For Life Personal Chef

Frosting For the Cause

Baked Goods and Bloggers unite to increase awareness of Cancer

Frosting For The Cause is a monumental endeavor by Paula Kelly. It is a full year of posts from bloggers and participants honoring/celebrating/mourning women we all know with cancer, and celebrating them with a baking project. Oh the stories! Oh the yummy recipes! Not only is this project raising awareness but the participants pledge to donate money and baked goods. Please go take a look. This is my contribution. ( I wrote about this recipe once before but it is time for a revisit)

I found out in November, 2010 that my mother had bladder cancer. I was with her in the Dr.’s office when she got the news. She knew right away that she didn’t want any heroic measures but she and her doctors decided that surgery to remove her bladder was a good option for her. It turned out that maybe that wasn’t the best course. I returned to Pennsylvania the end of January of this year to be with her for her surgery. It was a difficult road for her to recover from that surgery. The challenge of learning to deal with her ostomy and the bag that required proved to be too stressful and too difficult. During all that needed to be done in preparing for her surgery, it was discovered that she had some cancer in/on her spine and a suspicious area in her liver. The first few days after her bladder surgery, she and I did the New York Times crossword puzzle as we usually did when we visited together. Soon, it was apparent recovery was not going well. She had much pain and began to lose her ability to walk and stand. We had a succession of family members come and monitor/be advocates for her in the hospital and subsequent nursing care. About 6 weeks after her surgery, her children gathered at her bedside to witness her dying. It was a challenging and beautiful time. I learned much about my mother in those last months of her life.  I spent my whole life watching her struggle with her really non existent weight problem, denying herself the pleasure of eating what she wanted. The last few years of her life, she would say that when she got to age 90, that she would give herself permission to eat whatever she wanted. She died at 89 and the last week she finally gave herself permission to eat dessert and boy did she enjoy it. I always thought she didn’t like chocolate but every day that last week of being conscious and eating she had chocolate frozen yoghurt for lunch and chocolate ripple ice cream for dinner ( and several days, not much else). I am happy she got that chance to indulge. Mom, this chocolate frosting is for you!

Baked Gluten Free Coconut Flour Doughnuts

1/2 cup of coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon of sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
6 eggs
1/2 cup of honey (or other sweetener)
1 tablespoon of vanilla
1/2 cup of unsalted butter (coconut butter, coconut oil, or regular oil will work as well)

option – add 1 T. of cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, 5 spice powder, or powdered ginger

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. I always sift the coconut flour. Mix together the wet ingredients in another bowl and add to the dry. Mix well. This is when an electric beater comes in handy. You also could use a food processor. One of the tricky things about using coconut flour is that it gets quite lumpy in the process of mixing and requires a bit of effort. If doing it by hand, I recommend using a fork to facilitate the breaking up of the lumps.  Fill the baking pan ( I got my doughnut pan at King Arthur Flours) about 2/3 full. Bake for about 20 minutes in a preheated 350º oven. Let them cool completely and then you either can just lift them out with your fingers or gently use a fork.

There are many options for topping as well as just leaving them plain. I melted some 70% cacao content chocolate, added a few T. of cream and frosted mine. You could make a glaze of powdered sugar and your favorite flavorings (  a bit of orange juice, maple syrup, or vanilla extract). You could glaze them with a bit of honey. Yum!

I live in California and my mom lived and died in Pennsylvania. I so wish I could send these doughnuts to the wonderful nurses and aides who took care of her but the complications and expense of doing that overwhelm me. So instead, I will be offering some donation of cooking time and money to WomenCare of Santa Cruz, Ca. ( http://www.womencaresantacruz.org/index.html) and giving a nice big plate of doughnuts to the daughter of one of my personal chef clients who is having her own struggle with several kinds of cancer. She doesn’t eat gluten and her children love sweets so, a good solution.

I miss you, Mama, and I miss your help with those “darn” crossword puzzles.

In my Raw kitchen this week

Spring Raw Food Cleanse

Spring is traditionally a really good time to cleanse our digestive systems. The energy of Spring is that of new growth, of change, those seeds have to push through the dirt to find light. Fresher food is more available. For the most part, the weather is warmer. Not so much the last few weeks here in Central California! It has been raining a lot.

I decided with the excited support of my nutritionist with whom I work to do a 21 day raw food diet. I have ( had) gotten too set in my ways what I was willing to eat and not eat. I had been partaking of too many ( albeit WAY less than in the past) starchy carbohydrates and grains. Dairy, to which I am intolerant, was creeping back in….. mmm, cheese! raw cream! so, this felt really right. I am at almost 2 weeks now and going strong. I am following an omnivore raw diet. This means that I am eating some raw fish, raw egg yolks which I have written about here, and no, it is not raw but have had a bit of seared very rare meat. I have had a bit of raw goat cheese as well. I eat as many vegetables as I can including some that are fermented, a couple of portions of fruit a day, nuts and seeds, and plenty of fat in the form of coconut, olive, flax, and hemp oil.

Yes, I have been hungry. Yes, I have had equal moments of being gloriously satisfied.

I feel different. I have lost some weight. ( I haven’t weighed myself in a very long time, but I can see it and feel it). My ankles aren’t as swollen. My joints are no where near as inflamed. I am sleeping even better than before. It will be interesting next week when I start adding in more meat, cooked veggies how I continue to feel. It will be a good time to really tune in. Do I feel better because of no grains? no chicken? Or, do I feel better because of how many vegetables I am eating ?

So, no cooking per se which is weird for me. But, lots of chopping and mixing and creating interesting things. The food dehydrator has come out a few times. Here are a few photos of some concoctions.

An old standby, beet and carrot salad, I have enjoyed it with tahini miso dressing, occasionally with some walnuts, and occasionally wrapped up in some nori like a sushi roll.

I love this version of seaweed salad, found long ago on the internet. I would love to give credit but now I cannot find it so thank you to someone out there in the seemingly infinite world wide web. The basic ingredients are green apple. wakame seaweed, and avocado. I mostly stick with this and make a dressing out of different kinds of oils, coconut vinegar and a raw egg yolk. Truly, the egg yolk just disappears into it. If you click on the wakame link, you will discover as I did that it is a very invasive weed that can do damage to boats, etc. It is so nutritious, I wonder what this all means for the future of eating it.

Not such a great photograph but oh so delicious. Cafe Gratitude Cafe in the San Francisco Bay Area is a pioneer both in their delicious raw cuisine but also in how they do business. I have raved about their onion bread in another post. Here is a Spinach Tortilla from their cookbook. I topped it with a bit of kefir cream and some salmon and halibut ceviche. Sadly, it was gone in a few bites.

So, another week to go. I do look forward to having a piece of chicken and some roasted vegetables. It feels good that the simple things are what are calling to me. We will see.

Are you intrigued by the raw food diet ? My friend mentioned above is leading a raw food cleanse starting with an informational meeting this coming weekend. Please click on the link above and you will learn more about it, or leave a comment here.

A new venture for For Life! Personal Chef Services

Community Feast!

The more deeply I have pursued my own personal growth and my career as a personal chef, I have discovered such a need for community. There have been studies which show that having community is one of the elements of having a long healthy life. I have been part of a spiritual community for many years which has become my family and my deepest friends. I belong to a couple of online personal chef communities which gives me information and support, recipes and helpful tips. There have been gatherings in “real” life and those connections have also become deep and important to me.  There is a community of people who support the same ideas I have about nutrition, the political side of food, and cooking, both on line and in everyday life. I work alone, I live alone, and I am always looking for places where I feel comfortable gathering with my peers.

Some of my friends and colleagues and I have decided to do more to create that food community, that gathering of peers to celebrate our good fortune and blessings here in Santa Cruz County, the bounty of good food here, and people who are passionate about what we eat and where it comes from. Together with my friend Noelle Noli, Craig Lane from Health Alchemy Nutritional Services, and the good folks from Santa Cruz Local Foods, I am organizing a dinner.

This event will take place June 17, 2011 at the Masonic Temple in Santa Cruz, starting at 5:30 PM. We will have a socializing time, then dinner will be served family style ( a chance to sit with new friends), followed by some brief speaking, dessert, and some networking time.

We believe in eating seasonally, organically, using local and ethically produced products.

I am excited about the chance to work with these people and to create an absolutely delicious beautiful meal and an opportunity for people to get together and explore our connections. I hope you are too!

our menu:

Flax breads and flavored ghees
Wildcrafted herb and flower salad with several kinds of salad dressing
Sauteed Greens
Beef Ribs or Tempeh with Cherry Chipotle Glaze
Chia pudding Trifle with fresh berries and Lavender whipped cream
probiotic sodas, water

Cost: $40 per adult, $20 for children
Tickets available through PayPal ( account # charitydas)

prices

adult $40.00 child $20.00 child under 8 $0.00

more information , charitydas@me.com