Chili for a Spaghetti Western Party

We've got invited to a party with old Italian western movies and a lot of Mexican food. Well, cooked food... So, we needed to bring our own creation to survive. By a lucky coincidence, a book we are currently exploring provided us with the right inspiration. Carol Alt is surely into Mexican kitchen! The book, co-authored with David Roth, is called "The Raw 50". Don't panic, fifty is not an age; just breakfast, lunches, dinners, snacks and drinks - 10 each (just do the math :-). However, total number of recipes is much higher, because most meals have several courses.

We prepared "Sweet Melissa's Autumn Chi-lee" (page 62 of the book), with exotic ingredients like pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, and mango; along with more mainstream tomatoes, peppers, and jalapeños. Reasonably easy to make, fantastic taste and a huge success at the party!
Notes: We didn't have tomatillos, used half of zucchini instead, plus added around one cup of sprouted lentils.
How To Make 1t of Pumpkin Pie Spice: mix 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t ground ginger, 1/8 t nutmeg, 1/8 t allspice or ground clove.


To minimize risk of an untried recipe, Zora decided to un-cook another chili in parallel. "Everyday Chili" (page 102) has eggplant, zucchini, and mushrooms, with marinade and a tomato based sauce. We didn't bring it to the party, but enjoyed it at home the next day. Another recipe we can return to without hesitation.


There are more Mexican/Texan recipes in the book to complement chilis, e.g. Lettuce Shell Tacos, Zucchini Crackers, Guacamole and Lettuce Burritos. By the way, the most popular recipe from the book, according to voting in this blog is "Raw Pizza" (page 84), followed by Melissa's Chi-lee.

Erik's Name Day

Today is Erik's name in Slovak calendar. We celebrated with a Carob-Hazelnut Torte. We liked it, but kids didn't. It's very rich and filing, suitable for special occasions. The recipe is from Raw Truth: The Art of Preparing Living Foods by Jeremy Safron (page 173).

A lot of cooking, trying new things from an inspiring Australian e-book. Curried broccoli is very simple: just a little bit of coconut oil with curry powder massaged into broccoli heads. Goji-berries cookies are fast; we used freshly sprouted buckwheaties. No currants at home, so I've used some raisins and two fresh peaches. Cookies have nice orange color (they look almost artificial).
We made a big batch of vegetarian jerkies for party tomorrow (eggplant, zukini, butternut squash, sweet potato/yum, red pepper), using all 9 dehydrator trays. Recipe from Gabriel Cousens Rainbow book.

Meal log for today:

• Two kinds of green smoothies: kale, pears, mint (inspired by Green for Life), and salad, napa, blueberries, banana, chia seeds
• Dumplings with sheep cheese and bacon (bryndzove halusky) for kids - their favorite Slovak traditional food, with sauerkraut (probably the only healthy part of their meal). I've got similarly tasting lunch: sprouted buckwheat ("dumplings"), avocado with sprouts ("cheese"), marinated mushrooms and olives ("bacon") and the same home-made sauerkraut
• Haselnut-carob cake (tons of it :-), jasmine tea, banana, pear, apple
  
• curried broccoli with tomatoes, onion crackers, garlic toast, crab cake
• nuts and red vine with friends (well after midnight, very unhealthy!).