bread and cheese!

[luna99]

I'm sitting here trying really hard not to eat a piece of italian bread sitting on the counter with swiss cheese. So instead, why don't you all give me your best 'cheese' and 'bread' recipes.

I could go the rest of my life without eating a hamburger but I'm such a fan of really good cheese and bread.

even if the recipes are complicated and take a while and require dehydration for long times .. it's ok... cause I know sometime during my raw journey I am going to crave really good cheese and bread...

so help me out please! :)

[fairygirl]

hehe awww Luna, hang in there!

Have u tried chef russells almond bread yet?! If not, you totally have to! Its soooo delish!
Do you have alissa's book? there is every kind of cheese recipe in there depending on your preference. I really like the nacho cheese one.

[luna99]

no... haven't tried the almond bread... where could I find the recipe?

and yes, I have alissa's book. I dunno, every cheese I've ever tried just tastes very lemon/tart ish to me and not really CHEESY... you know? I guess I just need to keep experimenting, I just thought people could lead me in the right direction towards the BEST cheese recipe.

thanks!

[Ama]

I have come to the conclusion that there are no substitutes for SAD food. You have to expect that EVERYTHING is going to taste different. None of the cheeses that I've made/tried taste anything like real cheese. I remember reading in Alissa's book that the calzone tastes like the real thing. It is very good, my husband said it was the BEST thing I made so far but it is far from a "real SAD" calzone. Same thing with the ravioli. She mentioned in the book that some people would ask her what type of pasta she uses. The turnip does not taste anything like pasta yet I LOVE the recipe. I just had to stop *thinking* in terms of substituting, because there are no substitutes.

[trinity082482]

I used to expect everything to be the same tasting too. I hate when something is called cheesy but it doesn't taste cheesy. Wouldn't it be exciting if everything was labeled as it tasted lol

Very tart apple pie.

Chewy potato tasting ravioli lol..

Okay well it woudn't be that exciting :D

[Raw Jewelrylady]

I'm sitting here trying really hard not to eat a piece of italian bread sitting on the counter with swiss cheese. So instead, why don't you all give me your best 'cheese' and 'bread' recipes.

so help me out please! :)

I think you have recieved a lot of good advice...Maybe try this ...

Out of sight-out of mind...I had to purge dairy from my house & My DH eats bread-but it is in the freezer... :)

Lana

[Rawkinlocs]

I have come to the conclusion that there are no substitutes for SAD food. You have to expect that EVERYTHING is going to taste different. None of the cheeses that I've made/tried taste anything like real cheese. I remember reading in Alissa's book that the calzone tastes like the real thing. It is very good, my husband said it was the BEST thing I made so far but it is far from a "real SAD" calzone. Same thing with the ravioli. She mentioned in the book that some people would ask her what type of pasta she uses. The turnip does not taste anything like pasta yet I LOVE the recipe. I just had to stop *thinking* in terms of substituting, because there are no substitutes.

That's true Ama, but at the same token we have to realize that everyone's tastes are very different. Not only do some people hate what others love, but to some, things really DO taste just like __________.

Like the "Just like cheesecake" recipe...as you stated above, I liked it and found it tasty, but it didn't taste "just like" it to me but many people who made it said that it was just like cheesecake to them...same with the "ritz cracker" recipe here...VERY good cracker, one of the best I've tasted to date, but to me, not "just like a ritz" although I could see where the originator of the recipe may have been reminded of Ritz crackers.

I find a lot of the cheeses to taste cheesy to ME and even when I have my kids taste it after I've whizzed it up in the blender, I'll (without having told them what I was making) ask my kids to taste it and just tell me what it tastes like to them and they'll say, "cheese".

Oh and my favorite! Someone once said that if you coat raw nori in olive oil and a little sea salt and dehydrate it that it tastes "just like" movie theater popcorn and while I do LOVE the "toasted" (dehydrated) nori as a snack...it's nowhere NEAR popcorn to me. But I think what oftentimes happens is, once a person has been away from cooked food long enough, sometimes they'll make or tastes someone else's raw recipe and they are reminded of something they ate cooked and to them, it does actually taste "just like" it.

I think RP's brownies are incredibly close to the "real" thing and in my classes, people who are still eating the SAD even say, "Wow, these really DO taste just like brownies!"

But I guess I'm just saying that to some of us, certain things may taste "just like" (name your cooked food here) to one person, but may not to someone else. But it IS good to keep in mind what YOU said so that people don't get their hopes up and then dashed. Maybe the recipe names could be changed to, "Reminds me of _________"

:D

[carolg]

March 26, 2006 should bring you the recipe. Mediterranean Almond Bread by Chef Russell James.

Here you go....
http://therawchef.blogs.com/russell_james/2006/03/the_best_thing_.html#more

We had a discusison about it and courgette are zucchini. Search for this talk and you see what you would want to adjust. I think they even discussed what the g. means there too.

Keep us posted.
carolg

[spicyfull]

I had a LOVE AFFair with cheese. The More Robust the cheese was, the more MY Love was for it.

I NEVER THOUGHT WE WOULD PART. I made "stringy Motzorella cheese" once and it was a very good dip but nothing near cheese.

I have also come to the conclusion that cheese cannot be duplicated unless you use dairy. So I don't make any cheese recipes, Let me tell you how I booted it out of MY Life.

I read an article on this Forum about the "PUS" that is in the milk that cheese is made from, I don't know how true the report was but I said NO MORE....

I also listen to My Sister and Friends when they are talking and how many times they have to clear their throat from all the mucus, from dairy.....

That's this REPORTERS own personal openion and in the end you must be the final Judge.

I guess that is why I just Keep it Simple and Stay RAW......I wish you everythiing you need to Stay RAW........Welcome to MY World......

[luna99]

thanks everyone for the help... I guess I just have to realize that I'm never going to find something that replaces cheese in my life and let it go.

I too was having a love affair with cheese. Litreally weeks before I started to get interested in raw .. I was buying expensive specialty cheeses once a week...

rawkinlocs, I really liked what you were saying about how people's tastes are different.... I too don't like it when things say "tastes just like the real thing!" only to find out (for me) it doesn't.

thanks again everyone.

[Tirza]

I read an article on this Forum about the "PUS" that is in the milk that cheese is made from, I don't know how true the report was but I said NO MORE....

I also listen to My Sister and Friends when they are talking and how many times they have to clear their throat from all the mucus, from dairy....

Right On, spicyfull....

I, too, love cheese and all dairy. I, too, get a lot of mucus from eating it.

Here's my story. We used to live in a large beautiful valley in British Columbia where there were many modern, state-of-the-art dairy farms. Or should I say "factories". Very much so. We used to visit with many of them, spent lots of time in the barns and closely observed the whole process and the operation of the whole place. FAR from the sweet little clean pictures you see on the advertisements about the happy little cows and clean conditions, you wouldn't believe what even the best places look like. The cows are not let to roam around on good green hay-producing grass to graze. NOOOOO. That land must not be wasted on cows trampling it! No, they need to produce hay on that land, which they either use in the winter or sell.

Instead, they are wallowing around in feed lot conditions, with manure EVERYWHERE. They are usually fed in their stalls, and actually live in there in the bad weather, held by their heads by a big metal stanchion, standing or laying in quickly-soiled straw or wood chips. They march like automatons into the milking parlor twice a day, where they have to be hosed down to get the _______ off their udders so the milkers can be attached. Now this is a huge job and some of these farms have hundreds of cows to process so it has to go very fast, since "time is money" = not such great cleaning. After the hosing they rub the udders with some kind of cream to soften them to TRY to prevent/heal cracking and bleeding, and to heal them from the skin diseases they have.

Now tell me, have you ever tried to wash dirty filthy hands with just a spray of water? Add to that the cream they apply and then think of washing GREASY dirty hands with just a spray of water? They wipe them down with rags then, which just go from cow to cow!

The milking parlor is where they most likely notice and catch the ones with mastitis. The udders are swollen and red and painful and leak pus and blood. Sometimes they don't catch it right away. Or if 2 or 3 of the udders are okay so far, they just put the milkers on the udders that don't appear swollen at the time and leave them off the one(s) that do. The cows receive their penicillin shots, hormones and any other kinds of shots at that time. Some of them as they get older, are so crippled with arthritis they can hardly stand there. They will stumble and slip and limp.

I have seen the huge stainless steel refrigerated tanks which store the milk until the trucks come to get it. The pipes and tank are all washed through with lots of water and disinfectant, some of which stays on the sides and mixes with the milk. There is a huge "stirrer" in the tank that keeps the milk slowly moving so that the cream doesn't separate. That also keeps all that gunk mixing around. But even then, after the tank is drained down to a very low level below the stirrer, you can see the muddy brown sediment from the dirt, the manure, the blood and the pus etc. (even though it has all been filtered many times)

Lest you think, "Well, she said that was some time ago", let me assure you that things have not changed.

It is a far cry from the pristine-white image we are shown by the dairy industry. Sure, they pasturize it. They NEED to after all that. They need to bleach it. Why can't we taste that? We're just used to it I guess.

YUUUUUUUUK. Just let your mind wander on those images a bit and see if it doesn't cure your dairy/cheese craving. We don't need to be putting that into our bodies. Strangely enough, we seem to be able to block that kind of thing from our minds and just carry on as before. I know I can. Too bad. So since we can't gross ourselves out enough to change, we just have to use our brains to make the proper decisions.

After we do, we can become accustomed to and really SAVOR the flavor of all these great raw vegan foods. Maybe we can train our minds to really appreciate that CLEAN PURE taste of good ingredients. Maybe we can even convince ourselves that THIS is how REAL cheese is MEANT to taste. Maybe then if we were to try some of the dairy stuff again, our newly-sensitized/educated taste buds will notify us as to how really rotten and manure/blood/pus/chemical/pesticide/herbicide/fungicide/hormone-filled it is.

Maybe then we can enjoy a life free of mucus, free of obesity, free of heart disease, free of many cancers ....

We have a lot of reasons to motivate ourselves to LOVE the tastes of raw vegan foods.

[IamLoved]

Tirza,

Thank you for that wonderful mental image.

I too have been appalled by the conditions I have seen farms kept in. Here in Maine we pass one particular farm that is so filthy dirty disgusting and at the end of their driveway proudly displayed for all to see is the name of the milk company that buys their milk. The first time we ever drove by that farm I thouht to myself, I'm not ever going to buy that brand of milk again. Yuck!

We drove across the country a lot last year (well 2005 really) and we saw a lot of the same thing every where we went. There was a cheese making plant in Central California that was so gross on the outside, I mean really disgusting, and the beautiful sign said, "real California cheese." It was a beautiful sign, but the sign did not coroborate with the reality of what I was actually seeing with my own eyes. So if that is where "real California cheese" is made, no thanks, I don't want any.