FOOD THAT RAWKS : Market fresh sandwich. Wheat, dairy and yeast free.

Dear Melissa: Where have you been? Good gawd I have missed your delicious posts! I was waiting for some yummie recipes..and you left us hangin’? What are you up to these days…can we have some recipes please?  

Juda, Portland

Hey Juda! Thanks for throwing me a rope! I have been very busy these days helping other people open raw food cafes across the US map! I have also been appearing on some TV show with some of my yummie food. Take a look here www.Gliving.tv    Enjoy! this weeks market fresh sandwich!   Melissa “mango”Market fresh sandwich.Recipe adapted from one of my personal favorite Raw Chef Russell James! **clap clap*Today it is common that most kids and even adults are allergic to flour, wheat and other ingredients found in breads. Bummer when it comes to making lunch for a picnic huh!I use to enjoy the bland taste Ezekiel bread found in a local health food store’s frozen section then it occurred to me…there has got to be something better!What is wrong with regular bread you may ask? Well, bread is essentially glue and seasonings…with some refined, processed, fractured foods and honey if you’re lucky. Bread once eaten, moves extremely slow through the body because it has no fiber unlike fresh fruits and veggies. Here are some fun facts I found out about bread.

1. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and osteoporosis.
2. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread end up freaking out…me being one of them.
3. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts. I know I know..sounds funny…but this is true! These foods are actually not foods at all. Why are we conditioned to think these items should even be on our shopping list and taking up valuable space in our kitchens?
4. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person. Ever notice that people usually resemble the food they eat the most? eeewww
5. You are what you ate.
6. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill all your enzymes and nutrition right there
7. Bread is a filler and a cheap way to fill one’s belly when hungry. Bread is not nutritious!

Did you know that the inclusion of hydrogenated oils, artificial preservatives, emulsifiers, additives and other chemicals in bread became standard practice in the mid 1950’s?

At this same time whole wheat flour was replaced by bleached, enriched white flour. In this process, grain is bleached and sterilized with chemicals to make it white and soft.

It is then artificially “enriched” by adding vitamins, minerals and other materials destroyed in the chemical process.

Despite what you may have been told, trying to “enrich” something with the very vitamins and minerals that were removed from it in the first place, does not make it even half as healthy as the natural unrefined version.

When you think about this, it doesn’t even make much sense.

Your White Flour Isn’t Just White Flour

It is also a growing practice in many bread producing factories to replace white flour with substances like alum, ground rice, and whiting.

Alum is the most commonly used of all these substances, because it gives the bread a whiter color and causes the flour to absorb and retain a larger amount of water than it would otherwise hold.

This enables the factories to produce bread which imitates bread made from a higher quality flour.

This tainting of your bread with harmful, cancer causing chemicals such as potassium bromate, emulsifiers (both commonly used in bread production), and alum jeopardizes your health.

Do you know why your store bought bread has such a long shelf life?

The mysteriously prolonged shelf life is because of a particular emulsifier used in making the bread. This emulsifier is mainly used as a softening agent and tends to deceive buyers as to the real age of their bread.

This emulsifier can hide the signs that your bread is rotting (it certainly doesn’t stop the rotting) for a few extra weeks, but the harm it does to your body (and the harm in eating the half rotten bread) makes the cost for this “convenience” very high.

Is it any wonder then, that every year a growing number of people just like you and I, are being hospitalized with illnesses and incurable diseases?

How Can You Survive? Make you own living bread!Veggies:1 small red bell pepper julienned½ cucumber sliced thinsproutsbutter leaf lettuce or red leafred onion sliced thinRoma tomato slices1 avocado sliced thinOptional: 4 mushrooms sliced thin, marinated 10 minutes in 1 c water 2 Tb braggs aminos. Spread: Stone ground mustard, raw hummus or  Nut-cheezeAlmond bread recipe:3 1/3 c almonds ground in food processor1c flax meal1/2c olive oil 4 c zucchinis roughly chopped
3 red apples, cored and roughly chopped
3T lemon juice
3t salt4 TB minced shallots
¼ c dry herbs or ½ c fresh of your choice¼ c water added slowlyGrind almonds in food processor, set aside. Combine all ingredients except for the flax meal and almonds and process into a dough.Kneed all ingredients together, spread on 2 teflex sheets and dehydrate overnight.Flip bread the next morning, dry for 2 more hours, then store in a glass container or wrapped in plastic until ready to use.This bread will keep nicely in your fridge for 10 days as long as you keep it wrapped and cold!  

Recipes are created by Sweet Melissa “Mango”, Owner and Chef of Terra Bella Café.  For Gourmet Raw Catering, demos or Personal Chef Services contact Melissa@TerraBellacafe.com or see menu online at TerraBellaCafe.comIf you are interested in opening your own raw café and need help, contact Melissa!