Joel Rendall

I heard somewhere that dehydrating eggplant is a good idea. I had it at Live, a raw restaurant in Toronto, and it was presented as a raw “bacon” strip on top of a raw burger. I decided to try cutting it as circles, rather than strips. I marinated the slices for about an hour in olive oil, sea salt, garlic and some spices.

Then I put it in the dehydrator. It came out with a texture that reminded me of pizza crust. Hmmmm…

I topped it with a diced tomato and some onion (above).

Then I made a spicy jalapeno sauce with a bunch of other vegis and random spices, and drizzled it over the pizzas, and the asparagus. (below)

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos. Apparently I still don’t have the camera flash figured out.

This was so delicious. I think this is one of the best things I have eaten for the last couple months, and it was a fun mess to eat.

So there you go – raw mini pizzas. Time for me to get a cookbook deal!

ps. Look again at the photo on the right. An old trick I learned while working at a restaurant, is that if you want to make something look more appetizing, especially when the plate is a mess, springle parsely flakes on it, and it will look 10x better.

I went to Rawlicious with some beautiful people last night (well, mostly , and had the meatloaf. So I was inspired to make my own.

I looked at some recipes on the internet. They all varied in ingredients enough, that I decided to just improvise my own recipe, rather than following one. You see, cooking from recipe is work; bullshitting is fun!

I put in a bunch of unsalted, unroasted nuts: sunflower seeds, brazil nuts, cashews, and almonds.

I added sundried tomatos, a fresh tomato, half a small onion, a handful of sprouts, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, seaweed (for saltiness), 2 cloves of garlic, 3 stalks of celery… and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.

I didn’t do anything, except throw all this stuff into the Vitamix. I set it at about the 30% power setting. I used the black pushy rod that came with the blender to stir the mixture around as I blended. If I had set it on too high of a setting, it would have pulverized the whole thing into a soup. This way, there were chunks of stuff all throughout the mixture, making it more fun to eat.

I used my hands to spread the thick mixture out onto the dehydrator sheet. Then I used a knife to shape the mud pile, into something that resembled a square loaf. Then I cut it into 5 smaller portions. I stuck it in the dehydrator, waited impatiently for a couple hours, put it on a bed of spinach and sprouts… and now my stomach is filled to the brim.

I had no idea if this was going to turn out. I knew no matter what happened, I’d eat it. But I was pleasantly surprised when this meal ended up tasting amazing.

No matter what you prepare, dehydrate, cook, or even deep-fry (gag), the moral of the story is to be play with your food and not be too concerned about following a recipe.

Check this bad boy out. I can’t remember everything I put in it, but there are almonds, apricots, cashews, asparagus, tomato, green onion, garlic, sprouts, and all of this is thrown on top of a bed of pasta… zucchini pasta, of course! And some kind of dressing, with avocado, and spices, oil, vinegar, and probably other things I threw in the Vitamix.

Preparation time was no more than 10 minutes.
Now this is livin’!

Look at this image. This string has allegedly been formed using numbers and letters from our standard alphabet. RNK9? PWK9? FNK9? I’ve got the K9 part down pat, but the first half will require a few more brain cells…

How many times have you filled out a huge online form, and then get stuck at the end at the final step? Apparently, to prove I’m not a robot, I need to see an image of letters and numbers, and enter them in.

That would be fine and dandy, if what they presented me with was actually legible to a human. Perhaps I am less talented than the rest, because I NEVER get these things on the first try. It usually takes me about 5 or 6 before I’m presented with one that doesn’t look like a random spoonful of mangled alphabet soup.

Can’t we have our retina scanned or something? Anything that requires as little thinking as possible will be suitable for someone with the brain capacity equal to mine, or less.