Please Pray for my Mom

Hey guys, I know this isn't a food-related post but thought it would be a good way to get the word out to pray for my Mom.  She goes in for gall bladder surgery tomorrow morning at 9:00.  It came on suddenly, and the doctors are moving quickly. 
She went in to see the doctor Tuesday after not feeling good all weekend and he immediately began a series of tests and lab work and had her come back later that afternoon.  Her liver enzymes were extremely elevated so the doctor wanted to do surgery right away. 
She met with the surgeon this morning and she told Mom it's not going to be a typical gall bladder surgery exactly, but still shouldn't pose many risks. 
Mom is really nervous about Woodward Hospital because it has a terrible reputation.  Luckily, it's an outpatient surgery. 

Thanks for praying!
Sam

Pick, Paint, Eat

It's so exciting here in Wyoming. The warm summer lasted two months and Autumn is already in the air. I'm not pleased about that at all, but I am having a blast harvesting from our garden. Never before have I seen how broccoli grows, or cabbage, or potatoes. It's so fun! Yesterday morning, I picked some crops and then in the afternoon I painted them. In the evening we ate them. Everything on our plate was homegrown and organic (and fresh!). Here is a shot of my painting session:

I am going to miss this during our long, long, long and cold winter. I am trying to enjoy every second of warmth and every bite of fresh produce. Hope you all are well!

-Mara

Real Food

A friend of mine loaned me a book entitled, Real Food: What to Eat and Why. This has quickly become my new favorite book and I am only halfway through it! I have learned so much about cattle and milk and yogurt and butter, gardening and how so many of our grocery store options are processed (even things labeled "organic." It is an awesome book and we have already begun to adopt it's principles into our own kitchen. It sort of takes all the raw foodist, vegetarian/vegan, green smoothie and nutritarian stuff we like into one idea that still allows for delicious things like beef and butter and salt. It is so wonderful and I hope you all will read it, too! You would love it!

Find it on Amazon here.

Love you all!
Mara

Try This in the VitaMix

1 cucumber, partially peeled
1/2 c. cold water
3 c. ice cubes
1/3 c. honey
juice from 1/2 a lime (or more to taste)
1/4 t. fine grain sea salt

Yum! Great for a hot afternoon.

One of my new favorite things.

Coconuts. Have you tried to use one yet? I accidentally bought an

"old" coconut when I should have bought a Thai young coconut. Well, I decided I'd try to use it, and I'm glad I did. The water that I drained out was not all that great. Its a little weird tasting, actually. The greatness comes when you use the meat inside to make coconut milk!

The hard part is getting the coconut split into two pieces and then digging out the meat. Its a tough job. I was flicking meat all over the kitchen trying to pry it out piece by piece. Then I put the bits in the vitamix to blend it up, and then strained it. Yum! Raw coconut milk.

The smoothie shown in the photo just has banana, pineapple, and coconut milk in it. Soooo good. And healthy too!

Now I want to make a Thai soup.

Here is a link to a site that I thought explained the process the best if you would like to give it a try. I recommend you do!

First Fruits

We just ate our first fruits of the garden: a green salad made from the items we thinned. I wish I had a picture. The salad included:

Romaine
Butter crunch
Rainbow Chard
Kale
Cilantro
Sweet Basil
Lemon Basil
Parsely
Radish
Oregano

What a wonderful feeling to eat the first plate of things we grew ourselves!

We love gardening and it seems to me that observing plant life brings me closer to God, somehow.

-Mara

Raw food restaurant

We used a Groupon last night for a raw food restaurant here in OKC. Here are some photos. The name of the restaurant is Matthew Kenney OKC. Everything is raw (I think not cooked above 118 deg F if I remember correctly), and organic if possible. Here one of his cook books.

Our appetizer was an avocado dragon roll. It was delicious. I'm not sure what all was in it, but one big difference was instead of rice, they used jicama. Amazing how good it was - much better than many sushi rolls I've had.

I had a Thai Chile Smoothie. This was really good, and different than any other green smoothie that I've had. I believe it had mango, lemon grass, Thai chile, young coconut, and spirulina in it (and some other things I don't remember).

At the bottom of my glass there was some "balls" of something and I'm pretty sure it was mango. Sam had a cacao smoothie and she had some un-blended food in the bottom of hers, too (frozen banana we think). Anyway, we noticed they were using Blendtec blenders. Just saying.


This was Sam's main dish, some kind of a tomato corn ravioli.

I had a thai noodle dish for my entre. The noodles were kelp, and are not boiled. This dish was full of delicious flavor.