Sorry I haven’t kept up; this has been a crazy week. Thursday I needed to drive to Alachua to pick up kale and cucumbers for our weekly orders of kale salad and cucumber salad. I decided to call Geri who is visiting from Utah to see if she wanted to ride with me. She agreed and probably got more than she bargained for. I don’t think she’s ever seen that much “country”. We finally found a park on our way home where we could stop for lunch, and we had a great romaine salad with no net tuna, cucumber salad, and ranch dressing. At least I thought it was great. She ate it all, so I’m thinking she must have liked it as well. It is hard for people to believe it has no meat products or dairy. They don’t expect it to taste good. As an aside, our branch president told Roger he had felt sorry for him having to eat this way until he saw how we ate the other night at the branch party. We really aren’t deprived at all.
I was thinking about that yesterday when I was asking how the cheddar cheeze went over at the market yesterday. (I was unable to go as I had a church assignment in Orlando.) I was wondering if I would eat it if I was still eating “real” cheese. I think our palettes have to adjust to eating differently, but it is not offensive in any way. We eat what we are used to eating. Things we are not used to seem strange to us. I guess the main difference is that once we get educated as the harmful effects of something, say coffee for example, we make an effort to find substitutes that are both palatable and not destructive. Once we realized that meat and dairy products were unsuitable for us, we were determined to find substitutes that we enjoyed as much or more that were plant-based. (Please read the China Study if you haven’t done so already. It really is one of the best scientific explanations for why we must change our way of eating culturally.)
Well, anyway, enough of the philosophical stuff. On to the goods! Friday we had some delicious Mac n Cheeze made with wonderful spiralized zucchini, cheddar cheeze sauce, and marinated mushrooms. Of course we had a delicious salad to go with it. We experimented with mixing our ranch dressing and avo mayo for a fantastic avocado ranch dressing.
Saturday was leftover no net tuna for Wyatt and Roger. Angelina and I just had regular salads with veggies. We had some nice cherries and grapes as well. Roger had his cucumber salad of course. He eats it every day if we have it. We had Queso Dulce for dinner with celery sticks. Darius and Alicia like to dip strawberries in their QD. Today I sent shredded zucchini and cheeze sauce for the after-conference lunch. They have the missionaries with them as well as Alicia’s mom. I made a couple of quarts of cucumber ranch dressing to go with all the carrot sticks we have. The cucumbers add a nice touch to it.
I am making a bunch more cucumber salad as Roger eats it by the pound. Since the name didn't come up with I put it in the labels, I guess I haven't posted how this is made. It is very simple. I don't measure any of the ingredients, so I can only tell you what goes into it: cucumber, onion, apple cider vinegar, raw agave nectar, and a pinch of salt. I also marinated some broccoli (Nama Shoyu, maple syrup, onion powder, jalopeno pepper, sesame oil) so that we could have broccoli soup (marinated broccoli and cheddar cheeze) for dinner. I guess I’d better get more cheeze started, but I can’t make the alicheezits from the rejuvelac that's ready as the dehydrators are both going full blast with soaked and sprouted almonds.
There were a lot of people asking for prepared foods at the market yesterday, but it is too hard for us to keep everything at the right temperature. We are asking everyone to let us know what they would like us to bring to them there as we can keep small quantities cold. New people came though who had heard about our stuff and were hoping to buy it. I’m sorry they were disappointed; we’re not sure how to get people what they want. We’ll keep working on it. ¡Viva La Verde! is definitely a work in progress.
