipe for kale chips but I think it’s important to revisit them considering how freakin delicious and nutritious they are. These chips can rival any potato snack and win hands down. Even if you don’t dehydrate these the recipe can make a very tasty salad. I can’t wait until my homegrown kale gets bigger and I can eat chips like theres no tomorrow.

Ingredients

The amounts of these are really up to individual taste, but I suggest you start with lots of kale because it shrinks quite considerably with dehydration and just add seasonings to taste as you go. Remember that flavours tend to become concentrated after dehydrating. Try to use all organic ingredients where possible.

Kale (I like the curly kale)

Lemon Juice

Flaxseed, Hemp or Olive oil

Himalayan or Celtic Sea Salt

Method

Destalk the kale and chop any larger pieces into smaller sizes. The size is not really too important.

Throw the kale into a large bowl and drizzle with a little oil and lemon juice. Massage the kale with your hands until it has wilted a bit and turned a dark glossy green. You can add more oil as you go if needed.

Sprinkle with a little salt and place on mesh dehydrator trays.

Dehydrate for about 6-8 hours or until crispy.

Store in an airtight container.

About the Ingredients

Kale is a part of the brassica family so it’s a sibling of broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts and collard greens. It is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, and also pretty high in calcium. It has anti-cancer properties and can help your cells to cleanse and detoxify among other things. It’s also going to give you a pretty good dose of amino acids which are the building blocks of protein. So when anyone asks you where you get your protein just say kale!

Get the facts on kale here and here

I might have to go get another bowl now

Blueberry & Banana Icecream

This is a delicious alternative to the heavy nut based raw icecreams and it’s super quick and easy to make if you keep some bananas on hand in the freezer. The riper the bananas the sweeter it will be.

Ingredients

1/2 cup frozen organic blueberries

1 frozen organic banana

1/2 organic avocado

1 tbsp organic raw agave nectar

a splash of filtered or spring water

Method

Put everything apart from the water into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. If it’s not moving just add a little water to get it going.

Either eat it right away for soft serve or if you are patient enough freeze for about hour then whisk with a fork before serving. Yum!

TIP: Peeling and chopping your bananas before freezing makes life much easier. Peeling frozen bananas is a surefire way to get a bad case of finger frostbite.

Looking for Water

Today, in the midst of a storm I went looking for water. Inspired by Daniel Vitalis, my raw vegan buddy and I drove out to the Petone Aquifer also known as Te Puna Wai Ora or Spring of Life to collect water. At the site there is a set of vessel shaped sculptures, one a fountain and the other with taps providing pure untreated artesian water direct from the aquifer below. I had been on a hunt for a local spring and this was the next best thing I could find. From what I understand the difference between spring water and aquifer water is this: an aquifer, according wikipedia, is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, silt, or clay) from which groundwater can be usefully extracted. A spring is where water from the aquifer meets the grounds surface.

Te Puna Wai Ora was designed by New Zealand artist Louise Purvis to symbolise a water oasis. What a perfect place to collect water from! Two of my favourite things art and water! So how does this magical drink get from the ground into this sculpture? Well, the water originally comes from the Hutt River where it makes it’s way to the aquifer starting up in Taita Gorge. Over several years it make it’s way through said aquifer (layers of sand gravels and boulders confined by impermeable layers of silt and clay) until it eventually meets up with the Petone foreshore. It actually seeps up through the seabed of the harbour all the way out to the mouth of the harbour!

We managed to fill two 20 litre non-leaching plastic containers and a couple of extra mason jars each in the pouring rain and we weren’t the only ones there either. It’s a busy place! You can really taste the minerals in there. Seeya later tap water. Next step, vortexing…