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| Eye Doc Turned Prep-Chef |
Sometimes we find ourselves with a dietary mixed table ~ a
couple who are trying the Vegan lifestyle for a month and a couple who aren’t.
Donn and I get into the kitchen at 8 a.m. for 10 o’clock breakfast service
hoping to make everybody happy at breakfast.
Donn has discovered his inner chef
and has progressed from being a prep chef to dressing the oven roasted
potatoes, seasoning them perfectly, himself. He has brought the majority of the
new gadgets lately and loves his de Buyer mandolin that creates the thinly
sliced onions to top this morning’s paleo pizza - recipe to follow for both vegan and regular variations.
His prep-chef routine doesn’t work for part of the week when
he leaves for our Olympia Optometry office- Martin Way Vision Center, but for
most of his local eye doctor week at Medical Vision Center (www.medicalvisioncenter.com) in Morton, he starts
the day in the kitchen with me and ends it at the clinic. While guests often
sleep on, we’re creating fantastic memories playing in the kitchen together…
We
all wear lots of hats these days! I was appointed Associate Editor of the National
Health Federation’s (www.thenhf.com) magazine, Health Freedom News, so I will often be writing for
NHF or lining up authors while the pizza crust is on its first bake. Check out my article on Dry Eye in the Spring issue of HFN and learn to solve it naturally, once and for all. Magazines are free with your membership of $36 for the year and some of you will also wish to publish in this international, sophisticated magazine. Call me if you have an article to share...
This morning, we make one gluten free Vegan paleo pizza crust
using ground flax seeds mixed with water as the egg substitute and one crust with eggs. Each will receive the
topping suited best for the desires of the guests, and we end up making
everyone happy. We start with the Sweet Breakfast Quinoa that I shared with you
before- only now, since we went to the Hawaiian Vanilla Company on the big
island bringing home beans with us and I learned to make our own Vanilla
Extract- this time we finish the quinoa with a healthy splash – okay, splashes…of
Grand Marnier Vanilla. Yes! This is the ‘elevator’ that takes it to the next
level. Everyone loves it!
We have a large
bottle ‘brewing’ of Vanilla Rum and Vanilla Vodka and also the Queen of all
Vanillas: Grand Marnier. They each add their own special signature to the
dishes we prepare. Do you know the Vanilla Orchid only blooms once a year? It
is hand pollinated on that singular day and is one of the most expensive spices
in the World…Fascinating!
You can keep a bottle of vanilla extract going for years. Just keep adding the same liquor. Back in the Prohibition Era, because people started drinking Vanilla Extract as liquor, they diluted it with water by 40%
. So if you want the real thing…get some beans, open and scape the seeds
down into the liquor of your choosing and drop the beans in- three to a large
bottle. Six months later you have The
Real Deal! And seriously, what a difference. You can buy directly if you’re
ready to try your own and you will not regret it: http://www.hawaiianvanilla.com/
You can keep a bottle of vanilla extract going for years. Just keep adding the same liquor. Back in the Prohibition Era, because people started drinking Vanilla Extract as liquor, they diluted it with water by 40%
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| The Owner's Son Teaching Us The Art of Vanilla Bean Production...Another Plan for Adytum |
Today, with half Vegan guests, the traditional ‘Egg on the
Half-shell’ is transformed into a base of roasted Portobello mushroom with
slivers of garlic, garlic powder, sea salt, olive oil and Italian Seasoning.
Each option is topped with the same sauté of mushrooms, red bell pepper and
garlic highly seasoned. We only use sea salt at Adytum…one is topped with Vegan
Cheese and the other with Asiago. Again, all guests are happy. You can sauté all
this off with Pesto too, but it has a bit of Parmesan in it.
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| Sweet Breakfast Quinoa in the Making in My French Apron! |
I’ve done all the diets…raw, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian
which includes fish in a vegetarian diet, traditional SAD (Standard American
Diet)….In my perfect, idealistic World no one has to pass up a dish at the
table because, “I can’t eat that…” and in my ultimate perfect World, we can
actually eat out at restaurants and have amazing meals anywhere, anytime
because GF and vegetarian are mainstream. My chef son, Phillip advised me that
to order vegetarian at the average restaurant was to get options that have,
shall we say, been around in the freezer for awhile?
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| Beautiful Dinner for Donn and Me: Kale, Chestnuts, Cranberries, Raw Cashews and Cardamom |
That isn’t appealing…why
can’t they realize there isn’t “one size fits dietary ALL” out there?? Get
real, this is 2012 not 1960. I remember when basil hit mainstream and I
thought, “Where have you been all my life, baby??” We know how to make sure
everyone leaves not only full, but nurtured, nourished and pleasantly surprised
at how good ‘healthy, (modified to GF) Mediterranean based foods can be!”
The Hale Project is
something I have discussed frequently- Google it if you haven’t heard it yet or
check out this link: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/292/12/1433.full.pdf . The study took people aged 70-90 years of
age with active diseases in progress. After ten years’ adherence on the MeDi,
with no smoking and moderate red wine/moderate exercise there was an amazing
50% reduction in ALL causes of death and disease. This isn’t a vegetarian or
dairy free diet, but realize that lamb and sheep/goat cheese and fish are
different (i.e. healthier…) from our choices in America. The molecular size of
the milk from sheep and goats is different from cattle, and European standards are often so much
higher and the food cleaner…You never heard this on this diet promoted as being
both healing and preventive for major diseases on the nightly news, did you? If
Big Pharma produced a drug that promised these same results, you would have heard
about that though. We need to invest in our own health. No one is going to do
it for us.
Health begins in the kitchen - really in your bowels with good bacteria...and in the mind and our will-
our freedom to choose living, health promoting foods. We’re currently immersing
in fermented foods to restore the proper terrain/terroire of the gut and I’ll
share in future blogs our smelly kitchen concoctions…or you can share with us
as so many of you already know how to make many fermented things we are just
exploring. “Wild Fermentation” is now
downloaded on our Kindle…Donn is also playing with the dehydrator again- this
time making Kale Chips with a Cashew Cream Chili Sauce that is fantastic! Friends
popped by this afternoon and finished them off not realizing they were full of
active enzymes and full of health. They
are better than any chips we’ve had. Olympia Vegan shared that link on You Tube
and this is how we all grow in health…By caring with love for the health of
every one of us…iron sharpens iron!
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| Donn's Dehydrator Kale Chips With a Cashew Creme and Chili Finish- Excellent! |
It’s amazing how many people really love the paleo pizza
crust. With Cross-Fit pushing paleo in the form of meat (read the latest
studies on red meat…Hmmm. Someone is after looks before health there… the main
cause probably being iron overload) it’s nice to find this morning’s table
devoted to Paleo with the protein in the crust and in the quinoa- a complete
protein there much the same as eggs or meat. We love introducing people to
things they haven’t tried yet- or tried in that form. We all help each other and
so many of our guests are introducing us to recipes that we turn out loving.
Adytum is a magnet for this healthy exchange.
Despite some early predictions
that we would fail unless we offered “a complete English breakfast” (Google that
one…) we are holding our own as a vegetarian, gluten free kitchen. Even
dedicated meat eaters don’t miss it because the food is savory, prolific and
satisfying. We are open to growth and change and would love to hear YOUR
favorite recipes. One guest left me with a Pumpkin Paleo Muffin that actually
did come from the Cross-Fit people that I’ll try tomorrow with guests here. We
appreciate these ‘gifts’ so much, so please do share!! We need you and we appreciate
each and every one of you so very, very much…We are a growing community of
like-minded individuals here growing in grace and health every day of our
lives. Blessings to you all.
Paleo Pizza Crust - From a Telluride Chef - a Friend of a Friend...
2 cups almond meal
2 eggs - or 2 T ground flax seeds mixed with 6 T water and let it sit a few minutes
3 T olive oil
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 T freshly chopped rosemary (optional)
Preheat oven to 350. Using a spoon mix all crust ingredients together until it becomes very thick. Using your hands, form the dough into a ball. Press it onto a lightly greased pizza pan all the way to the edges making it as thin as possible, and remember to make the hole in the center that Mike taught us was essential to allow the steam to escape. We bake on a pizza stone for 20 minutes, then remove and put the toppings on and put it back in for 20 minutes watching for burning around the crust edges. We brush olive oil on to make the edges more crispy before baking the first time but it is not necessary. Everyone loves this...use oil on your hands if you're having trouble pressing it out. Without the seasonings it could be used as a tart base for fruits...you may want to add a little sea salt to the dough recipe before baking too.
Paleo Pizza Crust - From a Telluride Chef - a Friend of a Friend...
2 cups almond meal
2 eggs - or 2 T ground flax seeds mixed with 6 T water and let it sit a few minutes
3 T olive oil
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 T freshly chopped rosemary (optional)
Preheat oven to 350. Using a spoon mix all crust ingredients together until it becomes very thick. Using your hands, form the dough into a ball. Press it onto a lightly greased pizza pan all the way to the edges making it as thin as possible, and remember to make the hole in the center that Mike taught us was essential to allow the steam to escape. We bake on a pizza stone for 20 minutes, then remove and put the toppings on and put it back in for 20 minutes watching for burning around the crust edges. We brush olive oil on to make the edges more crispy before baking the first time but it is not necessary. Everyone loves this...use oil on your hands if you're having trouble pressing it out. Without the seasonings it could be used as a tart base for fruits...you may want to add a little sea salt to the dough recipe before baking too.
the paleo pizza crust was so filling but yet we didn't feel stuffed. it had great mouth feel and crumbled a little differentiating it from traditional wheat crusts. this made it all the more fun to eat! the whole meal was so awesome and savory! we ate plenty and yet again, we were not at all stuffed. i was left with a feeling of lightness and warmth. the cooks were not shy with savory spices and quality olive oils. this breakfast was such a highlight of our visit!
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