Petite Slaw of Celeriac, Broccoli Sprouts, Meyer Lemon & Thyme by The Alkaline Sisters

This post is also available in: French

Say hello to our next guest bloggers, the Alkaline Sisters. Julie and Yvonne write a beautiful blog, where they inspire readers to cook pH balancing dishes with their delicious recipes and vibrant photography. Ever since discovering the Alkaline Sisters, and later Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet, I've been giving my meals a lot more thought in acidic and alkaline terms. Make sure to visit Julie and Yvonne's blog to find more wonderful, healing recipes and stunning food photography. Here is Julie:

Sometimes it's kinda nice for a change to nibble on finely textured veggies cuz somehow they seem to have a different kind of flavour when they mingle in fine shreds.  That's what I've discovered from my extensive veggie preparations.  I end up experimenting with an array of textures, from finely diced, roughly chopped or shredded, to spiral noodles, thinly sliced and julienne cuts.  Each texture seems to give the veggies a unique taste sensation exposing more or less surface area of the veggies in a recipe.  Several flavours tend to marry more easily when finely cut.  Incorporating fine sprouts like broccoli, radish, garlic or alfalfa adds yet another character.

Experimenting with select veggies that will julienne nicely or pass over a mandolin like fennel & apple w/ parsnip or perhaps a combo of peppers, jicama and carrots can yield pleasing flavours. A special peeler like this is an easy way to julienne most any vegetable (with short or long strokes) except small radish sized veggies which work best on a mandolin.
You can enjoy this small dainty salad as a nice opening to a meal or alongside another main dish.  It's a yummy recipe that will help to increase your nutrient intake with living enzymes, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants all the while alkalizing the body to balance your pH which in turn will help to minimize symptoms of disease.

We've always been told to eat our veggies since we were kids, right? But now that we're adults.... we get to enjoy creative pretty salads to get our nutrients versus mushy peas and kaki coloured broccoli!  So off to the kitchen and dust off a few of those gadgets and make your veggie flavours mingle and dance!  You won't regret it!

Petite Slaw of Celeriac, Broccoli Sprouts, Meyer Lemon and Thyme
(Makes 4 petite salads or 2 grande salads)
1 tsp zest of meyer lemon
juice of 2 meyer lemons
1/4 cup cold pressed avocado oil
2 drops liquid stevia or 1 tsp maple syrup
pinch fine Himalayan salt
pinch of black pepper
1 medium celeriac root - peeled and julienne cut
1 cup broccoli sprouts
1 large carrot - peeled and julienne cut
4 radish - julienne cut on mandolin
5 stems fresh thyme - leaves removed
1/2 c raw walnuts - roughly chopped

In a small bowl combine lemon juice, avocado oil, stevia or syrup, salt and pepper.  Set aside.  In a medium bowl toss julienned celeriac, carrot, thyme leaves and sprouts to gently mingle the veggies together (you may have to carefully pull the sprouts apart and toss veggies by hand).  Chill until ready to serve.  Place in individual serving dishes and whisk the dressing once again and drizzle generously over veggies.  Garnish with a sprig of thyme and serve.

It's been a pleasure and an honour to be here sharing tasty healthy food with Golubka readers, thank you for stopping in.
-Julie
www.alkalinesisters.com

Spring Tea Party by The Rose Journals

This post is also available in: French
Today's guest post features new and exciting talent. Noelle and David run The Rose Journals, and from the moment we first visited their page, we fell for their style, food, and amazing photography. Head over to their blog and be prepared to be in love. Please give Noelle and David a warm welcome and enjoy this beautiful spring tea party.

The Rose Journals blossomed from a great affinity of simplicity and creating. Noelle (foodie, yogi, and writer of the blog) and I (foodie, filmmaker, and photographer of the blog) met when she hired me as a barista at a coffee shop in Appleton, WI that she was managing at the time. We immediately bonded over our love for basic, natural, food. Interwoven between our long days and hard work, we would share our philosophies, recipes, jokes, and lunches. We came to be great friends. When I finally put two and two together, and proposed the idea of putting our passion of eating, writing, and photographing together to form a blog, both our eyes lit with enthusiasm.
We are here to share our ideas, discover new recipes, and to develop a community...but mostly to eat.

Cheers! We clank our tea mugs together and bask in the warm April sun; we talk of red cardinals, spiders, the origins of clichés, taxes, and love; we share, we laugh, we eat, we drink. We nurture our bodies and spirits as we rejoice over spring. At the center of this gathering is a plate full of cookies. I sink in my seat, sip my tea, and smile at the three hours spent preparing for this party. Food—it is often the centerpiece of celebrations, connecting us to those we love, to the earth, and to the nurturer within. This week we share an assortment of cookie recipes—a few crafted by our fellow foodies, and one inspired by the island of Maui.


Haiku Cookies
(Makes one dozen)
I spent a month in Maui getting certified in yoga. My friend, Steve, happened to be working on an organic farm in the village of Haiku, which was less than ten minutes from the studio—I touched my first cashew tree on that farm. We would walk around eating herbs that made our tongues tingle. One morning we watched the sun rise from the top of Mt. Haleakala and proceeded to bike back to town, passing a lavender farm along the way—the soothingly sweet aroma managed to make its way through my Martian size bike helmet. We split coconuts open with machetes and drank the water, we swam at the tops of waterfalls and gathered lilikoi for smoothies, we lounged in the grass under the stars and listened to natives tell stories of the island. For a month I was surrounded by an abundance of natural beauty and people that revered the land. This recipe is a culmination of those experiences. It is simple, raw, organic, and has a lemony zest that is perfect for a spring tea party!

1 cup Cashews - unsoaked
1 cup Coconut
Juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon Agave
½ teaspoon Sea Salt
½ cup Pistachios
1 teaspoon Lavender


Pulse the cashews, coconut, pistachios, and sea salt in a food processors until coarse. Add the lemon juice, agave, and lavender. Pulse until all ingredients resemble a sticky mixture.

Form into one inch balls and flatten with your hands. Dehydrate for 8 hours.



Almond Butter and Jam Sandwich Cookies
(From the blog My New Roots)

4 tablespoons Coconut Oil
4 tablespoons Almond Butter
½ cup Coconut Sugar
2 tablespoons Chia Seeds
4 tablespoons water + 2 tablespoons Maple Syrup
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 ½ cup Oat Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
¼ teaspoon Sea Salt
Jam of your choice (we used Raspberry)

In a small bowl add chia seeds to water and maple syrup. Set aside for fifteen minutes. Blend oats, baking soda, and salt together.

Whisk coconut oil and almond butter until creamy. Add sugar, vanilla, and chia gel. Whisk to combine.
Add dry flour mixture in thirds. The dough will become rather stiff. You may need to mix with your hands. This is a delicious technique that I strongly recommend.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Form dough into one inch balls. Press dough into rounds. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until the bottoms begin to brown.
Fill with jam when cooled completely!


Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies
(From Living Raw Food by Sarma)

4 cups Oat Flour
1 cup Maple Syrup Powder
1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
1/2 cup Coconut Oil
1/2 cup Date Paste
2 tablespoons Vanilla Extract
3 tablespoons Filtered Water
1 1/2 cup Raisins (plumped in warm water for 30 minutes and drained)

In a large bowl, sift together the oat flour, maple powder, and salt. Add the coconut oil and mix thoroughly.

In a seperate bowl, whisk together the date paste, vanilla, and water, until thoroghly combined. Add this liquid and the raisins to the oat mixture and combine well.

Form balls of dough into shape (about 1 1/4 inches across) and place on mesh-lined dehydrator trays. Dehydrate for 8 hours, or until dry but still soft on the inside.

Raw Greenylicious Herb Soup and BBQ Grissini by Earthsprout

This post is also available in: French

Happy Easter! Today's guest post is by the beautiful Elenore from Earthsprout. She compares her approach to cooking as painting on the plate using nature's colours, and we could not agree more. Elenore's commitment to the most natural ingredients is incredibly inspiring, and her positive energy - absolutely contagious. If you haven't yet visited her wonderful blog, you are in for a real treat.
Elenore Bendel Zahn, your official tree hugger and sassy health gal. As both a Raw Food/ Natural Nutrition coach and an Organic Gardener, Elenore spreads knowledge that can heal both You and Mother Earth. Her home is in the very south of Sweden where she works with her company Earthsprout and its various Greenylicious projects. At the moment she is soon to be releasing her carefully handpicked Raw Food product "Nordic Superfood Mix", working one-to-one with clients, creating their custom made Adventure changes and whipping up health boosting flavor explosions for www.Earthsprout.org

I have to admit... While I can sit and admire green buds and colorful leaves for hours, when it comes to food, I tend to get easily bored (whaat!?). This is why when I realized what amazing flavor treasures and inspiring people where hidden in the world of food blogs I got really excited (almost as excited as I am when riding on a raw chocolate high) and decided to join. This is how Earthsprout was born. Now I use the site to play with the wonders of nature and let it flow of all passion and playfulness that, according to me, life and crazy health is all about.

Golubka is one of those brilliant sites that I can simply sit in front of, read, enjoy (and drool a bit) so imagine my excitement when Anya asked me to contribute to this space of "Food that takes love". Um, yes please! So here we go, gorgeous!

For this very special occasion I decided to put the current Swedish spring on a plate (it was snowing yesterday but still) and play with the contrast of fresh -makes my cell dance- greens and hearty BBQ seasoned Grissini. This dish will tell you exactly what is going on outside of my window using both flavor, texture and overall appearance to paint the picture. And let me tell you, I was not the slightest bit bored while eating...

Fun & Fabulous Facts
For those of you who does not know me, I have a hard time making food that does not contain any superpowers at all. I mean, what fun would it be creating meals out of uber-processed ingredients or meat from sad animals? My goal is forever and always to lure out the glitter in everyone's eyes, give some balance to Mother Earth and let our food become a smash-hit for everyone on this planet! You on board? This is why Raw, Pure, Whole and Vegan foods suit me so well. They give me a full palette of gorgeous colors to paint your plate with while boosting beauty, longevity and love at its very core.
You have all heard about the wonders of greens and all greatness that comes with munching on them regularly. This is why I will not go over it all again. See this as a little reminder that you are so worth living in your fullest potential, and the greens? The best shortcut ever!
I for one know that I can fly far far off on Raw desserts but when I down a huge green juice, that´s when I feel the most satisfied. Fact is our bodies all long for the alkalinity that glorious greens give us since most of us tend to hang around on the sour side of the pH-scale. Many (if not all) of our so called chronic dis-eases have their breeding ground in a sour, oxygen lacking, inflammatory environment. Guess what the solution is? This greenylicious herb soup! Alright, not solely that, but all the wondrous gifts of nature that up our oxygen-game making it hard for imbalances to occur and making it easy for you living in all the greatness that you are.


Raw Greenylicious Herb Soup
(Makes 1 litre)
This soup will (apart from blow your mind) serve 10 peeps as an appetizer or 4 hungry ones as a dinner. You could actually eat it as a green smoothie on the go but it shows its best sides when dancing together with the heavy seasoned bread sticks. Duh ;)

1.5 medium sized Avocado
2 stalks of Celery, finely chopped
1 large handful of roughly chopped Cilantro
1 small handful of roughly chopped Mint
1.5 cup Coconut water
1 cup cold water
1 small tsp of Himalayan salt/Celtic sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground Black pepper
Some fresh garden cress for decoration and final flavor touch

Cut and scoop out the avocados in a large bowl or a high speed blender.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix with a hand blender or in the high speed blender. Keep refrigerated

BBQ Grissini
(Makes 16, 7 inches long bread sticks)
1 cup Sunflower seeds
1 cup Golden flax seeds
2 tablespoons Black sesame seeds (ground for decoration)
Soak the Sunflower seeds and flax overnight in separate bowls, using approximately 2 cups of water for the flax (the amount of water covering the sunflower seeds does not matter). Rinse the sunflower seeds thoroughly, put in a large bowl together with the flax "dough" and blend with a hand blender or in a high speed blender. Make the BBQ spice and blend again until fully incorporated. Make 7 inches long grissini & sprinkle the black ground sesame seeds onto them. Put them on a non stick paper/Teflex sheet and dehydrate in a dehydrator for about 18 hours (flip them over after 10 hours). Done!

BBQ-spice
3 small cloves of garlic
0.5 tsp smoked paprika powder
0.5 tsp black pepper
1 pinch of chilli
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp ground coriander seeds
2 tsp dried oregano
1.5 small tsp salt

Press the garlic cloves and add all spices to the sunflower/flax "dough"

So, known and unknown friends I hope you will all enjoy this foodie illustration of the Swedish spring and hop on over to Twitter, Facebook or Earthsprout if you have any questions, fun ideas or stuff like that. Looking forward to hear from you, honeys!

--And a final thanks for the beautiful Golubka family for continuously presenting inspiration that makes all our hearts sing!--

Much bliss and love /Elenore

Chocolate-Blueberry Pudding by Scandi Foodie

This post is available in: French

Hello April! The truth is, we've been a bit busy - torn between school, work, numerous projects, and 3D event planning. We decided this would be a great time to do what we've been wanting to do for a while - ask a few food bloggers we absolutely admire to be guest posters here at Golubka. We've got a great lineup for you!
Our first guest is the amazing Maria of Scandi Foodie, born in Finland and living in Sydney, Australia. Maria comes up with beautiful and approachable recipes, often with a Scandinavian influence, that speak of freshness, seasonality, and health. Recently, she also became quite an expert on sugar-free and low-sugar cooking, after completing a sugar-free challenge. Jump over to Scandi Foodie to see Maria's welcoming and delicious world. Here is Maria:
Hello dear friends!
I am so honoured and excited to be guest-posting here at Golubka! I find Anya’s food philosophy and creativeness ever so inspiring and the beautiful posts at Golubka are always a real treat to all senses.
Although my personal daily diet is vegan and mostly raw, I have not really ventured into the world of raw desserts. Thus, I wanted to share this chocolate and blueberry pudding with you today, because it reminds me of a childhood favourite of mine. These types of puddings are a staple in the Finnish kitchen and they can be made using berries, fruit, chocolate, or just milk and vanilla. They are so light, quick and easy to whip up and a perfect dessert or an afternoon treat!
This time I’ve opted for a low sugar, vegan version that uses almond milk as a base. I’ve added blueberries, stevia, a touch of rice syrup and warming spices such as cinnamon and vanilla to provide all the sweetness it needs. The result isn’t overly sweet, but certainly ticks all the boxes for a perfect dessert. Hope you enjoy!

Chocolate-Blueberry Pudding
(serves 4-6)
500ml (2 cups) almond milk
100g (about 1 cup) blueberries, fresh or frozen
2 tablespoons pure, unsweetened cacao powder
3 tablespoons potato starch
1 teaspoon granulated stevia
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla powder (ground vanilla)
1 tablespoon brown rice syrup
fresh figs or berries, to serve
toasted almonds, to serve

The easiest way to go about this recipe is to blend all the ingredients (that is, everything but the fresh figs and almonds) in a blender until smooth. Pour this mixture into a small saucepan and heat it, stirring constantly, on a medium heat until it thickens. This will take a few minutes.
As soon as the pudding has thickened, remove the saucepan from the heat and place it in a sink filled with cold water. The water should reach about half-way through the saucepan. Leave the pudding to cool, then scoop it into serving bowls or glasses and top with fresh fruit and toasted almonds. Serve the pudding cool or at room temperature.