Pestos and Crackers

I have a pretty intense grain allergy and a mild coconut allergy. If I eat white bread, my eyes get inflamed and I get asthma; the effects of eating whole grains are much worse--rice in particular. It is not a stomach intolerance, but a respiratory allergy, which is strange, for I don't have hay fever, although my sister, my mother and my nephew all do. One of the best things to come out of the raw foods movement is the marketing of non-grain crackers made of seeds and nuts. However, they are very pricey. All the sweet cookie type raw things are filled with coconut, so that makes me keen on doing my own thing.

Brigitte is big on flax and flax crackers. I'm not so keen on flax, but flax does make good crackers, so I'll start with the flaxseed cracker recipe.

Flaxseed, or linseed, is (yes, you guessed it) the stuff that the artists' oil is made of. It is a cheap oil when it is made for industrial uses. The flaxseed oil for edible purposes, is extremely expensive and very volatile, so it is found in health food refrigerators in brown plastic containers and hard to eat before it goes bad. It is very high in omega 3 fatty acids, as high as cod liver oil. People eat flax seeds for the same purpose, but they are very mucilaginous (slimy) and used for constipation. I'm not keen on slimy food. I found out that chia seed is higher in omega 3s and easier to eat. It forms a gel when wet and is very like tapioca, but it is not as slimy.

However, sliminess holds the crackers together.

You can see here that I've added a little water to some flax seed (golden kind is best.) Do not cover the flax seeds with water or add the same amount water, but as little as possible. Here you can see what happens after about ten minutes, you can stand a spoon in the bowl!

Now Brigitte just adds kelp to the flax and spreads it out on a dehyrator sheet. I prefer to add some pesto to the crackers, but the variations are endless. Before I go on to show you how to finish the crackers, here's one of my pesto recipes.

I take about half to a cup of walnuts and soak them in enough water to cover for about five hours. Overnight is okay.
You can see from this that I've taken the walnuts and mashed them up. You can use a blender, but it's hard to get the nuts to grind without extra water. I like a mortar and pestle for grinding nuts. I've tried to use nut grinders or grain grinders like the Bi0mühle variety, but the mortar and pestle works just fine. It takes a while, but it's kind of fun and quieter and, well just peaceful. I love these Asian mortars that are ceramic and have groves cut in the clay to rub the nuts (or leaves) against. They work very well and are surprisingly easy to clean.

Then I gather my greens. I use pestos to add in greens to my diet that are strong tasting. The basil covers up the taste of almost everything. Dill pestos are also good. When I make pesto, I don't use all basil: it's way too expensive and I find it very strong tasting, sometimes bitter. I've found that about half and half basil and parsley is a great combination in that these two strong flavored greens compliment each other and make for a better taste. When you use basil, stay away from the flower buds. They are very strong. I assemble all my leaves like this because I then:

Cut them! I've found that cutting works better than chopping and I don't have a food processor or blender. Again, it doesn't take that long, is quiet, doesn't use electricity and is easy unless you have arthritis. I've discovered that I can monitor my own arthritis in that if I cut and my hand hurts, I've got to do liver detox (more olive oil and greens, less cooked food.) Pretty soon that big bowl of greens is a quarter the size. Do this first, before you dump the greens into the walnuts.

After some mushing, which can take a long time or not, depending on how "smooth" you want your pesto, you have something edible. As I grind the leaves with the walnut mix (pine nuts, pecans, almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds--anything works) I add olive oil. I also add dried nettles or other dried herbs that are good for me but not so fun to eat. If you are adding pesto to crackers, keep the olive oil to a minimum. If you want it for a squash dish like a sauce, add a lot of oil. I can't eat garlic, but, by all means, bring on the garlic if you like it! To get the Parmesan taste, you have to add salt. I don't like yeast, but some people swear by it to mimic the cheese taste. If you have access to raw Parmesan, go for it.

Okay, I added about half my pesto to my flax mix and added in about 1/4 cup of kelp granules. The powder is vile--use the granules. Kelp is also mucilaginous. I also added caraway seeds to this mix.

I don't own a dehydrator. Too expensive, and again my hubbie can't stand the noise. Also, even at low temperatures, your house will smell like the seashore when you dry out seaweeds. I got this plastic roll-up tray from the hardware store for $3.00. I found out very fast that drying food in a low-heat dehydrator was a way to get the mice to be friendly. It's also cockroach heaven. Nothing like finding mice turds or cucurachas on your crackers! If you live in a very warm and humid climate, you may want to dry out your crackers in the refrigerator. If you live in a dry climate, let the air do the work for you and don't worry about getting a dehydrator for your (expensive) raw kitchen. I put this sheet of crackers before a fan and they were dry in 24 hours.

Spread the mix as thin as you can. When the mix is tacky, but not dry, go ahead and cut the crackers with a knife. A bit tricky, but not as tricky as trying to make crackers out of the gluey, sticky mess they are when wet!

Be patient. You want your crackers to be crackers, not crumbly bits of moist seedy stuff. Takes about 24-36 hours depending on the room temperature, whether you use a fan or not, or whether you live in Oregon or Colorado. Stuff in the fridge takes longer to dry. You might get creative and hook up a fan in your fridge!


Here are my crackers. I put some avocado on them and made them "artistic" with some peppers and olives. Seed or nut crackers and avocado is a very filling, high-fat, meal that is great for winter.

Bon appétit!

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!

How to Eat a Salad

I hope you're laughing! I would have, but yes, I've learned to prepare salads.

Susun Weed did a good job of showing how thick the cell walls are on plants. Some nutritionists don't advise depending on greens for calcium and other minerals unless they are cooked because they can't be digested unless the cell walls are destroyed.

I always sit down when I hear things like this and think, in my usual way, "but then why do we have teeth?" And then I hear that apes are not cows and not cats and only meant to eat fruit. And I have to sit down again.

The favorite way for a chimp to eat leaves is to roll up a bunch of leaves into a pack and then chew and suck on them for an hour or so. Like gum or chaw. That seems like a very logical, very practical way of getting out all those nutrients, mixing them with enzymes and not eating all that cellulose. Cool. Now should we all start chewing leaves and spitting out the dead pack into spittoons in our offices? Hm.

I hear of many people eating blended salads. My husband is not big into noise, so no blenders at our house. And I did learn that chopping up salad greens was very bad because chopping destroyed the cell walls and turned the greens brown. Hm, I say, in my very Anne-ish way. Chopping destroys the cell walls. Chopping is good.

So I started cutting up my salads with scissors. I'm not a good chopper. But I have a wide, shallow dish for salad, and cut off the leaves of kale, lettuce and what have you into this dish and then go at it with the scissors until I can eat it with a spoon. Then I use the ol' grater. I grate beets or other roots or raw winter squash or summer squash or green papaya and put them in salad or use them as a rice substitute in a nori sheet. I also grate stuff as a pasta substitute and put pestos on top.

Pesto is another great way to eat a salad. I use a mortar and pestle and mash up herbs and greens that go a long way (strong tasting) like dill and basil and mix them half and half with dandelions or nettles or parsley, mix in a bit of olive oil, maybe some soaked nuts or seeds and, voila! pesto.

But the key to eating veggies is to masticate them into almost a juice by the time you swallow them. You can chew for a long time, but if you're rushed, used the scissors.

Recipe for a iron-rich salad

Three red lettuce leaves (or dandelion)
Three red kale leaves
A few sprigs of parsley
A tablespoon of dried dulse flakes
A grated beet
A teaspoon of dried nettles
Dill or other herb to taste
A tablespoon of sprouted sunflower seeds (or sesame seeds)
Some olive oil.

I cut up the greens very fine, and find that this combination of greens and such is very mild. I've found that certain strong-tasting herbs and greens seem to cancel each other out, or blend together to make a very palatable salad.

Here is my favorite pesto recipe

A cup of basil
A cup of parsley
A cup of dandelion greens
A teaspoon dried nettles
A half-teaspoon kelp granules
A tablespoon of some kind of soaked nuts (walnuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, etc.)
Olive oil.

I can't eat garlic, but if you can add it. I cut up the greens and them mash them in the mortar after I have mashed up the nuts with a little oil. Keep adding oil until you get the paste consistency you desire.

This is delicious on a cup of grated butternut squash.

Pestos are a great way of getting greens into kids and other people who won't eat nettles or dandelions or such. The basil is strong enough to hide the taste of almost anything. Basil is so strong that I usually cut it with another less expensive green anyway like parsley.

Enjoy!