Thanksgiving dinner

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Lisa & Danny’s yesterday.. it was great.. except I had to look away a few times, they had ham & turkey.. and it was a boneless already stuffed turkey which you cook straight in the oven from frozen for 5 hours. Easy.. but when I looked it was square & I was trying to figure that one out.. then they told me it was boneless.. they were joking about if someone deboned it raw, which would be pretty hard to do, leaving the rest all intact, or grew it boneless.. ok, that one almost did me in.

Then they were talking about the spinach scare.. and I suggested it may actually have been done to it.. I mean a lot of people have a lot to lose if the world starts getting too healthy. Ok, so good chance it was washed with dirty water or something ..but it’s not outside of the realm of consideration in my books. Jim said he never took me for a conspiracy theorist.. but considering everything I’ve been reading lately.. and now with carrot juice.. and romaine lettuce. For a lot of people out there getting romaine into their diet is a huge green thing to do.. and spinach is the epitomy of green to many. I know people who have stopped drinking green smoothies because of the spinach scare.. anyway, just a thought.

But dinner was great. I made Thanksgiving raw foods and brought them. 1st I ordered a raw cheesecake from Moni’s Raw –Catering, Training, Certified Raw Foods Chef – Monica Swift – 416-269-4336 or e-mail monicakes$u@yahoo.ca . Monica made a cranberry topping for it. She makes great pumpkin desserts also.. and a great raw Tiramisu, which I got to try when I went to pick up the cheesecake.

So, I made & brought cranberry sauce, a raw mashed potato experiment, a raw holiday vegetable loaf and a big salad. The salad was great, the cranberry sauce amazing, better than any cooked version I’ve ever had, the mashed potatoes were not very great, I tried.. but I am ready to give up trying. Just can’t find a raw substitute for those.. and maybe there is just not meant to be one. & The holiday loaf was actually really good. That’s the thing with raw pate’s and loafs.. sometimes they are just not as visually appealing.. even with the decorative red peppers & oregano sprig in the middle.. but it tasted really good.. and even the meat eaters tried and liked it & asked how it was made.

The Cranberry Sauce was made from a bag of cranberries, 1 orange (or apple), ¼ pineapple (1c), and a dozen dates pureed in a food processor. Leave 1/3 of the bag of cranberries to pulse-chop in at the end. & then I stirred in some 1-2T’s of agave syrup.

The Loaf was a made from a sunflower pate recipe – 1 ½ c sunflowers seeds, ½ lemon, 1 celery stalk, 2T red onion, 1 garlic clove, ½ “ ginger, and 2T tamari – blended together. Then I took half that recipe and mixed in with it – kernels cut from 1 ear of corn, 1 carrot, grated fine w/ mandolin, 1 beet, grated, ½ red pepper chopped fine, 6 sprigs parsley, chopped, marjoram, sage, oregano & basil from the garden.

Strawberry Cheezecake recipe: http://www.rawguru.com/recipe36.html
& lots more recipes: http://www.rawguru.com/rawfoodrecipes.html