Rainy Day Pesto to go with Broccoli-Mushroom Salad

Ingredients:
leaves of fresh mint (Available at your favorite weekend market)
leaves of fresh thyme (Available at the Salcedo Market)
1 head, broccoli
1 cup or more mushrooms
2 cloves deveined garlic - Slice the garlic clove in half and remove the sprout in the middle. Deveining the garlic is optional. 

1 cup walnuts*

1/4 c pine nuts*

1-2 t olive oil

Nutritional yeast to taste (Available at Healthy Options)

Sweetener to taste-raw honey is great (Palawan wild raw honey is my fave!), you might also want to try pitted dates (available at Assad), or a single raw, dried mission fig (available at Healthy Options) I don't really like using agave nectar. Or the other processed "raw" sweeteners out there.

Nori, one-two sheets (Dahon Kusin is selling raw nori!)

Basil or other sweet herbs. My supplier, Shinozaki Yasutaka, gave me a kind of local peppermint that smells like basil but tastes a little minty. Will get back to you on the name again. If I forget, send me a note on the kontactr form.

*Soak the nuts for eight hours in mineral water. Throw out the soak water, then rinse before using the recipe.

Preparation:

Just place everything in a high-speed blender (for a coarser pesto) except for the mushrooms, broccoli, mint and thyme. Use the tamper to push down ingredients to process.

Or, I can imagine this would be creamier in a food processor. Sigh. Would love to own a food processor one of these days!

For the salad, put together broccoli florets from a head of broccoli, about a cup of mushrooms, and (optional): other greens.

This recipe is high in Manganese, Manganese and Phosporus.

It also has trace amounts of:

Vitamin A
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B12
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Calcium
Cooper
Iron
Niacin
Pant. Acid
Potassium
Riboflavin
Selenium
Sodium
Thiamin
Zinc

This recipe contains 83% fat, 10% carbs, and 7% protein. Yes, protein.

Rainy Day Pesto to go with Broccoli-Mushroom Salad

Pineapple - Malunggay Green Smoothie

Ingredients:

An entire ripe organic, non-hybrid, non-GMO, fresh pineapple, skin and eyes removed
A few sprigs to many sprigs of malunggay  (1 sprig if this is your first time to try this recipe)
2 cups of water or more to taste


For high-speed blenders: Blend everything at once.
For regular blenders: Put in the pineapple little by little and pulse until well blended.

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This is not a smoothie to make for a first-time smoothie drinker. For beginners, I recommend this smoothie instead. Once you are ready for a malunggay smoothie, use only one sprig. Then build up your taste buds to take two sprigs the next time, and so on.

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Malunggay can just grow in your backyard if you live in the Philippines. It can also grow in Hawaii. The Philippine consulate in Israel has also tried growing it there - and it has! It sure would be nice if every Pinoy (or the local public school) has this in the yard, wouldn't it?

To prepare, grab a few sprigs and wash carefully. Sidebar: Do you have a 2.5-3 year old at home? Show her how to do this one by one, and sloooooowly.  I guarantee you - you will have a very happy camper! Just be patient! S/he will like plucking the leaves off into a bowl until it is ready to be washed.

I don't soak mine in sukang tuba, because I grow malunggay organically at home.

Malunggay leaves have a waxy coating that deter pests and can be grown pesticide-free!

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An organic pineapple is about P70 each.

Imagine this: for less than P100, you can provide a cancer patient with a pineapple - malunggay green smoothie with the following nutritional, bioavailable benefits:

This recipe has a high amount of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Calcium, Manganese, Zinc, Selenium, Protein in the bioavailable form of 18 essential amino acids, and trace amounts of:

Copper
Iron
Niacin
Pant. Acid
Phosporus
Riboflavin
Selenium
Sodium
Thiamin
Vitamin B6

When eaten raw (not canned or frozen), and  fresh from the blender, and taken alone (not as an accompaniment beverage to a Standard Filipino Diet meal), your body assimilates this recipe's goodness super fast!

Too often, Pinoys equate pineapples with upset stomachs because to begin with, their stomachs are acidic. Pinoys also equate pineapples with opening a can of ______. (Can anyone say "tricalcium phosphate?!). Preservatives in canned pineapples exacerbate the stomach's reaction to pineapples. Slowly alkalize your body with fruit and vegetables, and over time, you will not find eating organic, raw pineapples upsetting.  In fact, they will have an alkaline-forming effect on your body. Strange but true!

Pineapple - Malunggay Green Smoothie

Stuff Raw Foodists Like #3: Sprouted Quinoa

Where do you get your protein?

Protein is everywhere!

The raw foodist's advantage is that raw fruits, vegetables and nuts come packed with their own proteins in the form of enzymes. Enzymes are a protein that aid the digestion of the food it is part of.

That said, there are some raw foods that are more abundant in protein than others. One of them is quinoa. (KEEN-wa). According to Ian Merber and Vicki Edgson, authors of The Food Doctor, quinoa is the perfect vegetable protein. It also contains calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and vitamin B3. It is easy to digest, is gluten-free, contains more calcium than milk, stimulates milk flow in breastfeeding, and its lysine content is a potent antiviral agent.  

I first tried quinoa in the form of quinoa pasta when I discovered that I had an intolerance to gluten. I got my quinoa pasta from the health food store. The taste was excellent! Way better than rice pasta, in my humble opinion.

Now that I have gone high raw, I buy quinoa in its raw, unprocessed form. These are grains you can find in the grain section of your health food store.

To prepare them, you need to wash them well, then soak them in pure water (in my case, I just use mineral water) overnight in a covered container. The following day, I throw out the rinse water, then I check for tails. If I see those, I rinse them again and they are ready to eat! It is one of the easiest raw foods to sprout!

Look for the tails! Can you see them?

Sprouted quinoa (KEEN-wa) is a really yummy way to enjoy proteins! Some sprouts can be really stinky, but  sprouted quinoa has a mild, sweet smell. It can be mixed with almost veggie.

Here's Aileen de Guzman who taught me how to use the sprouted quinoa in a lovely salad.

What are your favorite quinoa recipes?

Stuff Raw Foodists Like #3: Sprouted Quinoa