A Stove-less Thanksgiving

October 11, 2011

Hitchhiking is almost unheard of in most of Canada and for good reason.

But it’s not uncommon for folks to hitchhike from Alaska to the Lower 40 by way of Yukon. The territory is small and there’s a sense that you might even know the person who picks you up. In fact Brian had to hitch home a couple of weeks ago because his “carpool” fell through and he couldn’t reach the rest of us.

Our stove-less Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be eventful. We were hesitant to make plans for inviting people because we seriously didn’t know how much time and trouble the raw food preparations would take. Turns out it was ‘easy peasy’ and looked delicious.
We got our recipes through Jolie but they are all available on the blueberry toes blog (link below). The good thing was she recommended some favourites and put together a combination that looked like a typical Thanksgiving dinner.

So, it was great when our friend Nicole showed up with a young hitchhiker from Palmer, Alaska. He came for dinner, celebrating his first Canadian Thanksgiving and then right after supper he went on his way. He didn’t return when it got dark and cold so we assume he got a ride okay.

Jessie wasn’t expecting Thanksgiving dinner to be raw food, but he was a good sport about it … full of compliments and conversation. The truth is if this was his first exposure to a raw food meal as it was ours, it was a really pleasant surprise, full of colour, flavour, variety and ambience.

Here are some things that we learned along the way:

Stove-less means no stove, so presumably low energy use. But we never realized until we were well into the preparations how much the various dishes would require the use of a good blender. Brian now has a very bad attitude toward that blender!

The other thing that we required was more water than expected for soaking and rinsing food, and washing the blender and washing the blender and washing the blender. And we required a few clean kitchen towels for squeezing and drying foods.

A pleasant surprise was that once prepared, it didn’t matter when the guests arrived. There was no worry about the quality of food deteriorating with time or cooling down.

The preparation and serving of the meal dispelled the myth that raw food is limited to produce as we see it in its natural state. A large pumpkin became a nice “raw food pie” and nuts became “whipping cream”. Blended in with other things we created a great variety of textures and flavor too. I kid you not it was tasty too.

Another myth dispelled was that we would still feel hungry after. The meal was satisfying, filling and sustaining. There was lots of protein in the nuts but you hardly knew they were there. It might be a tough diet for folks allergic to nuts though.

The dinner expanded our vision of produce but it does rely on nuts and more exotic fruits such as pineapple of coconut. Recipes could likely be adapted and still be tasty to incorporate foods more accessible to the North.

Where do we go from here:
There are mixed thoughts on this. While some in the family might embrace this type of food as a regular part of their diet, the reality in a house full of people with different interests produces a different result. Perhaps if children were raised with this they might think differently of food, but in our own household it would be a tricky adjustment to make. Our best bet would be to build raw foods into our diet on a regular basis, as already suggested by folks who commented on our previous blog.

Right now for the Energy Diet Challenge we want to focus on local foods and explore the possibilities around more local options. Once the Thanksgiving “leftovers” are lapped up, we can do just that.

http://berrybluetoes.blogspot.com

Recipes used:
Thanksgiving Nut Loaf
Whipped Parsnip/Cauliflower
Raw Shredded Sweet Potato Pineapple Salad
Dairy Free Waldorf Salad
Mushroom Gravy
Cranberry Relish
Raw Pumpkin Pie
Cream Whipped