Cantaloupe "Mousse"

I really don't know if this would qualify as a mousse, or a pudding for that matter, which is what I intended, but it's still good.  What I did was I made something similar to my mostly-raw healthy chocolate pudding, but made it simply from cantaloupe, and macadamia nuts.  It was a big liquidy due to the water-content of the melon, but it was still really good.

I blended about a half-full of nuts (you could use cashews) to a powder in the blender, then added the fruit of a half of a medium to large cantaloupe, adding a dash of nutmeg and some vanilla extract.  I felt all fancy slicing a little bit off the bottom of the empty cantaloupe shell so it would sit flat, and pouring the mixture back in, and eating it out of that.

Cancer-Protective Healthy Dinner Party

I found out recently that a friend of mine has a brain tumor. She's working on raising money for a biopsy. She is raising money through this store.

I decided to have a fundraiser in the form of a healthy food night dinner party. I've done healthy food nights before for free. I buy inexpensive food and prepare healthy, simple, yet tasty recipes to encourage people to eat this way as well. For this event, I made more food than usual, and asked for a suggested donation of $10. It was a small event, but I feel like it went well.

I made a kale, white bean, and tomato stew using canned organic tomato sauce, onions, garlic, cannelini beans, kale, carrots, seasoned with a little paprika, thyme, and garlic. The tomato sauce had some salt in it already.

I also made a black rice salad with a dijon dressing that included dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, fresh lemon juice, garlic, and water. This salad had japonica black rice (which was on sale) and also had chopped sun-dried tomatoes and crushed walnuts. It was meant to have greens added, but I ran out of time and there were plenty of greens in the other dishes.

The other salad I made was mostly raw: raw chopped collards and some spinach, chopped apples, with my favorite tahini curry dressing that contained curry powder, lemon juice, tahini, and water. I brought optional currants that people could add to the salad.

The dessert got a lot of praise. I wanted to make something with berries, since these are protective against cancer. I wanted to make something that was mostly whole foods and mostly raw. I got some dates from my local farmers market (the apples, kale, and lemons were from there too). I thawed some mixed organic berries and blended them up with a little bit of lemon juice and vanilla extract. I slightly melted some raw coconut butter (this stuff is probably not incredibly healthy in large quantities, but more ideal that coconut oil, and so rich and delicious) and mixed all this together. I sliced the dates along one side, removed the pit, and stuffed each date with a little of the coconut-berry filling. I had considered putting in some raw cacao nibs, but ran out of time to deal with that.

So over all, I had a variety of whole plant foods, many of which are protective against cancer, including the kale and collards (cruciferous veggies- in the cabbage family), garlic, onions, carotenoids in the carrots and tomatoes, turmeric in the curry powder, and the good stuff (antioxidants) in dark berries (and probably the black rice). Plus a healthy dose of fiber.  Oh, and walnuts have some omega 3 fatty acids.

Of course eating this one meal isn't going to prevent or reverse cancer.  Eating this way on a regular basis can help protect you against cancer.  Discussion reversing cancer would be tricky for anyone to discuss, even seemingly doctors.  But if you are fighting cancer, it makes sense to eat a whole foods plant-based diet.

Further reading:  Eat For Health - The Anti-Cancer Diet
 Foods for Cancer Prevention |  T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Here are some other links I've been sharing with friends and family dealing with cancer:

http://anticancerliving.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/tumor-shrinking-on-vegan-diet/

http://www.thechinastudy.com/PDFs/ChinaStudy_Excerpt.pdf

http://crazysexylife.com/category/diet-lifestyle/

http://www.healingdaily.com/conditions/Gerson-therapy.htm

video/audio: China Study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfWSHaaPiE8

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/859

http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/1-anticancer-vegetable/

Healthy Chocolate Pudding

No, this is no tofu pudding. This is no "sugar-free" pudding with fake sweeteners, sugar alcohols or stevia, this is a delicious pudding made from mostly raw whole foods. This is healthy enough that I've had it for breakfast a couple times. It's probably less calories than many cereals people eat for breakfast.

I wasn't going to include this because it wasn't as affordable for a treat as I'd like to promote. But in comparison to a similar sized serving of a frozen dessert like soy icecream, I'd say it's pretty comparable.

The key to this recipe is a nicely ripened mango. I've made this several times now, and the riper the mango, the less it clashes with the chocolate.

So initially I made this with a handful of macadamia nuts (unsalted!), but when I ran out of those, I made this with cashews and was not disappointed. Today I made it with raw almonds and it was good, but I think I prefer cashews.

I take about a handful of nuts per mango and blend them up in a blender or food processor (the blender seems to work best for this recipe) until I have a finely ground powder. You could also use a nut butter, in which case I could add that after blending the mango. Then i rinse and peel the mango with a veggie peeler. I cut the mango off the core in smallish pieces and put all those pieces in the blender. I add some vanilla extract, maybe a teaspoon or so. I blend this for a bit, and I might have to scrape the sides and the bottom to get it all blended. Then I add cocoa powder to taste. I usually add enough that it looks and tastes like chocolate pudding (although I've not had any sort of chocolate pudding in a long time, so I'm not sure how accurate this is). Then it's done! It should be a nice pudding-like consistency.

I would like to also try this with avocado instead of mango some day...

Banana Ice Cream: just made from bananas!

Blending frozen bananas to make ice cream is one of my favorite food-related discoveries.  For one, bananas are one of the cheapest produce items available (unfortunately it's not locally grown).  Two, you can make a great dessert just with fruit and a food processor.  Well, actually the idea evolved from me slicing bananas and putting them in a bowl in my freezer, then eating it with nuts and/or chocolate.

If you're going to freeze bananas, you're going to want to peel them and cut them in thirds, if not smaller, then keep them in a plastic bag or container.  You can use them in smoothies, but for ice cream, you can simply blend them up with a little bit of water or milk substitute.  If you're not so concerned about the fat or calorie content, adding coconut milk and/or peanut butter is excellent.  Of course you can add all sorts of things: chocolate, carob, chopped nuts, coconut flakes, other fruits, flavorings (vanilla extract is great), etc. 

If you don't have a food processor, a blender might work.  Or, a friend of mine actually uses a champion juicer and doesn't have to add water and that turns out like soft serve.

If you have some dates, make a banana date shake by making banana ice cream and blending it up with date pieces and more liquid, adding some vanilla extract if you have it.