Astranoir

Tonight’s food club theme was “raw food.”  I brought all my components in containers so I could frost the cake when we got together.

In addition to the carrot goji cake I brought, people brought a surprising variety of food including zucchini “pasta,” apple butter, curried coleslaw, borsht, shrimp ceviche, and gazpacho.

All the food was delicious, check out this Flickr for more pictures!

While I had fun with raw food this evening, I don’t think it’s something I could do as a lifestyle, or even often.  It’s kind of exhausting remembering which nuts/legumes/etc. have already been cooked at high heat before I even buy them.  It did help me be more mindful of my food, though, which is generally great!

Sorry I didn’t include Brandon’s dessert.  I didn’t get a picture of it, and couldn’t remember what it was called

In preparation for food club tomorrow night, Brandon and Kris came over to help me make a carrot goji cake.  I used this recipe, with a couple tweaks to the frosting (I was only able to get 1 vanilla bean, so we added a dash of vanilla extract, and I used a mix of walnuts and pecans rather than just pecans).

When we blended up all the ingredients for the cake, it smelled delicious.  Unfortunately, it didn’t look quite as lovely as it smelled.

While we made the cake and frosting, Kes was watching Demolition Man in the background.

Currently, the cake and frosting are setting.  I will plate them for the food party tomorrow evening, and see how people end up liking it!

Brandon was a ton of help.  I would have had problems pitting the dates and dealing with the vanilla bean if he hadn’t helped me out.

I’m excited to see what people are bringing tomorrow.  Hopefully the raw food theme isn’t too intimidating, and we can all try new things.

This Sunday evening I went to my first book club meeting with my friends.  We got together, had some delicious quiche, and read aloud to everyone.  I don’t remember the titles of everything that was read, but some of the works included Madeline, Where’s My Cow, a French poem, an excerpt from Zorba the Greek, an excerpt from Insoluble Fish, excerpts from Pissing in the Snow (a book of Ozark folktales), “Snow, Glass, Apples” from Smoke and Mirrors, and an excerpt from a superhero/zombie book.  It’s a bit intimidating reading in front of other people, but everyone was enough laid back and attentive that I was able to have fun.  We hadn’t previously discussed or planned a theme for our story choices, so it was interesting to see what everyone brought.

This Wednesday’s food club theme is “raw foods.”  I’m making a raw carrot goji cake, so today I went to the local natural food store to get ingredients.  I tend to be a bit leery of going to the natural food store because even though I’m a co-op member, I always feel like people are looking at me weird like I shouldn’t be there (maybe I don’t wear enough hemp?).  Fortunately, today was an exceptional experience.  Both employees and customers were friendly and tolerant of my bewilderment.  The produce manager was particularly fantastic (and may be starting a produce blog soon)!  I didn’t realize coconut flour and coconut oil were as expensive as they are, so hopefully this cake is pretty tasty.  I’m already soaking the nuts for the frosting, and tomorrow I’ll start working on the cake itself.