This past weekend, my sisters and I all had dinner together – which is a rare and wonderful thing -since we live in different cities.
As they were driving towards my house, I contemplated where we should eat. Perhaps The Red Lentil – a lovely veg restaurant in Watertown MA, or maybe head up to Beverly to Rawbert’s Organic Garden, my favorite raw food restaurant, or try to get squeezed in at Oleana’s and have their amazing vegetarian tasting menu.
All wonderful options, but we ended up at a casual but tasty joint called…my kitchen. As we were trying to figure out where to go, I blended up a green smoothie, which then took me into making a raw sunflower dip rolled up in collard greens – which I teach at my Raw Food class – which then led us into a creative frenzy of raw food and art.
Now you see, both my sisters are amazing artists. Frith is a potter and Ilana is a painter. But it’s not as simple as that. They both just emanate creativity. So making food becomes an artistic endeavor with them. Every time I plunked one of my yummy creations on the table, it was scooped up, reconfigured visually, plated beautifully and then photographed.
Not only was our meal a feast for our bellies and souls, it was a feast for the eyes.
Here is a peek at our meal.
sunflower dip on layers of raw beet and young turnip slices
Pink Protein Power Dip
sculptural raw beets and raw young white turnips
The pink protein power dip that you see in the pics above, is a delicious version of Kirsten Suzanne’s Hemp Seed Dip. I love her dip, but I didn’t have a lot of the ingredients she calls for, so I made this one up, based on hers. We used raw young fresh white turnips and beet slices as chips. It was luscious! Here’s how I made it:
Pink Protein Power Dip:
Blend it all up in a Vita-Mix – or blender
- 2/3 cup hemp seeds
- 1/3 cup sunflower seeds
- 4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- 1 small raw beet – cut into chunks
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinergar
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- dash cayenne
- 1/4 tsp turmeric
- 1 teaspoon of tamari
Then we had banana candy for desert. Yum!
What’s the moral of the story…
Stay home, make good food, be with people you love, and make your life into art!
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Nina Manolson, MA, CHC, LMT is the Smokin’ Hot Mom Mentor and Family Wellness Expert. She’s the founder of SmokinHotMom.com and HealthyYummyKids.com. She helps busy moms look and feel their best, and helps them feed their kids well in a world that doesn’t. To get your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and receive her healthy recipes and wellness tips click here.
Nina Manolson, MA, is the founder of Body-Peace®.She helps women end the war with food and body and finally feel truly at home in their body—as it is.
She is known for her deeply feminist, anti-diet, body-peace® approach. She brings her 30 years of experience as a therapist, Body-Trust® Guide and Psychology of Eating Teacher to helping women create a respectful and trusting relationship with their food and body.
Nina’s Body-Peace® work is all in service of helping people get off the diet roller-coaster, and into a compassionate and powerful way of eating & living which creates a positive long-lasting change in and with their bodies. Her courses, coaching, poems and Body-Peace APP positively change the conversation that women are having with their body.
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