The Juicy Life--Breaking the Fast, Day 6

FAIR WARNING: IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY JUICE FEASTING, AND DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT SOLID FOOD, YOU'RE GOING TO WANT TO SKIP THIS ONE. :)

Well, you can say my feast is well and truly broken, now. :) Every week, in Milwaukie, Oregon, (a suburb of Portland) we have an organic raw vegan meetup called "Sunday Supper." We are completely spoiled! Three weeks in the month, this is a dinner with a theme catered by various local raw food chefs. The supper is hosted by Gabrielle Chavez, who wrote The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw For Total Well-Being. Once a month, in lieu of a catered dinner, we have a potluck, and that has been fun, too.

This week, Gabrielle prepared the dinner, and we had not one, but three chefs there! Andy, whose last name I don't remember, but he is a well-known raw chef in the Portland area, was there, even though he has been on a juice feast for (get ready for it: 172 days! He is going to do 200!!! Needless to say, no one was impressed with my 40 days at all, lol) Julia, another un-cookbook author, catered the dessert with one of her amazing pies from her book "Sweet and Raw Pie Mandalas." Nearly everything we ate (besides the avocados!) was grown on Gabrielle and Thomas Chavez's organic farm in Oregon City.

Here's the Menu:




Pizzamoles Topped with Minh's Marinated Tomato Madness

Fruit 'n Nut Crunchy Salad

Savory Greens of Summer Soup

Julia (Divinia Alchemy)'s Prize "Sweet Mandala" Pies

So what is a "pizzamole" you might ask ('cuz I did.) Ok, a pizzamole is a 3 by 6inch piece of raw onion bread (uber yum, recipe in the kitchen) spread with a recipe Gabrielle got from Mihn (of Ronnie and Mihn). It is simply mashed up avocado that you add a little bit of lemon juice and about a teaspoon of unreconstituted miso paste to. It was sooooo delicious! On top of the avocado were cherry tomatoes that had been marinaded in an Italian-type raw vinaigrette overnight and then dehydrated just a little bit to concentrate the flavors.

The pie had a goji-berry and almond crust (really interesting flavor) and was an apple-creem pie with a goji-chia seed jam on top. It was amazing, and the tiny sliver I had, I enjoyed immensely. Everything else was good, too, but the pizzamoles and the pie really stood out.

So it was probably not the best idea to indulge in dense, dehydrated raw gourmet 6 days after ending my juice feast. I have no regrets, however. All day long, I stuck with veggie juice and green smoothies and greens based blended soups, and that's what I'll be having today, as well. This was my pre-planned celebration meal, and I enjoyed and appreciated every scrumptious bite, in the company of lovely friends. Isn't that the way that we are meant to experience food?

Doing this juice feast has renewed my taste buds and refreshed my palate to enjoy the delicious, simple flavors of raw and living foods. I never even add salt to any of my blended soups, because I add celery and greens and I can "taste" the salt in them.

After Sunday Supper, we gather for a spiritual fellowship time (the meal is held at a church) and almost everybody stays for it. We read a passage of the Bible and share what it meant to us, what questions we have about it, and then we pass around a soft, squishy globe of the world and everyone picks a place on it to pray for and send loving blessings toward. Then we pray together for anything or anyone else we may want to, and have communion (with raw bread and raw fresh-pressed grapejuice!) What I love about this service is that probably half or greater of the people may not even identify themselves as Christians...and yet we can all gather together in peace and love and harmony and discuss scripture and send love to the world and pray and break bread together as sisters and brothers.

I feel so blessed to have connected to my raw community. If you haven't done that, you are cheating yourself. If you don't have one by you, start one. It can even be profitable--at this one, everyone gives a love offering of $10-20 for the meal (totally worth it for a raw, vegan, organic, gourmet 4 course dinner) and whoever volunteers to be chef (with lots of help from the rest of the group) gets to keep whatever $ is leftover after buying ingredients. I have heard some of our chefs say they made $300 in one night. (It is very well-attended, and most of us have great organic gardens. :)

Raw foodie cannot live on raw bread alone! Friendships are a gift and connection is vital to make this not just a lifestyle, but a life. :)