Come Join Elizabeth!

Come join Elizabeth at her new blogs!  Learn about what she eats at Life With Food Allergies and take  walks through nature along side of her.  These fun blogs are just starting to bud so keep on the lookout for new posts!  

~~Laura

P.S. don't forget to vote on her polls!  ;-)

Lunch Time!

We don't have much time, but we thought we might share our "Elizabeth and Laura proof" lunch! It was completely gluten-free and totally delicious!  We have given the explaining to Muddy and so take a look at her blog in a bit.

Almond Milk

Mango Cherry Milkshake- with the Almond Milk

Raw Mexican Pizza

Elizabeth's Not Egg Salad

Raw Apple Pie

~~Laura

Beet Salad

I made a really yummy beet salad with broccoli, kalamata olives, and a lemon and olive oil dressing.  --simple and tasty --  It also cleaned out our refrigerator.

~~Laura

Happy Late Birthday Elizabeth

Elizabeth's birthday hit right at the end of our Santa Fe trip. So instead of celebrating her 13th with a special ladies tea party, it was a combined Santa Fe vacation with shopping.

She bought some beautiful French linens and accessories for her hope chest. It was pretty funny in the Provence store. Muddy said just a couple of french words to the owner and he got excited and started speaking in French. Needless to say, the french part of the conversation ended there as Muddy doesn't remember many french words.

When we came home, we ate at one of our favorite restaurants in town that serves great salads and even better desserts. We ended her multi-day celebration with a presentation of more gifts to add to her hope chest.

The Only Way To Eat Kale!

WE LOVE KALE SALAD! This one has lemon juice, olive oil, kalamata olives, pine nuts, orange bell pepper, and sprinkled with a big dose of hemp seeds. YUMMY!

~~Laura & Muddy

(Daddy even likes it too!)

Our Favorite Time Of The Year

Our favorite time of the year is 'Green Hatch Chili Season'. We will either get our roasted hatch chilis from Santa Fe, NM (if we are there in September ;-)) or we will get some from Whole Foods. (in the pictures below) We love to visit all the vendors at the Santa Fe farmers market who not only sell the chilis, but also roast them on site. The smell of roasted chilis can't be matched.

After packaging bags for the freezer, we then go to work.




Our first favorite thing to make with the fresh green chilis is homemade hot sauce -- YUMMY!
We use fresh tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, green chilis, lime juice and salt. Then we blend it all up in a food processor. While we are munching on chips and hot sauce, we start getting creative.




For this particular meal we made some chili mashers to go with Daddy's meal.




Here is Daddy's 'meat and potatoes' meal. We used grass-fed beef, organic carrots, the chili mashers, and of course chili season wouldn't be complete without roasted green chili french bread.


While Daddy was enjoying his steak we were enjoying our "BIG" salad. We start with a bed of greens, PILE on guacamole, sprinkle on corn and red peppers, splash on some of the roasted hatch chili hot sauce, and for an extra punch throw on more diced chilis.

Below is Muddy's salad ~~ Can you tell that we are from the Southwest? ;-)




To kinda cool the palate, this particular meal I made whole wheat sopapillas. We dipped them in plenty of raw honey ---- YUUUUUMMMMMY!

~~ Laura

Serving Muddy

Not only is Muddy a vegetarian, but she is also a raw vegan. We also eat mostly raw, so we enjoy our meals together. Here was a surprise lunch that we made while she was out. She enjoyed it so much that she had us repeat it for her lunch in the car on the way to Santa Fe.

The yellow dish contained a raw mock egg salad -- but boy did it taste like the real thing. We used fresh dill from the garden which made it extra eggy special.

The stuffed mushrooms were unbelievable! Raw shitakes soften nicely with the marinade.

Our favorite is always the SUSHI! We make it ourselves with all of the fresh veggies we can find. Sweet rice miso is a very nice substitute for the white sushi rice as well as ground jicama or cauliflower. We are showing two variations below--Elizabeth's and Laura's.

Just keep raw nori sheets on hand and voila! Veggie sushi in seconds.

~~Laura

Happy Birthday Laura!

Thought we would start at the end of July--My 16th Birthday. It was a pretty special one because my parents went halvsies with me on my new sewing machine! My old one (Elizabeth calls it her new Elna Jane) just wasn't giving me the right tension -- so my parents surprised me with the idea of helping pay for one so I could get it immediately. Of course, as soon as the new one entered the house, Elna Jane acted perfectly--good for Elizabeth.


Since I'm the baker of the family, I like to make all the birthday cakes--even my own. This wasn't actually a cake, but it did the job just fine. I found this recipe for chocolate zucchini muffins on Debbie's Blog. I'm up for anything with chocolate. I have made these three times since then, and have even changed the recipe --- keep an eye out for the new version in our upcoming cookbook.


Daddy took the family to dinner for our celebration. Muddy and I asked the waiter to make special salads. The waiter later told us that the chefs in the kitchen were so excited and had alot of fun coming up with something different and special. Here's the result. It has lots of veggies, mango, raspberries, avocado, as well as a beautiful chunk of brie--my favorite.

The waiter then surprised me with a little birthday candle on my dessert plate. What a special ending to a perfect birthday!

~~Laura

Tomato Summer

We had an unusually short tomato season this year due to a summer of rain. We had too much rain and not enough sun. But boy were they good while they were here. We still have two cherry tomato plants and two juliets hanging on, but those will probably be pulled up in another week. We've already planted the fall garden and we'll post soon on that. Here are some pictures of how our tomatoes supplied us with yummy meals.

The best way to enjoy tomatoes. Ahhh! Just a drizzle of olive oil and surrounded
by some of our cucumbers.


Wow! This was one of our favorites. We sauteed garlic, red pepper flakes and garbanzo beans. We added that to whole wheat shell pasta and topped with tomatoes. The tomatoes really gave it a fresh punch. Also mixed in was a huge amount of chopped fresh parsley and sage from the garden. This dish reminded us of another favorite. Pasta with pesto and tomatoes.






This was a real quick snack lunch. We made homemade hummus and sliced up tomatoes, avocado and red bell pepper for dippers. All it need was fresh chives from the garden and a sprinkle of celtic sea salt.


With most of the tomatoes, we made homemade tomato sauce and put up in the freezer. We normally can our tomatoes, but the freezer sauce just tastes fresher with our fresh herbs from the garden. We'll share our fresh tomato sauce recipe in our upcoming cookbook.

Instead of trying to peel thousands of cherry tomatoes (yellow pear, sweet 100s, and juliets), we decided to use the dehydrator. This really concentrates the flavor of the tomatoes. They're good just plain for snacks, but they also make great sun dried tomato pesto for the bread we make at our market. Poor Elizabeth doesn't like tomatoes, but she was a fantastic help with harvesting and putting them up. We do give the first prize of best picker of the year to our Dad. Thanks Daddy!


Bye Bye Tomato Season! For those of you wondering about fall tomatoes, we just don't like to take up the room in the garden. We have so many other fall yummies that take the space.

~~Laura

Great Lunchtime Sammy

Elizabeth and I were trying to figure out what to eat for lunch Wednesday when nothing in particular seemed to tempt us. We decided on a twist on a "normally plain" egg salad sandwich. We started with an organic spelt flour tortilla and then layered the following:

Organic green leaf lettuce

Egg salad

Crisp red bell pepper slices

Balsamic capers


We used the egg salad recipe from The Empress tea book. We especially liked the freshness of the chives in this recipe. The bell pepper kept the sandwich fresh tasting with an added crunchy texture. It also helped keep the egg salad from tasting too rich and bland. We added the capers because, well because we love capers! ;-)

~~ Laura

Strawberries

If you think that the cake below is a bit too rich and/or fattening, here's an excellent salad that would lighten things up!  We made it with baby lettuces from our garden.  Add organic strawberries, red onion strips and chopped walnuts.  We made the dressing with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, and salt.  VERY refreshing.  ~Sisters

Mock Tuna Salad

Here is our version of several raw mock tuna recipes~

4 Large Carrots

2 Celery Stalks

1/2 Red Bell Pepper

1 C. Walnuts

2 T. Dulse and/or Kelp Flakes

2 T. Organic Soy Sauce

1 t. Onion Powder

1 T. Flat Leaf Parsley 

Vegan Mayo to Taste

Finely chop the carrots, celery, red bell pepper, and walnuts.  Mix in the next 4 ingredients.  Add in as much mayo as you like.

We ate this Thursday with avocado, and we stuffed it into whole wheat pita pockets for a picnic lunch after bible study Friday. 

In bible study, we have been studying the book of Joshua and have been putting Joshua 1:6-9 to memory.  The verses are all about being strong and of a good courage.  My favorite version to memorize these verses in is the KING JAMES VERSION because of the word "withersoever". The sound of all the neat words is alot of fun to memorize. :-)

~Laura

Salad Time

Here is another salad idea ~
Organic baby greens, organic romaine hearts, organic spinach, red bell pepper, grated organic carrots, grated organic beet, chopped organic red onion, artichoke hearts and capers. We topped this salad off with a dressing that has organic fresh lemon juice, dijon mustard, organic olive oil, and celtic sea salt.
Deee-licious!!

We normally won't post on a Sunday but this was too beautiful and the whole family got in on taking the photos! ~~Sisters

Salad!

"...And gives food to her household"

Proverbs 31:15

Our family loves trying new variations on the typical salad.

Here we made one using fresh baby greens, blueberries, and avocado.

All this salad needed was a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of celtic sea salt to bring out the flavors. ~~Sisters