Good afternoon Sweet Ones
Oh how you have been on my mind, so much is happening here and I want to share it all but often we finish in the kitchen between 11pm and 1am and I know that if I start to share I won’t be asleep until the very early hours. And the last time I sat down at the end of a long and productive evening to share something happened to my entry. I spent two hours talking to you and posted the entry only to find the next morning that only the first paragraph survived – the other 99% of the entry was gone…poof…disappeared. I went to bed with tired shoulders that night and didn’t even get to share.
But i am here now, it is early Sunday afternoon and I have just had a brief spell on the computer researching chocolate molds and truffle boxes. Yes, it is official, we are entering the Raw Chocolate Session here in the TeamRAW kitchen. More news of that as it happens, i have been playing with raw chocolate for a while and am ready to take it to the next level. Expect beautiful glossy raw chocolate filled cups and truffles soon…
As many of you know we went 100% raw for the month of May. We are entering the Raw Foodie’s heaven as we move from Spring to Summer and our favorite fleshy fruits come into season. There is a huge difference between 80% raw and a full on 100%. Not only do we both feel great but the synchronicities that have occurred during the month have been astounding. A time of instant manifestation. One of those times where you better be careful what you wish for because you’re going to get it (smile). We have several options opening up to us to get our hands dirty in the garden and a serious inquiry about selling our new red bell pepper and flax pizza crusts and a few other bagged goodies. This has us looking into compostable food packaging, thinking about labels and of course, recipes that would lend themselves to the debut of some of our products.
Of course, our main focus is to teach people how to do it for themselves (our next class is July 19, 2009) but we accept that not everyone has a dehydrator so we will be making some of those products available and you will be the first to know. Our grawnola just couldn’t be better. We eat it every day for breakfast piled high with fresh oranges, mango and strawberries. What a visual delight it is!!! We are currently working on our cracker and chip offerings. The dehydrator has been going none stop for over a week now and last night we loaded another 9 trays.
As I type we have chocolate chips, almonds and cashews for flour, candied walnuts (awesome on salads), za’atar flatbread, cumin flatbread and corn tortilla chips…later when a tray or two open up we will be adding in kale chips…yummy goodness that tastes divine and is good for you. We are busier than usual in the kitchen as we are getting ready to go to Raw Spirit Festival in Santa Barbara this coming week. A little preparation ahead of time will yield us a varied and tasty 6 day camping menu…no more cooking required!
As I type I am sipping our newest smoothie blend…we call it: Mellow Yellow Baby (MYB). It is a creamy, dreamy blend of raw almond milk, frozen banana and pineapple and fresh mango and orange. So round and very creamy. I (Shivie) created it Friday and it is my favorite to date. Try it for yourself and taste the possibilities of summer in your glass.
Talking of summer, it’s around the corner. Have you felt the “bloom of Spring” in your life? We have and we can feel the endless possibilities of summer around the corner. After a winter of contemplation, Spring gives us the chance to see beauty with fresh eyes, to appreciate the colors, smells and often better temperatures, of Spring. As we “Spring into Summer” we get the chance to take the “Spring in energy” we have felt to the next level. Days of dreaming under seemingly endless blue skies allows our minds to stretch into corners it did not see in the darker corridor of winter. Nature jumps alive and tantalizes us with her smells, tastes and textures. The harnessing of the sun’s energy in our food make us too feel endless and boundless. It is a time where, if we are in the right place, doing the right thing, literally anything is possible. These are my favorite days.
So, as I finish up my Mellow Yellow Baby, I invite you to tune into the natural cycle. Feel, literally, Spring in your step as you walk, feel it in your lungs as you breathe the softer Spring air, soak it up in skin as you feel the sun warmly upon you…look up to the endless blue sky and invite your mind to expand like the sky, to open more and more to a vastness that is beyond definition. Accept that where you are is where you need to be in order to go where you need to go. Do it with love, for yourself as much as for others, and feel it come back and envelop you in more love than you thought possible. Don’t think IMPOSSIBLE think I’M POSSIBLE. Dream big and in technicolor.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, make it a RAWsome day.
I’m going back to the kitchen to check on my babies!
In deepest gratitude and with Blessings
Shivie and Cemaaj
TeamRAW
