Raw Carrot Ginger Soup (with Kasu)

I changed my diet to raw food just over a year ago.  In that time I have learned to sprout and make great salads.  When I acquired a Vitamix blender I also began to experiment with soups.  Over time I've learned how to make good raw food.  I find that because things won't be cooked or served hot, I have to be much more conscious of how things naturally taste so I can blend flavours properly.  Texture is also more important.  I don't always succeed but my rate of success is increasing.

Yesterday I had lots of carrots in the fridge and I wondered what to do with them.  I was tired of the recipe I had been using for carrot soup and wanted something more subtle and smooth tasting.  The recipe I had been using had raw tahini in it which made it somewhat bitter.  Also there was lots of leek which also gave it some harshness.  So I decided to just go by feel and blend tastes that I know go well with carrots.  Here is the result followed by the recipe:

I don't know the exact measurements of anything but I'll attempt to describe what I mixed together.

1 avocado
kasu about 3 tablespoons (eosoteric ingredient I know but it's delicious if you can get it.  It's the lees from making Sake.  Really great fermented rice that tastes like sake.)
juice of a half of lemon (about 3-4 tablespoons I think)
ceylon cinnamon (maybe 3/4 teaspoon…if you're using a stronger cinnamon, reduce this amount)
fennel (maybe half a cup, I included some of the stem/leaves)
leek (maybe 2 inch piece from the non-green part…though that's an accident of what I had.  I wouldn't be adverse to using the green part)
ginger (1 inch piece, not peeled)
coriander (a handful of leaves)
carrots (about 6-7 carrots…I think it was roughly 3 cups)
pepper
water to the degree that you want the consistency.  I think I added about 3 cups but it's hard to say.  I just kept pouring into the blender until it was soupy.

Add the ingredients roughly in the same order as above to a Vitamix or similarly powerful blender.  Blend, blend, blend.  Fun.  Delicious.  

Salt as needed.  It doesn't turn out so salty even with the kasu. 

Garnish: rapini broccoli sprouts
I also added some sprouted beans for protein and crunch.

Look for certified organic GBs (day 115)

Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.
-- Don Reisinger (CNET news story: "Study: You'll wolf down 34GB of data today )

I don't think Canadians fared much better.

How many GB for a healthy body?  What proportion of news, twitter, fiction is ideal?  Should one ingest any TV?  Is there a difference between wolfing down words or images?  Are images really worth a thousand words?  Is reading tweets the equivalent of snacking? 

Here is my recipe for a healthy information day:

Total GB: 14.84-17.3
Preparation Time: Pre-packaged
Cooking Time: Pre-cooked

50 tweets - 6.8 KB
50 emails - 600KB
3 videos (10 minutes each, HD) - 2 GB
1 hour of podcast - 25MB
one of:
   1 tv episode - 550MB
   1 movie - 3GB
2 hours internet browsing - 88MB
2 hours of virtual reality - 12 GB
1 hour of reading print -5MB
background music (3 hours)- 180MB

I know it seems like a near starvation diet but a good choice of media will make you feel full with less.  You'll thank me later when you slip in to that accessorized story full of just the right references, perfect for a late night conversation.

A song for this post.

Pancakes and art (day 45)

I've mentioned before that I have pancakes every morning.   Since tonight is a late one (btw, if you're a night person are you more likely to have a hard time dying?) I will share my pancake mix recipe and call it a night.  Oh and maybe share some art pieces that I think are ok...

Here is the recipe:
2 cups of unbleached white flour
1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup of buckwheat flour
1/2 cup buttermilk powder
1/4 cup vanilla sugar (plain sugar will do but really the vanilla is a nice touch)
1/4 cup freeze-dried cocoa powder (mycryo) (optional but makes it moist)
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

To make a good size pancake you mix about 1/3+ cup with a little more water than that.  I just wing it every morning to get batter that is a little more runny than cake batter.
These days I add coronation grapes but the season is almost over.  Blueberries of course work well.

And here are two art links that I think are all right:
"Best Buy" by Borna Sammak
"Tiny Sketch" competition

A song for this post.