Hear Me Raw!

This healthy meal is not raw, so I won’t put it on my recipe blog, but it’s healthy nonetheless, not to mention YUMMYYYYYY! so I thought I’d share “Trine’s classic tabouli”:

• 1 cup of wheat bulgur, soaked in one cup of water until fully absorbed (a few hours)
• 2 packed cups of finely chopped parsley (I like a lot!)
• juice of 1 small lemon
• 1 red pepper, chopped into small pieces
• 1 celery stalk, chopped finely
• 1 tsp garlic powder (you can use fresh if you like)
• 1/4 tsp of sea salt (or to taste)
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (or to taste)
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (I used garlic-flavoured)

Stir it all up and enjoy! Tastes great the following day, so I made it with lunch in mind. Bulgur is basically cooked, dried, and sometimes ground (not in my recipe) cracked wheat. If you are not 100% raw, it a decent grain to have in your diet. However, grains are indeed difficult to digest, so you can always substitute with ground cauliflower or some sprouted grain if you are keen to stay raw. :)

Ohtsuka Pharmaceuticals 大塚チルド食品 - 野菜の戦士 has this great campaign going on for their new fermented “Vegetable Warrior” drink. For a mere 1000yen, they’ll deliver a box of 15 bottles of their red and yellow veggie-based cultured drinks, in hopes that you’ll sign up to have them delivered to your door regularly. Me thinks I will, even though the original juice from which it’s cultured is unlikely raw, and it does appear to have a small amount sucrose in it, possibly left over from fermentation? No sugar is in the ingredients list, but it shows up on the drink’s nutritional profile. Japanese consumers don’t care for what they call あう臭い (stinky green), and sadly as a result a lot of vegetable-based meals, including this drink, are sweeter than I would prefer. The drink IS a live culture, though, and an interesting one!

This stuff is not quite raw, and definitely not vegan, but one can definitely do worse for a kefir base! This low fat cow’s milk has no preservatives and is pasteurized at lower heat for a shorter time than the norm, which destroys far fewer of the inherent nutrition. At more than twice the price of regular milk, I would hope it’s worth it!

As you can tell my the empty glass, I am really love love lovin’ my kefir! This is the first time I have consumed cow’s milk in about a decade (?). I cannot believe how digestible it is when fermented this way. It’s even more delicious with a squirt of lacanto syrup and a dash of vanilla extract.

Still not 100% comfortable with consuming dairy. I want to experiment with with more cultured foods in hopes that I will find something vegan as delicious and effective as this recipe, which has been keeping people healthy for literally thousands of years!