You Know You're Italian When...

Thank you so much everyone for the well wishes a la the eco-friendly wedding planning and finally settling on a place. I swore I would never do a 'destination' wedding and here I am planning not only the very thing I swore I would never do, but taking on the raw vegan eco-wedding challenge as well. Apparently, I like to do everything the hard way. Alas, I think it's important and I don't think I would feel right otherwise.

 This was another busy food week for me. Kevin and I were leaving for Vegas on Sunday morning (more about that later!) so I had to have all food prepped and ready to go by Saturday for early deliveries. Just thinking about it makes me exhausted. I can't believe how fast I was able to get everything done. I had Kev wash dishes (lol) so that cut a considerable amount of time off my work load.

Anyway, last week I finally got around to making what was supposed to be Eggplant Rollatini di Melanzane except there was no rollatini-ing here since all the eggplants I could find at the farmers market were pretty stubby and in no shape for rolling. I just laid them flat, stuffed 'em, and stacked them instead. I guess this was more of a lasagna than anything else, but either way, my sources are telling me that this is turned out exceptionally well.

Eggplant Rollatini di Melanzane

I went for an all out Italian-themed menu last week. Italian is my favourite and I love trying to create raw versions of the food I grew up with. I don't normally use beans, sprouted or otherwise, when making raw food. They never taste the same as the cooked version and I'm just not a fan. However, I figured, 'what the heck' and made this raw minestrone soup. I soaked the beans for almost 48 hours but, didn't sprout them to avoid that strange taste they develop when sprouting and made a tomato, celery, parsley based broth. I loaded it up with a variety of greens and three different types of beans. I have no words. I couldn't believe how similar it tasted to the real thing. Yum yum!

Minestrone Soup

Italian-themed menu's wouldn't be the same without pizza. I veered from the traditional margarita pizza and opted for a white pizza with raw, ricotta cheeze, 'sausage', garlic cashew cream sauce, and lemon-parsley butter on an herby crust. Two thumbs up all around!

White Pizza

We've been getting really ripe, juicy fresh strawberries from the farmer's market lately. I love farmers market strawberries. You can totally taste the difference; they are so much sweeter and make for a mini raw cobbler that is out of this world. I like to put it in the dehydrator so that all the juice from the strawberries turns into this yummy, thick syrup. Pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but it is worth mentioning again. Cobblers have become one of my favorite raw desserts to make. Their simple, but always allow the flavors of the fruit to come through. The only sweetner I added here was some coconut sugar- my new fav. It tastes like graham crackers!!

Strawberry Cobbler

Mangia! Mangia!