DAY 16... Awesome salad

I wanted to do a part 2 of 'what I've learnt', but I got so distracted by the salad I made for lunch I just have to share it with you. I promise I'll continue with part two tomorrow.

There is one huge advantage to eating raw, and that is you can be really creative with how you prepare meals. So, although I've been following a meal plan to make it easier, there is no reason why you can't just make up your own food - as long as it's raw. And, because you don't have to worry about cooking times and rising and whether it will be fluffy, or fall flat, you can't go too far wrong. At least I don't think you can!

Anyway, I was running late and got home way after lunch time in a panic. I didn't take head of my post from yesterday which said plan, plan, plan. I had forgotten to take a snack with me when I was out and the result was I got home and was ready to start gnawing the side of the couch if I couldn't find food fast.

I looked in the fridge and just decided to throw some things together.

Arugula - I buy it in bulk, because it is the one leafy green I could eat all day. I am in love with arugula. I would call my child Arugula.

Baby marrows / courgettes - There were some lovely firm, bright green organic ones just dying to be used.

Tomatoes - I will eat tomatoes with anything, at any time of the day. If I didn't call my child Arugula, I might try Tomato, but I don't think my husband would go for that.

Strawberries - Now, I'm not a big fan of adding fruit into salad. I know it's popular, but I just don't do it often. However, I had these great strawberries that I knew would spoil soon so I wanted to use them but didn't feel like eating them on their own. What the heck I thought, just throw them in.

Simple, that's it.

And then... Then there was the dressing...

First, you have to understand that I regularly crave salty things. Like I've said before, I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but put something salty in front of me and it'll be gone before you exhale. Today I was craving salt in a way that was inhuman. I don't know what that means, but I was craving salt badly.

Normally I wouldn't have a problem. I would get a bag of salt and vinegar chips and eat them. But no matter how much I research and wiggle it and try as I might, I just can't fit chips into the raw food category. Trust me I've tried. If there is one thing I would try and slip into raw food, it's chips. But I knew I had to get the salty flavour I was craving, so I decided to throw together a dressing that might help.

Unfortunately I didn't measure anything - which is unusual for me, I'm a consummate measurer, and I apologise - I just threw it all together in a mason jar and shook until my hand got sore.

So, throw in some balsamic vinegar (I'm not sure if this is truly raw, but throw it in anyway), then add about 1tsp of Dijon mustard (if you think you've thrown in a whole teaspoon, then add some more, more than you think is reasonable), add extra virgin olive oil (I think it was almost equal with the vinegar, a dash of Pink Himalayan sea salt (or the regular kind if you haven't been to the Himalayas recently) and then here's the kicker... a good bit (maybe 2 -3 Tbsp) of tahini (raw sesames ground down to make an oily thick sauce).

Put the lid on and shake until your hand hurts. It should be extremely thick, almost unable to pour thick. And, it's brown, chocolatey brown. Then, before you toss it into your salad, taste it to see if you need to adjust. At this point, try not to drink it all straight out of the jar like I almost did, remember you have a salad to dress. THEN, pour it on your salad. Mine was so thick, I ended up sprinkling a few drops of olive oil on top of the whole lot just to help it to blend into the salad better.

And, because I was feeling the need for so much salt, I threw a few olives in at the last minute. Now, I was really afraid of mixing strawberries and tomatoes and olives. I wasn't sure just how revolting it would be. But, I decided to live on the edge and just threw them in. It is honestly the most amazing salad I have eaten (either that or I was so hungry I was losing my mind).

I think the keys are the mustard and tahini and the arugula and strawberries. Give it a try. The pic above is what mine looked like. Yum

DAY 38...Why do we stand for it?

This morning I had a little aha moment. Yesterday, as you know wasn't a great day, so besides the huge salad I had for dinner, I didn't stick to the food plan and just nibbled on fruit the whole day. This morning, my breakfast was a huge selection of fruit with a little nut cream - yum.

What I realised during these two fruit-filled days is why North Americans don't eat enough fruit. The answer is simple really - it tastes aweful! Sorry to throw that out there like that, but it really does.

Now I am not North American, I have been living in Canada and the USA for the past few years and it just dawned on me, that once I moved to the USA I stopped eating the fruits I have always loved and grown up devouring. Why, because they all taste the same, and that taste is insipid and watery and unidentifiable. Now of course I am generalising here, I have had a great apple during apple season, and I have had the odd good fruit, but nothing close to what they should taste like. I'm sure part of that reason is that we expect to be able to eat any fruit at any time of the year. I understand that.

I understand that expecting my breakfast plums and strawberries to taste ripe and luscious while we are coming out of a deep dark winter is perhaps crazy. But, it's not stopping anyone selling them to us for outrageous prices. I also understand that if I bought everything at Whole Foods, or the farmers market it might be better, but then I might be taking out a second mortgage on the house to sustain that, so we have to weigh the pros and cons of supporting local and quite frankly right now, it's just not always an option for most people!

We've just got to be able to do better than that, don't we? We have to produce natural fruit that is yummy and juicy and tasty. So what if they aren't a certain diameter and who cares if they aren't all the same perfect shape and colour, shouldn't the taste be more important than how good they look on the shelves?

So, this morning, I pulled out this beautiful big pineapple and then got out my meat cutting board that has a drain around the outside to catch juices, because it's impossible to cut fresh pineapple where I come from without it ending up all over the kitchen. I cut and cut and cut and quite frankly, I could have cut it in my car, on my lap and not got one drop of juice on the seats - there was no juice. How sad, although it actually didn't taste too bad. Nothing like the plum, that tasted like... well, like nothing. Or, the strawberries, that tasted like... well, like nothing. So sad. If I hadn't seen the colour and shape of the fruit, or the name above it in the store "PLUMS", I would not have been able to tell you what I was eating.

My question is, how can we get people to eat better and be healthy if the food they are eating is aweful? Why are we putting up with this?

Hmmm, I'll let you know when I have the answer. But, for now, I'm going to make more nut cream so my fruit can taste... well, like nuts.