Making life easier

Tonight I made dinner for everyone in about 10 minutes. Half of it was raw and all of it was vegan.  More gratifyingly every bit was eaten and was loved.

This post falls into one of those top tips for eating well and staying healthy whilst still having a life.

I really am amazed at how many people seem to resent spending anytime in the kitchen preparing food or those that think that raw food is time consuming and difficult in comparison to cooking.

The key to doing anything well and efficiently is preparation and flexibility. Oh and you have to care. If you don’t care then it is really hard to motivate yourself to do anything. If you do care, if you are into eating yummy things and feeling great then it is really easy to take a few steps towards making raw food fast food.

Our dinner was Roast Vegetable soup with Raw Pizza bread.

Now clearly the roast vegetable soup was cooked, in fact it was cooked weeks ago. The roast veges were planned leftovers from a huge vegetarian roast that included fennel and loads of sweet potatoes and pumpkin. They went straight from the table to the blender, were joined by a bunch of fragrant basil and then into the freezer.Done. Ready to be a meal in a minute.

The raw pizza bread was assembled in 5 minutes from standard staples I have in my fridge.

I keep a thick raw marinara sauce in the fridge always- I cant imagine not always having some on hand. It takes 10 minutes to make in the blender and you can use it in vegetable pasta, lasagne, as a dip, dressing or spread or as a base for soup.  It is easy to tweak flavours with chilli or other spices.

I also always have a raw basil pesto and a nut cheese. They keep well, they take no time at all to make in the blender and you can eat them with anything.

Tonights pizza base was Kamut essene bread and although it wasnt exactly like junk food pizza none of us expect it to be like that. Given that junk food pizza bears no relation to proper Italian pizza or real food for that matter I hardly think it is something I want to emulate anyway. We buy our essene bread from the local healthfood shop and try to buy different grains each week or two.

I smothered the essene bread in marinara sauce, basil pesto, tiny pieces of tomato and onion and a finely pureed nut cheese.

I grilled them just to warm them as it is the middle of winter here and served them on the side of the fennel and roast vegetable soup.

The whole thing was a 10 minute job of assembling and warming and completely delicious.

Things you care about are easy to prioritise, things you value you will find time for. If you say you would love to (fill in the blank) but there isn’t enough time then you really dont value it. Everything you ARE doing, ARE finding time for mean more to you.  That can be challenging for some people to hear- they will protest that they really do want to exercise/ eat good food/ meditate/ what ever it is,  but the truth is it just doesnt mean enough. Until it does. Your life depends on it.

Le Cru

The newly opened Le Cru raw vegan restaurant 137 Victoria Ave, Albert Park is nestled among cafes and shops at the beaconsfield Pde end of Victoria Ave.

Its morrocan stylings are lush and fresh and include a beautiful courtyard area that seats about 20 people comfortably. Mint and parsley grow beside huge ornate doors that set the scene for a relaxed and enjoyable eating experience.

The menu states that Le Cru offers a raw, organic, plant based restaurant, bar and function experience and it delivers on that promise. The difference with raw food restaurant to a conventional one is that nothing has been heated above 45 degrees to maintain the live enzymes and the retain the optimum nutrient value of the food.

Nothing- that means every little detail from the agave nectar that sits on each table to the nut milk in the coffee to the ‘cheese’ and crackers has been produced with painstaking attention to the values of the raw food diet. This along with the use of organic ingredients means you have an extremely healthy and thoughtful dining experience.

On the day I dined at Le Cru the organic spinich had not been delivered because it hadn’t met the suppliers strict standards so there were a few scratchings on the menu. Starters and mains are reasonably priced at $4 to $15 and include the kind of food that most people would recognise from a non raw restaurant; soup, dips and crackers, salad, pizza, burgers, and lasagna.

I took a non raw foodie along for a perspective from the other side of the fence and we sat in the delightful courtyard on a sunny afternoon for a relaxed lunch. The owner of Le Cru, Caroline was kind enough to serve us herself and answer all our many questions about the menu, ingredients and her cafe in general. There is a clear love of raw organic cuisine and she seems understandably proud of both the cafe premises and the menu.

We started with a juice labeled a blood tonic with kale, beet apple, and ginger which was $8.50 and was delicious. The juice was thick with the ingredients and as Caroline pointed out, much healthier than thin juices where the fibre has been removed.

Our starter was cheese and crackers and I was curious to try the two kinds of cheese on offer. The creamy Alfredo was made from cashew and was like a fresh fromage with a light yellow colour and smooth texture. The Cheddar was a deeper colour and had a sharp tangy flavour that did everything I would want a cheddar to do. It was powerful and tasty with a complex mixture of herbs and spices and a macadamia nut base.

These were served with tomatoflax seed crackers that could have easily stood on their own. They were firm and peppery but not crunchy and were a stand out favorite for us.

Priced at just $12 and serving 2 as a starter we thought these represented great value and if washed down with a glass of red from the great wine list would be just the perfect start to a meal.

Our mains were the pizza $7 and the lasagna $13 and this is where the comments of my non raw food friend were most valuable to me- the Pizza we agreed was amazing. It had a thin crust base similar to the flax seed crackers we loved with just the right amount of tomato sauce and cheese on it along with the fresh vegetable to impart that quintessential ‘pizza flavor’ and the serving size was reasonable for the price.

Then there was the lasagna. Now in all fairness I have never had a raw lasagna before so maybe I cannot compare but I know what I want from a lasagna and it is a comfort food. This was more like layers of a fresh sliced tomato with zucchini and there was some sauce in there and some cheese but overpowering it all was that essentially it was a pile of tomato. It felt like an arranged salad. My friend said this is the kind of thing non raw foodies dread about raw cuisine. A tiny portion of something that doesn’t bear any relation to the thing it was named after.

That aside we had a lovely lunch and were completely impressed by the range of things on the menu.

If we were still hungry we could have followed up with one of the many desserts- ice cream, Chocolate Ganache slice, Mini Tiramisu, Lemon merange pie, cake of the week or raw chocolate block with chili, orange or honey almond. Prices range from $2.50 to $12.

I noticed there was a nice simple kids menu that included guacamole with tomato bread, tzatziki with cut up veges, and soup and for dessert ice cream with sprinkles and cupcakes with frosting.

There are also some takeaway foods including the one cooked item we saw which was a quinoa tabouli.

There is also a lovely range of organic teas, coffee and hot chocolate of course and their wine and beer list which I will be saving for my second visit.

Le Cru was a delightful dining experience and deserves to become not just a raw foodies’ hangout, but one to take their non raw friends to introduce them to the joys of live food.

Hours are

Tuesday through Friday Lunch and Dinner closed from 3pm to 5pm

Saturday Dinner

Contact Le Cru for up to date times and bookings
(03) 9699 1144
137 Victoria Ave
Albert Park VIC 3206

Le Cru website

Friday night is Pizza night

So for a third day running Melbourne suffers 40 plus degree heat… we are all a bit bored with it and getting cranky from lack of sleep, well I am anyway.

When life hands you global warming it’s time to get sun drying so I sliced up some capsicum, celery, and mushrooms along with the ever present tomatoes and put them out on trays.

Then I concocted a pizza base that went like this

Pizza base

2 cups sprouted mung beans

1 cup ground linseed

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup almonds

Nutritional yeast/miso/salt

1 tsp agave nectar

water to get the right consistancy

Blend adding water as needed to get a thick paste.

Spread on baking paper in the vague shape of a pizza base and bake in the sun, turning once to dry evenly- about 6 hours

To make the pizza I blended the veges that I dried out roughly with some dried italian herbs and spread the thick paste on the pizza base.

I then chopped up an avocado and put that on top.

Then I covered it with cling film (probably toxic and evil) and put it in the fridge for 2 hours. This allowed the base to soften and absorb the pizza flavor from the veggies.

I could only eat half of one as it is pretty nutrient dense and I had it with a rocket and spinach salad with an olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing.

Friday night is pizza night!