Peaches, Ice Cream and a Taste of Motherhood

I spent the last three days preparing to serve "cheeseburgers" tonight. Attempting to use our oven as a dehydrator for five recipes now, has finally pushed me into purchasing a dehydrator. The Excalibur was recommended to me, so that's what I bought, can be purchased from Elaina Love's website: http://www.purejoyplanet.com/.

It's not that I think the food will taste any better, it's just that once you get more into this, you become very conscious of the nutritional value of food, and they say cooking beyond 105 kills the enzymes, vitamins, and life-giving properties of the food. The lowest my oven will go is 140. And the more into this you get, the more you want to eat like this. It's addictive in a great way. Now instead of my cabinets being stocked with flour and cereals and bags of chips, canned goods, etc. I have jars filled with lovely nuts, grains and dried fruits. And I'm actually using them in the most delicious recipes!

My sisters Lise and Lady Lori brought baby-Gael for the afternoon and dinner. I could tell they kind of looked at me in awe as I excitedly explained to them about preparing live foods. Lori’s a mom with two kids, and Lise is a new mom with Gael, almost 2 years old. Lori came sans kids tonight. I mean, they’re both so exhausted and taxed by caring for their children, they couldn’t imagine taking something like this on, they barely have time to think about the next meal, much less indulge in this “fad” that is so time-consuming. But, of course, I look at them in awe. They’re both such good mothers, like the kind I would want to be or have! Really living the dream of feeling the curl of their child in their arms. And as much as I wanted to be a mother, I’m not, and now that I’m over it I’m really having a good time throwing myself into things. So instead of spending all my energy caring for my kids, I have energy to do these crazy projects. Somehow, this is my motherhood. And in this way, I see we can look at each other in complete awe and admiration of how we’re doing things.

It's not often I get to have my sisters for a few precious hours alone, so I was pleased to be serving an all-living menu, but nervous the damn burgers would not turn out. By late afternoon they were still soggy and I wasn't sure my "dehydrating" was working. My husband ran out and purchased ground sirloin and buns and fired up the barbecue as 'back up.' But once again, somehow these live-food recipes are delicious no matter what! To my surprise, they loved the burgers (Juliano's cookbook). And then we only sampled the cooked burgers. I served Corn Wowder (from Vibrant Living Cookbook) on the side, another live dish...a great summer soup. Anyway, from Roxanne's book, I did dessert: Indian Red Peaches with Vanilla Ice Cream and Pecan Praline. It was heaven. We couldn't believe how much the "ice cream" tasted like real ice cream--no dairy and sweetened only with agave nectar. I cheated on the fruit and did not dehydrate it, served it fresh. I cheated on the praline as well, no dehydrate, can you say "toaster oven?"

47 more recipes to go in only ten weeks. Oh no! That's basically a recipe every night!

Tomorrow: Daikon Lo Mein.

And if you have a sense of humor, check out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vr4_RfJxwsU