Day 47: dulse is not bacon

What do you mean, we're out of kale?

The picture really has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it's a funny one of Madeline and me from last week. We were in my school's library and if I recall, I was making some now forgotten emphatic point, and she was playing with Photobooth. We so rarely agree on photos of ourselves (one of us usually thinks it's the best picture ever! and the other wishes to immediately delete it from the memory card), so it had to be shared.

Last week, on a whim, I purchased dulse seaweed. I'm not sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time and it's really healthy for you. I wasn't sure what to make with it, though, and it sat in the cabinet, making everything smell like the ocean. Last night, Mad read the package which said that it could be used in place of bacon (!!!) and suggested making BLD (get it? like BLTs with dulse...heh) lettuce wraps for lunch today. So I obliged, even though I was not convinced and a small taste test did not assuage my concerns.

Verdict? Dulse tastes nothing like bacon. It was more like salty and slightly fishy lettuce and tomato. I couldn't finish, but luckily I had made myself a salad, as well, with the golden elixir dressing from The Raw Food Detox Diet. I like the dressing a lot, although I make it in half-batches because the first time I made it, it went rancid in the fridge in less than a week.

Lesson learned: dulse is not bacon and now I have to find another recipe for the rest of the package. Luckily, not all of my un-cooking is such an epic fail.

One of the things that Mad has really been struggling with since going raw is a lack of Indian food. Her parents are from India, and while I was raised on microwavable dinners, she had freshly made Indian food every night. It's fairly easy to eat Indian as a vegan, and after a few lessons from her mom, I was able to make some pretty decent daals. It hasn't been easy for her to maintain connections to her culture. Being gay and in a relationship with a white girl are huge obstacle. Not eating brown food is another huge blow.

So I went looking from some raw Indian meals. There's really not much out there, but I was fortunate to come across this blog of two Indian brothers, one of whom is raw and the other is high raw. Last night for dinner, I made their malai kofta recipe, which was quick, delicious, and most importantly, authentic tasting. My only deviation from the recipe was to substitute the coconut oil with 1/2 tb of olive oil and 1/2 tb raw shredded coconut, since I had none in the house. We're overdue for a trip to the local Indian grocery store. I'm inspired to rawify other curry recipes in the near future.

In sad news this week, we are out of kale. With all the green smoothies I've been drinking, I was consuming 6-10 cups of spinach and kale each day. Then Mad read something regarding spinach and the effect on the thyroid, which led me to research the small amounts of toxins in different greens. Of concern for both were oxalates. I'm not overly concerned because I am healthy and I don't have any conditions that would be aggravated by their ingestion, but it did underscore the importance of rotating greens for their different nutritional highlights. So I skipped my beloved kale and the big bag of spinach we usually buy in favor of romaine, turnip greens, collard greens and chard this week. Unfortunately, all except the romaine still contain oxalates, so next week I'll be looking for more variety. Should have done my research first, I suppose. It's not bad, but I had my smoothie recipe perfected and now I'm all thrown off. Chard, in particular, was difficult for me to make palatable. It's really, really salty. A lot of citrus was called for.

Other quick highlights: we have Egg (less) salad from Awesome Foods in the fridge for dinner tonight. I think we're really lucky to have this great raw food company local to us. We're able to buy the whole range of their products at our rockin health food store, but they deliver on Wednesday and if I wait until Saturday when I work in the city to stop in, their stock is already depleted. So we made a special trip to the store last night just to snag some egg (less) salad, which we've heard rave reviews about. After the dulse debacle, I'm super excited for dinner tonight!

-Eloise