Fun with Tulips

One of the things I look forward to every spring are tulips. If you do not like greens, tulips have the crunch of lettuce or spinach without the green taste. They are mild, with almost no taste at all, but are very pleasant to eat. Best yet, they come in all kinds of colors and can be used as "cups" for deserts as well as thrown into salads for color. I've been picking tulips around town after they've been blooming for a couple of days and are about to drop their petals. They're still good, although a little beat up, and people just don't think of eating them. What a waste! However, do NOT eat tulips bought in the store or flower shop, they might have been heavily sprayed and beware of picking them "in the wild" where there is high auto traffic or you know people have sprayed.

Although in the onion family, tulips do not give gas. Their bulbs are edible, but only just so, slimy when cooked and not very palatable. But the flowers are a cook's dream! And kids love them, too!

Here is a fun chia fruit salad.

1/4 cup chia seeds mixed with as much water and soaked for about 15 minutes
1 chopped up kiwi
6 strawberries
(honey if you want--I don't like my food too sweet)
plopped on a "flower" of tulips petals. Cut off the part that might have pollen on it.

fun!

Another Cracker Recipe

I've been experimenting with cracker recipes that do not use grains. I am very allergic to anything in the grain family, which cuts out any sprouted crackers, etc. I also have joint trouble when I eat amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa. In this cracker recipe, I went ahead and broke down and bought flax meal instead of flax seed. I was impressed by how well the crackers came out.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup flax meal
1/2 cup black sesame seeds (soaked and rinsed to get rid of the oxalic acid)
1/2 cup sprouted sunflower seeds (do not use if you are allergic to ragweed)
salt to taste (do not used bleached salt--it should be grey or reddish)
1 tbs granulated kelp
1 tbs dried nettles pound up in a mortar and pestle
1 tsp powdered cumin seeds

I mixed this up with just enough water to make the dough stiff and then spread it out on my plastic cookie sheet and dried it under the fan for 24 hours. (see the other cracker recipe.)

Then I added avocado topped with a little paprika and dulse. Good snack!

Crown Chakra Pudding and Blue Edible Flowers

I'm not as keen on flax seeds as most raw foodists. I guess it's because I'm an artist and grew up with linseed oil as a paint thinner, not something to eat! The small amounts of Prussic acid in flax will not harm you; you'd have to eat pounds of it to get the toxic amounts. People eat flax to thin the blood because it is high in Omega 3 fatty acids. This is a new buzz word, but the point of Omega fatty acids is to balance them, not to just run out and eat a ton of flax oil.

Walnuts, also lauded as high in Omega 3 are also high in Omega 6. Omega 6 is necessary to the functioning of the body, but on the standard American diet people eat muscle meat from animals raised on grains (not grass) and eat too many grain products, so they get a ratio of 100-1 Omega 6 to Omega 3 instead of the recommended ratio of 3 or 2-1. A good rule is to stay under 6-1, which is very difficult if you eat a lot of grains and oils like canola and corn. Most nuts are very high in Omega 6s. Unlike many land animals, humans need the same ratio of Omegas that sea animals need.

You can get Omega 3s from sea products EXCEPT farm bred salmon, and from grass fed animals IF you eat the organ meat. The other way you can get Omega 3s is from many greens such as spinach, kale and the entire mint family. Which brings us to Chia seed, made famous by the hokey commercial where kids used the seeds to grow in ceramic figures for instant "hair." Chia is the seed of a member of the mint family: one of the sages, closely related to common garden sage. Go ahead and eat all the seeds of this family, unless the plant is not familiar to you. There is nothing wrong with peppermint seeds, except that they are TINY. Chia seeds are large for seeds in the mint family. But the cool thing about chia is that when you add water to them, they swell and get very sticky, not so much slimy as like a pudding. I use this quality of chia to make desserts.

For this pudding, I took a half-cup of chia and added about the same amount of water. Stir the seeds and let them soak. Then you have a pudding base to which you can add just about anything. Sweet, dessert type stuff is more familiar to us; if you were to add salt, the chia would be more like caviar.

Here is a recipe for a pudding to nourish the crown chakra at the top of the head. Blue-indigo is the color of this chakra. Good for the sinuses and the eyes!

1/8 cup dried elderberry fruits (soaked)
1/4 cup dried blueberries (or 1/2 cup fresh)
the chia mix
honey to taste
cinnamon or cardamon or other spices to taste
top with edible blue flowers (here I've used rosemary.)

Blue Flowers

I love edible flowers. They are often very tasty and they put pleasure into food preparation. I'm taking you on a tour of blue flowers in this post by family.

My favorite blue flower is Anchusa azarea, a plant in the borage family common to the Mediterranean. This is a tough plant and wonderful to grow. Unlike comfrey, it does not spread everywhere. Unlike borage, it is a perennial. It produces hundreds of beautiful blue flowers in late May and again in late summer if you cut it back. But the secret is: if you get to the flowers before the bees do, they are absolutely delicious. If the bees get there first, they are pretty, but not sweet, very mild. But I love blue in the garden and anchusa is spectacular. The flowers go well on salads and on deserts or are fun to eat out of hand. The plants are carefree, but might want to be tied back because the stems are so heavy with flowers that they tend to fall over! A flower for the back of the garden, the same size as glads.

The famous flower in the borage family is...borage! These little gems are also very sweet, but the bees love them. This is a re-seeding annual, another carefree plant that will keep coming back even in very cold climates. The seeds are used to make borage oil and the leaves have a pleasant taste of mild cucumbers. The flowers are beautiful and have been used for ages in sweets and candied for drinks.

There is also a beautiful blue comfrey in this family if you like comfrey. The flowers of lungwort are also a gorgeous blue color.


I keep going on about the campanulas, which used to be called "rapunsel" in Europe and are also called "rampions" and "harebells." All of the campanula flowers are edible and very benign. There are campanulas that spread like wildflower and there are some that are better behaved. Some are arctic flowers and will do well at zone 2, if you are blessed with that climate. They are tough plants and the bees love them. They have been selected and bred widely and there are rock plants and tall plants and drought friendly varieties. Although some campanulas are good for roots and others for leaves, all have wonderful flowers. Grow some just for the fun of throwing the flowers on a salad all summer.



The onion family is blessed with a number of beautiful blue flowers. However, some taste like onions! The flowers of grape hyacinth are HOT, like strong garlic or onions. So most of these are not desert flowers. You have to taste them to see.

Most of the onion family has white flowers, some light pink. But some of our favorite flowers of all time are in this family: tulips, lilies, and gladiolas. Gladiolas are wonderful flowers in mid-summer for sandwiches, salads and anything else you can think up. They are strong enough to hold up well, but not to cooking where they will turn into a little slimy mess. They are mild and taste like not much at all, but they have a texture like a baby lettuce.



There are many other flowers in the onion family that are worth trying because they are so easy to grow. One of the most beautiful plants in this family that is still wild is the camass, not to be confused with the "death camass" which has white flowers. Some are native to the Rocky Mountain West, which gives you a clue as to their hardiness. I include them here as an example of a beautiful plant to grow in a "wild" garden that will give you a little bit of "blue" to throw on your salad.





I love nigellas. There are three basic nigellas. The Spanish nigella has rather hot seeds, and the Nigella sativa has seeds that are almost the same as onion seeds, and called that by Indians. The seeds are widely used in Indian and Mid-Eastern and Slavic cooking. But the garden variety nigella, called "damascena" or commonly, "love-in-a-mist" has sweet seeds that are used in confections. The flowers are stunning, some of them pure blue. The ripe seed heads are used in dried arrangements. This is another self-seeding annual that will come back year after year. If you like Indian cooking, do not go without planting "black seed" or Nigella sativa in your garden for a spicy treat.


And violas, pansies and violets! Where would edible flower cooking be without them? I've had pansies and violas last all winter in my Colorado gardens. They are hardy, pop back after hard freezes and snowstorms and will be a staple of your winter garden in milder areas. And the color! Flowers in the viola family have been bred into every color imaginable. When I did catering, I used these flowers as the backbone of my cooking when I did weddings to match the bride's colors. Easy to grow, pest-free, the foliage is edible, the flowers are edible and they are wonderful for gout, arthritis and a host of over blood and joint problems, having salicylic acid.


The other family where you find a number of edible blue flowers is in the mind family. This is a picture (courtesy of the web--thanks!) of dragon's head, which is a citrus tasting tea plant that comes in a re-seeding annual or a perennial and is native to Eastern Europe. The leaves and flowers are delicious in teas or in salads and deserts.


Many of the members of the sage family have blue flowers and are very good. But some tend to be a bit strong, so taste first. Where I live, rosemary blooms in March, so I have used those flowers in my pudding. The flowers taste like mild rosemary and made a suprisingly good combination with the elder and blueberries. Use the flowers of lavender and mints, thyme and hyssop on all of your creations.

Cooking with flowers adds elegance and pizazz to your meals. Children love edible flowers. They also love bright colors. The next time you go out in the garden, pick some flowers. Most garden plants have edible flowers, with the exception of the tomato family, which are controversial.

Enjoy!

Fun with White Roots!

I'm keen on root crops in fall and winter. Most root crops are meant to be cooked: taro, sweet potatoes, potatoes, yams and arrowhead all have anti-nutrients in them or enzymes and chemicals that make them toxic or pretty nasty to eat raw. I've known people who ate potatoes and yams raw, but they are both so full of starch as to be pretty slimy and vile.

I eat plenty of carrots and dark greens, so I walk around with orange-ish palms anyways, so I don't worry about how much nutrition to get in root crops. I want bulk, carbs, and that full feeling that you can't get from most veggies. I also have the taste buds of a child, so I'm not keen on strong-tasting food.

I'm enticing you with this picture of a mushroom dish on some celeriac that I colored with a dab of spirulina to show you that white roots can be fun, even for kids.




Queens of the roots are the umbel family. They've been domesticated for hundreds of years as to not look like these wild roots here. But if you are running around in the wilderness in winter and KNOW your umbels (remember hemlock is in this family) you can get a pretty good meal out of even roots like this. But umbels love the mud, the muddier, the better. I'm showing you these roots in a more natural state to show you that the grocery cleans them up (A LOT) before they put them on their neat shelves.

If you grow umbels, they want mud, well not all mud, but light, almost sandy soil that is constantly moist. Any drought, any check in the moisture and those lovely carrots will be BITTER. And umbels can get mighty bitter. They can also be pretty strong, so taste them before you go crazy with them. If you grow them, they want coddling, unlike some other roots that are more forgiving of bad climate.

Umbels with edible roots number in the hundreds. But here are the more common ones you can find in the grocery: carrots, celery, celery root (celeriac) parsley, parsley root, dill, caraway, cilantro (leaves) and coriander (seeds), anise, fennel, bulb fennel (finocchio), and parsnips.

If you have enough beta carotene and want to try a sweet variety of carrot, go with white. White carrots tend to be sweeter than orange and much sweeter than red or yellow carrots. They also seem more resistant to the bitterness of the colored carrots. When you eat raw, you really notice things like bitter carrots.

(I love this cat.) Here is a pile of white carrots courtesy of the web (I'm using some of these photos that are not mine to show you what these plants look like.) You can see that white carrots look very much like parsnips. But, big taste difference. All the roots of the umbels above are edible, some very good. Fennel root is as good as fennel stalks. People use them mostly in soups, but I just like eating them for a crunchy treat out of hand or grated up in some experiment.

Most moderns don't know that the roots of parsley are good. I like growing veggies that have multiple functions. Carrot tops are good when young, and some varieties of parsley have good roots like this small one here. The large root is a parsnip. Note that the leaves of parsnips are NOT edible. Many umbels can cause dermatitis in some people, anywhere from a mild rash to a serious case like poison oak. If you get rashy after you've been pulling carrots, use a gentle soap right after you deal with the greens and don't eat them. Parsnips greens will give many people a rash, which is why they cut the tops off in the stores. But parsnips are wonderful in raw dishes. They have a spicy, sweet taste that goes well in many dishes. Experiment!


But my favorite of the root umbels is celeriac. It's grown in muck and highly sprayed. NEVER buy and eat celery and celeriac that is chemically grown. The bugs love it and it's full of pesticides. The higher price for organic is totally worth it for carrots and celeriac. Some crops don't get bugs and the organic label is more for "show" than something that you must choose.

Grated celeriac is dry and mild. I use it in my sushi recipes, but it's equally good grated for everything. It thins the blood, which is good for some and bad for others and cleans the liver, helping with gout, arthritis and a host of auto-immune diseases. You can also eat the leaves, but they are strong.

Just as carrots come in other forms, so do beets. I do not use white, golden, or pink beets because they give me a sore throat, just as other roots in the chenopod family do. Pay attention to things like this. A golden beet might make your throat sore; a tea made with yellow dock might make your throat close up (happened to me.) Be careful when trying new foods, especially in the raw form. Try a little, then wait for a reaction. But white beets, both round like this and mangels (sugar beets) are an alternate white root crop for fun. But if you find the taste of red beets to have a strong, "beety" taste, white are even stronger! They are good mixed with other roots, and again, the leaves are as good as spinach or chard.

Many people have seen jicama roots, which look like large, brown turnips on steroids. They are delicious. Many bean crops have edible roots. I'm showing you the foliage and flowers here, because, although the roots are wonderful, the seeds are poisonous. Many bean seeds are more or less poisonous, which is why most of them are cooked. If you eat raw, there are seeds you can eat as well as green and seeds you can't, like American common beans (although green beans are okay.) Jicama, like kudzu, is a tropical crop, so the roots are coming in from Mexico. They are a juicy root and a great nibble. But if you have gas problems with beans, jicama might give you gas. They are full of indigestible starches that bother some and don't bother others.

Another "gassy" root crop are the roots of the sunflower family. This is a picture of chicory, which grows a fine root. Other familiar roots in this family are sunchokes (jerusalem artichoke), burdock and many, many wild crops like balsam root and Oregon sunflower. They are tooted as a good root for diabetics because the carbs are in the form of inulin, which is indigestible, thus they are low in sugar. Some people do fine with inulin; for others it is a nightmare of gripe and gas. Eat a little bit first. Cooking does not help, unlike with beans.

But chicory and burdock and dandelion roots are unparalleled as liver cleansers, excellent for gout and other diseases of toxic blood. Beware though, of another problem. If you have ragweed allergies, do not eat anything in this family: lettuce, chicory, sunflower seeds, are all going to aggravate it. But for most people, the roots of these crops are easy to grow, giving edible leaves and seeds, are healthy and make a crunchy root for eating out of hand or grated.

Here is the other most famous of the root crops, roots from the cruciferae family: radish, turnip and rutabaga. The hot spices are found from horseradish and wasabe which are both roots in this family. Mustard is from the seeds.

Radishes, like these daikons, practically grow themselves. They are very weather resistant. But, bugs love them, so go with organic. Daikons and other radishes come in a hundred varieties, some red and green, many with colored skins from red to green to black. Daikon radish is delicious raw and is a staple in sushi bars.

But if you have a sensitive stomach, almost everything in this family may give you gas. So go slowly at first. Most people get used to this family after some time being raw, others do not.

One of my favorite roots is a weed. And I mean a weed. If you've had problems with campanula in your yard, you know that even the tiniest piece of root will grow into a hundred monster plants. Why? Well, it's also known as rampion and rapunsel and was bred to be a plentiful, cheap root crop like radishes. People stopped eating it, why? Only Rapunsel's mother knows. She had to forfeit her baby for stealing the greens from her neighbor's yard.

Rapunsel is mild and crispy. It's relative, platycon or balloon flower is as pungent as radishes and is found dried in Korean grocery stores. But Americans don't grow it or eat it and you can't even find a picture of it, only an old drawing like this. So sad. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible, some better than others. Plants for a Future Database has a long list of the best of the campanulas to try, but you must grow them. Italian seed houses still sell the seeds of rampion, but to get seeds, you may have to go to English seed houses for wild and native plants. Or check your backyard. The campanulas have wonderful purple bellflowers or harebells--yep, same plant. But some have almost no root and others, these thick crunchy, yummy roots.

Okay, enough on roots. Time for a winter dish!

Blue roots with Mushroom Sauce

One cup grated celeriac tossed with a pinch of spirulina
(try tumeric for yellow, beet powder for red and pink)

Marinate a handful of shitake mushrooms. (Do NOT use the regular button mushrooms or criminis or portobello mushrooms which are not good for you raw.) Most mushrooms are not good raw, so stick with the ones recommended, like shitakes.
Marinate in 1 tsp raw cider vinegar and olive oil
With:
Chopped raw, oil cured olives (or sun cured)
Soaked sesame seeds (soak and wash to get rid of oxalic acid)
For an Asian dish, you can use some soy sauce. I'm allergic to it, so I've used a little bit of fennel here for a more Italian taste.

This dish is fun, filling and good!

Experiment, have fun, give your kids blue food! Hah.

Squash in Nut Sauce

Eating Raw in winter is difficult. The body craves carbs. About September, I start eating very heavy food (for me.) I anticipate the season and eat for the upcoming season. Right now, in Feb., I am eating more cleansing food. In late summer/fall, I double the amount of oil I eat and start eating roots and nuts. If I put on ten pounds, I'll easily lose it by Spring. I find it very hard to put on weight and am one of the few people who Brigitte Mars recommended for a diet high in fats. But be aware: I am 6 feet tall and 130 pounds. My son is 6'6" and 160 pounds and my father was 6'4" and 180 until he got old and went down to 150. I have a BMI of about 19 and very fine bones with short muscle body. My sister who has a large frame and much more muscle mass is heavier and must eat about twice what I do, being a jock.

From my mother, I inherited early onset arthritis. Most of my diet is for one reason: pain management. The other part of it is because I have trouble eating anything, so much trouble that I seriously wanted to just give up eating about ten years ago; eating was a nightmare for me and I grew to hate most food intensely, but I still craved it--a very bad dependent relationship. This diet gives me no pain and makes eating pleasant for me. I prefer it to drugs.

I also inherited all kinds of stomach problems from my father including a serious dairy allergy. I'm also allergic to the ENTIRE grain family, even sprouted grains. They aggravate my respiratory allergies and give me eye infections and asthma. This means corn syrup, sugar and also molasses, beer and almost all prepared food. Given that I also can't eat soy, most prepared food, especially vegan food is a no-go for me. I also have a very acidic stomach, so I can't eat pineapple and much in the way of fruits. I also have a serious citrus allergy and am allergic to coconut. The most common question I am asked is: "what do you eat?"

Most nuts and seeds irritate my stomach acid. I don't find them hard to digest, but the pain after eating them is sometimes pretty intense. However, I found that eating acidic nuts in pestos or in salads tended to balance their acidic nature. I also do this with meat. Unlike most raw people, I do eat small quantities of meat, mostly fish and shellfish.

This is a delightful dish that I developed over the years in the search for filling, non-dairy pestos for pasta. I had to give up pasta, but there are many, many substitutes for pasta you can experiment with. Some people dehydrate the "noodles" a little for an al dente texture; I don't have a dehydrator or the time to mess with this.

Winter squash can be delightful raw, it can also be horrid. Again, know your families. Squash comes in four families. The most popular is Cuccurbita pepo which includes common pumpkins, zucchini, all those funky summer squash, acorn squash and delicata. Delicata is delicious cooked, but pretty boring raw. Many pumpkins are pretty vile raw except for a few bites while carving jack o' lanterns.

Most of the squash available in the markets is C. pepo and I do not recommend any of it for eating raw. But you should taste it yourself; I find the texture does not appeal and they often have a very "pumpkin" taste that seems overpowering to me. The other down side of C. pepo is that they store well for about 3-4 months, but get dry and mealy. This is a great example of a lovely vegetable that cooks well and is not as great raw. After sampling other squashes for use as summer squash, I'm not even as sold on C. pepo in the form of zucchinis or yellow squash. But they are common in the grocery stores. Squash takes up a huge amount of space in the garden and are disease prone, so often buying them is a good option.

If you have a farmers' market, getting squash can be a more adventurous experience. One of the better squash families that is more common on the East Coast and in Asia is Curcurbita maxima which has some of the better summer squashes in the form of banana squash and some of the more spicy tasting winter squashes like the Japanese form of buttercup squash known as Kabocha which looks like this photo of some buttercup squash. must be cured correctly to have the sweet, spicy taste that makes it delectable raw. These squashes can be dry, tasteless and have huge seed cavities and almost no flesh by the time they hit the market. Again, they are a fabulous baking squash, but also good raw, unlike most of C. pepo. There are hundreds of varieties of squash, far, far too many to list here or evaluate in your own garden. The best place to "window shop" is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a new company that has more varieties of squash, melons and gourds than any other seed company out there. They are also extremely friendly and may be able to point you to good squashes to try to grow and eat raw. Kabocha is one of the best, but it is erratic in the stores. The smaller squashes tend to be dry and seedy, but if you get a good squash, it is spicy and wonderful raw, just by itself. Grated winter squash, if it is good, is also something kids will devour raw with relish.

The best family of the squashes for eating raw is Curcurbita moshata, more commonly found in the form of butternut squash. There are hundreds of varieties of this squash family. They usually have more meat than the other squashes. They vary quite a bit, but are usually darker orange in color.

Butternut is usually available in common grocery stores. Try to buy organic squash; the common crop is heavily sprayed. A good butternut squash will have a large neck and be reddish-tan without lesions on the skin. One of the great points of this squash is that it will keep until May, even June if you store it in a dry place at room temperature, not too hot.

Butternut is very sweet, too sweet to eat with honey or brown sugar. Try giving it to kids plain before grabbing the honey. It will keep for a week in the fridge, longer if you cut off any of the exposed flesh that may get moldy. It is usually very juicy and easy to grate. I grate everything by hand, so I love easy to grate. Avoid the squash that looks beautiful but has a lot of ridges--you lose too much flesh. Here is a Ukranian squash from this family, note again the smooth, red-tan skin and the bright orange flesh.

If you live in a climate hostile to squash, like where I lived in Florida (zone 10) it may be a challenge to get winter squash before disease and bugs do you in. A cure for powdery mildew is to spray the foliage with sour milk or sulfur solution BEFORE the onset of the disease. Once the plant gets it, it's too late. If you live in an area that gets powdery mildew, start spraying your squashes early. In Florida, I had a much better experience with growing gourds than with the Curcurbit family. Lagenaria is a bit bitter, but is very good as a zucchini substitute. There are also many winter squashes in the Benincasa family, called wax melons and native to SE Asia.

But on to the recipe. In the photo below, you can see the grated butternut squash. The color is vivid and appealing as a "noodle" substitute. It is juicy and sweet, but not as creamy or crunchy as noodles made of flour. I hesitate to call it a noodle substitute since is it just different.

There are as many different toppings for squash as there are cooks. You can try a tomato sauce with garlic, fresh tomatoes and basil, or an Asian sauce of five spices and tahini. This is one of my favorites, a creamy nut sauce that can be made with dill, tarragon, or basil. I also put dried nettles in all of these sauces; along with kelp, nettles are something I eat every day. I have thin blood and kelp and nettles are the best treatment for it. They also help with allergies and have made my hair and nails about twice as thick. I also use a mortar and pestle (no blenders at our house) so my pestos and sauces tend to be more chunky.

1 cup grated squash
1/2 cup soaked nuts (about 5 hours) walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, etc. ground up into a creamy texture
1/4 cup basil chopped finely
1/4 cup parsley (For a greener pesto use 1 cup each. You can also add in other fresh greens, like dandelion, spinach, anything you like.)
1 tsp dried nettles powdered
1 tsp kelp granules
pinch sea salt
1/3 cup olive oil

Optional: garlic, raw cheese

Mash or blend together the ingredients for the sauce and put onto the squash. This is a creamy, heavy dish that will satisfy even the winter blues. Also keep in mind that I don't really like to cook. All these dishes take about 15 minutes to prepare at the most.

Bon Apetit!

Vegan Maki Rolls

One of my favorite dishes is a maki roll like you get in a sushi bar. I can't eat rice, so I have experimented over the years with trying to get a rice substitute for a roll. I tried sprouted grains mixed with avocado, and various mushed up sprouted grains, which did not work at all.

I tried then grated roots and veggies, like zucchini, which were also disasters. The key is that you need to grate up something very fine that is also on the dry side. Anything wet will make the nori sheets fall apart when you try to roll and cut the roll. Vegetables that work well are sweet potatoes/yams, and roots of the umbel family like carrots, parsnips and celeriac. I stopped using sweet potatoes because raw, they do have enzyme inhibitors although I find them fairly easy to digest. I do not eat dandelion roots or sunchokes because I find them hard to digest. You can mix some roots in with celeriac like a bit of radish if you want some punch, but radishes by themselves are too wet. Some winter squashes are dry enough, but often taste awful raw.

Here I have grated up some celeriac. Celeriac, or celery root, wins the contest as the ugliest veggie out there. Like celery, it's grown in mud and has roots all over it. It's also a veggie that you have to eat organic or grow yourself. It likes a lot of water, but is less sensitive than celery. If you cannot get it in the stores, use parsnips (like a white carrot or large radish) or even those old cooking carrots (the new ones are too juicy.) If you want to eat sushi (raw fish) I recommend using green papaya instead of roots; it will digest better.

The trick to a roll is not to use too much on it. Only cover half the sheet with celeriac, only about a 1/4 of an inch deep (less than a cm.) The finer you can grate your roots the better.

Put on some veggies. Try not to overdo it. I like avocado. Avocado is good with sweet peppers as you see here, or cucumbers. Do anything you can think of, get creative. I also like marinated shitake mushrooms (don't use most mushrooms raw). If you like, you can even use raw sushi-grade fish, but it's harder to digest with the carbs in the celeriac. You could also try a fruit maki roll, but be aware that anything too wet will wreck the roll.

It may take you a couple of times to get the hang of rolling the nori sheet. You must roll it as tight as you can. Have some water ready to wet about 1/2 an inch of the last of the sheet (at the top) so that you can seal the roll. The seaweed will stick to itself if you wet the sheet. Don't get it too wet and hold the roll over the seam for a minute, pressing it down onto your board.

To cut the roll demands a very sharp, clean knife. Clean the knife between cuts. Nori sheets have perforate guides on them, but it's easier to cut the roll once through the middle and then double it up and cut two at a time, into quarters and then into eights. Watch the sushi chefs do it. The ends of the roll will be a little messy like in the picture. You can fuss with it if you like.

Also experiment with sauces to go over the roll or to dip the roll in. You can sprinkle black sesame on top for an authentic look. Using colored radish or a bit of carrot makes the roll very colorful.

Sauces:

Traditional Sauce
Tamari
Roasted sesame oil
Vinegar
Wasabe root (or powder)

Raw Sauce
Lemon
Raw tahini
Dulse or Celtic salt
Fresh wasabe

Anne's Allergy sauce
Raw apple cider vinegar
Celtic Salt
Olive oil

This is great fun with kids. Enjoy!