September 15th, 2010
Paloma loves to eat. In that way, we are very fortunate. It’s quite a rarity for her to turn down food, and she’s always eager to try anything I put in front of her. I’ll never forget an impossibly bitter dandelion smoothie that I made. No one could drink it, except for Paloma, who joyfully slurped down a whole glass. I dearly love to cook and feed people, especially family and friends, and her approval makes me one happy mama.
Our days usually start with me cooking breakfast and impatient Paloma sitting at the kitchen table, spoon in hand, narrating my preparations and hurrying me on. It’s quite humorous. She is not the calmest of children (a little tornado to be exact) and becomes very excited when food is in sight.
This is where the idea for the edible puzzle stemmed from. I imagined a game that would occupy Paloma, and, since she puts everything in her mouth, be safe and tasty to eat. I thought about the obvious educational qualities of puzzles such as teaching about shape, colour, size, structure, and included two more – flavour and nutritional value.
I started by making various fruit leathers of different colours. Mango, kiwi, blueberry, strawberry, pineapple, kiwi-spinach and carrot-mango to be exact. Then I decided on five basic shapes (circle, triangle, long rectangle, curved teardrop, and straight teardrop) and cut each one out in three different sizes. The simplicity of the shapes allows for much imagination when building a picture, the possibilities here are never-ending. It seems that room for creativity is one of the most important aspects of a children’s game, it encourages a sort of intellectual freedom and concentration.
Well, it was a hit. Paloma is a little too young to be able to construct her own images, but she liked watching us do it, naming all the animals and things, and loved the fact that all the pretty puzzle pieces could be eaten.
This type of puzzle would make for an interesting homemade gift. Or it could be a way for a more finicky eater to learn about the taste, scent, and colour of different fruits and learn to like them through playing a game.
Bunny rabbits, cats, birds, tigers, bears and other animals, snowmen, butterflies, flowers, sailboats, the sun, pine trees, bees, and landscapes.
You name it.
Fruit Leather
You can find many fruit leather recipes on the internet. Here, I just blended the fruit in a food processor. Then sweetened it to taste with raw honey or agave. Spread it quite thickly on Teflex-lined dehydrator trays and dried at 115F until leathery. Peeled off the Teflex, flipped, and dehydrated some more until completely dry. I made hard templates of each shape and used a knife and kitchen scissors to cut out the pieces.
Tags: children, dessert, food, food for tots, paloma, raw food, recipe, snack, special food
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April 19th, 2010
These avocado truffles were once again inspired by Luxirare. The challenge was to use raw ingredients and create some kid appeal. There are lots of ways to involve children in the kitchen. Even as a 20 month old, Paloma is always hanging around when I’m cooking – playing with pots and pans, studying the ingredients, and begging for samples. I can already tell she’ll be a good little chef.
When they are able to handle the mess, you can show your kids how to paint pictures with the ingredients, sort all of the components of a dish by colour, or make a game of determining a food blindfolded, just through taste and smell.
Making these avocado truffles could be a great way of getting your little ones to eat healthy and be adventurous. It is, afterall, a colourful and mysterious salad, with a hidden surprise inside.
Ingredients:
Cut an avocado in half, take out the pit. Scoop out some of the flesh, leaving a good amount intact, so that it holds its shape when you take off the skin.
Mash the scooped avocado flesh, adding some squeezed lime juice. Then put the mashed mass back into the two avocado halves – distribute evenly.
There are endless possibilities for the filling. We love the classic combination of mango and avocado, so I made a simple salad of chopped mango, cilantro, black sesame seeds, and lime juice.
Put the filling into the two halves. Assemble them back together and carefully peel off the skin.
Painting pictures with coating ingredients. Paloma enjoyed pointing out the eyes on the sun.
For the coat, I used dried mango, black sesame seeds, pistachio, and freeze dried corn, peas, and red bell pepper.
Grind these ingredients together with a mortar and pestle.
Bathe the avocado in the ground coating, carefully turning to pick up the crumbles.
Besides chocolate truffles and truffle mushrooms, the coated avocados reminded us of trimmed cypresses in a jardin à la française, so we went for a linear and symmetrical presentation, involving the main ingredients.
Although they look elaborate, avocado truffles are actually very easy and surprisingly quick to prepare. This dish would no doubt be a hit at a dinner party.
In addition to being pretty, the truffles are also very tasty, combining the subtlety of avocado, sweetness of mango, a touch of citrus, and finishing off with a pleasant crunchiness of the coat.
P.S. Golubka was nominated for Babble’s Best Mom Food Bloggers, we would greatly appreciate your vote!
Post by: A
Tags: a, children, food, paloma, raw food, recipe, salad, special food
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April 3rd, 2010
We aren’t religious, we celebrate Easter more as a tradition and part of our culture. This year, both the Orthodox and Catholic Easters have aligned, which makes this post more universal, which we’re happy about. We decided to go a little crazy this time, inspired by the ever-amazing creations of Luxirare. We took the egg as the dominant symbol of Easter and made a likeness of it in delicious dessert form. The challenge was to work from scratch, using only raw ingredients. This undertaking turned out to be more demanding than was expected.
The raw cacao butter is much more fickle than regular chocolate.
It is either too runny and ends up dripping to the bottom of the egg mold, or too thick and unruly when mixed with different powders. It was tough to achieve the right colour, so we experimented with mixing in different raw ingredients, such as maca, lucuma, dried bananas, etc., until attaining just the right shade of white chocolate. The cacao butter was gently heated on a double broiler.
The true breakthrough was the adding of fresh vanilla bean into the chocolate. Almost immediately, the mass resembled the colouring of a quail egg, which we were going for.
We had two different sized egg molds, one was true to the dimensions of a hen’s egg, the other – a quail egg. The chocolate mixture was brushed onto the molds, frozen, and brushed again until a sturdy shell thickness was achieved.
We wanted to make the filling resemble the insides of an actual egg. For the egg white, the meat and water of a young Thai coconut was blended with raw coconut butter, fresh vanilla, and a bit of agave syrup.
For the yolk, we used fresh and dried mango, which was blended with a small amount of agave syrup.
We glued the shell halves together by adding more of the same melted chocolate around the edges and freezing to create a whole egg.
The seal was carefully shaved off.
Since we were going for the appearance of quail eggs, we had to find a way to create characteristic spots. Here, it was logical to use raw dark chocolate.
Just to add some variety, we experimented with filling options. The recipe of this particular chocolate filling is from Sarma Melngailis’s book Raw Food, Real World. (Dark Chocolate Ganache Tart) We also used macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, and berries.
Coconut mixture that went along with the berry filling: meat and water of a young coconut, agave syrup and fresh vanilla whirled together.
The bigger eggs:
Coconut feathers:
The tiny eggs:
At the end, we thought it would be fun to blend our two main filling ingredients together to make this delightful drink. Young coconut meat and water + one fresh mango:
We also made some hollow eggs and melted straw openings though their shells with a hot needle. Filled with the above smoothie:
We just had some friends over for an egg tasting and no one could pick a definite favourite. Once frozen, the mango and coconut fillings taste like ice cream. The berry filling, however, is at its best when fresh, as it bleeds and combines with the coconut mixture. Overall, we loved it more than we ever thought we would.
Happy Easter!
Tags: a, dessert, food, m, raw food, special food
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