Category Archives: food

B is for Bananas

It was about a year ago that David and I went to Banana Island. Banana Island, you ask? Where is that? Well, Banana Island is essentially a cleanse where you eat only bananas. We did it for three weeks and we felt amazing.

bananaa

I figured it was an easy way to get started on the high carb, low fat, raw vegan lifestyle and I was right. It’s the only thing I ever did where I didn’t have sugar withdrawal. Now, bananas are a HUGE part of our lives and we go through a lot of them each week.

Because we eat so many bananas each day, we always have to have some ripening. Since we moved, we still haven’t gotten far enough ahead of the game to have some to freeze and make ice cream out of which is a deficiency I need to correct. Soon. Spooning banana ice cream (frozen bananas put through the juicer with a blank = soft serve) off of celery sticks is a taste treat like no other. I also saw a recipe for mint chocolate chip ice cream yesterday that I’d like to try. Anyway, I digress.

rack

Bananas are super good for you. We wait to eat them until they have brown spots on them. This makes them easier to digest and gives you a whole range of health benefits.

brown

The other day, I got the surprise of a lifetime when I opened a banana and found twins inside! Trust me, I’ve eaten a lot of bananas in my 54 years and I’ve never seen this before. I was so weirdly excited.

twins

I have blogged about bananas before but in the event you missed why I eat so many, the reason is because they are calorically dense. I’m a pretty large (5’11’ on a large frame) and extremely active person. If I eat a pound of lettuce, which is a lot of food, it’s still only around 100 calories which isn’t good enough. The bananas help to keep my calorie levels up.

They are also a good workout. When I buy a case of bananas, 15 bunches, it’s somewhere around 40 pounds. I have to squat those babies eight times to get them from the car to the apartment. 🙂

So, anyway, that’s the story of bananas in my life. I love them, they fill me up, they’re delicious. 🙂

Mmmm Summer Rolls!

8 Replies

One of my very favorite things to eat these days is Summer Rolls. I’ll admit I don’t make them too much because the dipping sauce, which is divine, contains a little more fat than I like right now. But every once in a while, you’ve just gotta.

low-fat-high-carb-raw-vegan-summer-rolls

I made them for dinner last night and, as well as being delicious, they are super easy.

You’ll need some spring roll wrappers. I got the biggest rounds they had at the Asian market. They have them in some standard grocery stores, too, but there’s a bigger selection (and bigger wrappers!) at the Asian market.

Then, you put whatever kind of veggies you want in them.

This time I had romaine, spinach, carrots, cucumber, tomato and alfalfa sprouts. I will tell you that in my opinion, these guys are NOTHING without the alfalfa sprouts but you decide for yourself.

You just dip the wrappers into water to soften them up, layer the veggies of your choice inside, and roll them up. Easy peasy!

You will, most definitely,want to dip these in this dipping sauce that I modified from one that Megan Elizabeth shows on her YouTube channel.

I use 2 tablespoons of almond butter, 2 tablespoons of coconut sugar, 1 tsp of Liquid Aminos, 1/4 cup of water and some crushed red pepper for the dipping sauce. I take all of the ingredients and blend them in my little Magic Bullet which does a fabu job of mixing it all up. I have mixed it with a whisk, before I got the Magic Bullet, and it’s a little difficult because the almond butter is very thick. But it can work.

And that’s all there is too it! A tasty way to eat a bunch of veggies. I can usually eat three of of these and sometimes more if I’m particularly hungry.

Try them, you’ll like them! 🙂

Mango!

Leave a reply

Since I started eating the high carb, low fat, raw vegan diet, I’ve listened to other raw foodies on YouTube extolling the virtues and deliciosity of mangoes. I didn’t think I’d ever eaten one and, honetlly, I wasn’t sure how.

mango

I saw the red kind of mango at Aldi several months ago and the glambaby and I were going to try it. I’m so glad I tried it first or she would’ve probably thought I was trying to poison her. It wasn’t good. I’m not sure if it was unripe or what. I sincerely had no knowledge about mangoes.

On our first trip to Costco here, I saw the mangoes and mentioned to David that I rally wanted to try one but didn’t have any idea of how to know if they were ripe or not. A lady who was selecting some for herself turned around and gave me a mini mango class. It was so sweet of her but I wasn’t ready to buy a warehouse store quantity of something I wasn’t sure about so I didn’t get any mangoes that day.

cut_mango

A few days later we were at a grocery store where I got one yellow mango to try using the instructions the lady at Costco gave me. And guess what? It was good! I liked it.

I need to figure out how to get into them better. I didn’t know what kind of a seed situation was inside. The first half was a mess and I basically sucked the flesh off the skin. But the second half I was able to cut into chunks that came off easily when I ate them.

So, yum! I’ll definitely get some more mangoes. 🙂

Raw Vegan Avocado Pasta

2 Replies

I’ve been sitting here the last couple of days marveling at this person I’ve become. It’s Christmas time after all and I’m not planning tons of uber sweet treats for us all to eat. No, instead, things like this happen. The other day I clicked into Pinterest to look at something Nikki wanted to do for the glambaby’s birthday and I saw this:

I clicked through to see the ingredients and immediately became obsessed with eating this salad. Now, I’d heard about hemp seeds before but had never eaten them so I’m not sure why I felt I needed to eat this, I just did. As soon as I could get away, I ran to Akins and bought hemp seeds and hemp oil and came home and made the salad. I wasn’t disappointed. One of the best things I’ve eaten since I started my raw journey.

I find myself finding other recipes that aren’t necessarily raw and trying to figure out how to make them raw and that’s what I did today. I came across this recipe for Avocado Pasta. I loved the idea but there were so many things I don’t eat in the recipe. Still, it leant itself nicely to being modified and I came up with this for lunch today. Oh yum! Seriously one of the best things I’ve eaten. If I had more zucchini, I’d have made myself another huge bowl.

raw_avocado_pasta

I will definitely eat this again and again and again. The only thing I’ll do differently is add more ground black pepper which I adore. Yum!

Last year at Christmas, I think there were more desserts than people here to eat them. This year, my biggest Christmas dinner dilemma is what to do with all of my bananas so we can all sit at the dining table. What a change! 🙂

bananas

Raw Vegan Avocado Pasta

2014-12-06 13:53:17

Delicious zoodles with a creamy avocado sauce.

Write a review

Save Recipe

Ingredients

4 small or 2 large zucchini
1 ripe avocado
1/4 tsp basil
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tbs lemon juice
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
Ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

Spiralize zucchini into zoodles. Cuz tomatoes in half.
To make the avocado sauce, place avocado, spices, and lemon juice in blender or food processor. Blend. Add water to make a smooth sauce.
Pour over zoodles and tomatoes, toss until evenly coated. Add ground pepper to taste.

Notes

You can use fresh herbs and spices, in fact they're probably preferable but I was in a hurry. Yum yum! 🙂

By Lauri Rottmayer

Adapted from DamnDelicious.net

Lauri Rottmayer https://www.rottitude.com/

Raw Sweet Potato, Carrot & Spinach Soup

Leave a reply

I’ve been having a heck of a time getting warm today even though it’s supposed to be a record breaking warm day. I decided to have soup for lunch and boy was it GOOD! 🙂

raw_sweet_potato_carrot_spinach_soup

I bought some sweet potatoes the other day and wanted to use them but, like a lot of days, I sometimes feel sweeted out from all of the fruit I eat and most of the recipes season with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. I wanted something spicy!

I chopped up a large carrot and blended it with a cup of water. I then cut up two sweet potatoes and chunked them and tossed them in. The mixture was pretty thick so I added another cup of water. Then I found some little orange peppers that I forgot I had and tossed in a couple of those and some onion. I then added some of the home made taco seasoning that is always in the cupboard and cilantro. Oh how I love cilantro!

I blended it all in the Vitamix until it was warm. Then I poured about 2/3 of the soup into my bowl and added a big handful of spinach to the remaining soup in the blender and blended it. I tried to swirl the two colors of soup but I think I had too much green to make it pretty but, oh well, it was delicious and that’s better than pretty, right?

Raw Sweet Potato, Carrot & Spinach Soup

2014-10-25 12:45:05

Serves 1

Delicious, spicy raw soup!

Write a review

Save Recipe

Prep Time

10 min

Total Time

10 min

Prep Time

10 min

Total Time

10 min

Ingredients

1 large carrot
2 cups water
2 sweet potatoes
2 mini orange peppers
1 cup spinach
chopped onion to taste
2 tsp home made taco seasoning*
cilantro to taste

Instructions

Place 2 cups of water in Vitamix and add carrot. Blend.
Add chopped sweet potato and peppers. Blend until smooth.
Add onion, taco seasoning and cilantro. Blend until warm.
Pour 2/3 of soup into bowl. Add spinach to the remaining soup and blend until smooth. Pour in the middle of first soup and swirl. Garnish with more cilantro and cracked black pepper. Yum!

By Lauri Rottmayer

Adapted from Raw Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Spinach

Lauri Rottmayer https://www.rottitude.com/

*I use the taco seasoning recipe found here.

Easter Cake Success!

Leave a reply

A couple of years ago, I pinned a cake to my Easter board at Pinterest:

Look at the comment. 🙂 So I decided this was going to be that day and gathered what I needed. It was really easy.

I made the chocolate layer cake in 6 inch pans because we really didn’t need that much cake and it makes it just her size. Then I made buttercream frosting and tinted it purple. Put that together, attached the Peeps all around, sprinkled Easter M&Ms on top and Voila! My cake:

I was really happy with the way it turned out and hoped the glambaby would love it, too.

We had it for brunch today and she loved it!

She wanted the Peeps off of it. She decided earlier that she likes Peeps since they are marshmallows which she loves. She then proceeded to eat the ears off of every bunny Peep she got a hold of. She liked the M&Ms that were on top of it, too. Honestly, I’m not sure if she even ate the cake part of it but I knew the way it looked made her happy and that was enough for me. 🙂

Success!

Carpe-ing the Java at Cafe’ Mondo

Leave a reply

After CoffeeCON, I drove out to where I call The Middle Of Nowhere, Illinois. I call it this because I get NO cell service there. It is my cousin’s house.

I love to visit here and just hang out and watch her animals. This time, there was no Llily the Llama as she had passed away since my last visit. There was, however, another dog named Cosette, lots of chickens, and kitties. The day it snowed, the mini horses were playing like little kids in the pasture. I wish I could have gotten video but I was so afraid they would stop when I opened the door.

We drove to the nearest town that was bigger than 84 people which is the population of the nearest town to them, Adeline.

My cousin had to run some errands and we stopped off at Cafe’ Mondo, in Freeport, for lunch. The cafe’ is cute and I loved the coffee pot display they had on one wall.

Of course you know that I needed coffee and I was happy to find Tanzanian Peaberry coffee as an offering. I’d never had it before and I liked it’s smooth, nutty flavor a lot.

The menu was nice with a lot of sandwich offerings. I chose the Colosseum Sandwich which was a grilled chicken breast, provolone cheese and tomatoes served hot on a bun. We also ordered a little piece of dessert to split that was chocolate and caramel. I don’t know the name but it was delish!

The service was very good and friendly. If I get back to Freeport, I’ll definitely stop back at Cafe’ Mondo. It was a good choice. 🙂

Carpe-ing the java at LaBriola Bakery Cafe’

Leave a reply

After a day of coffee, coffee, coffee at CoffeeCON, on Sunday I need to have…coffee. 🙂

When I knew I’d be in Chicago, I made plans to visit with a long time twitter friend, Jay Beaton aka @Chi_Coffee_Guy.

I was staying out in Oakbrook so a quick Google search of coffee + Oakbrook brought me to the LaBriola Bakery Cafe. Having no advance knowledge of where this place was in relationship to my hotel, I arranged to meet Jay there. And it was SO easy. Three roads in one. Cermak turned into West 22nd Street, turned into Butterfield Road and I was there. 🙂

And what a great choice I made! You see, I had also checked to see if they served Almond Croissants. They are my favorite and I have not found a real almond croissant in the state of Oklahoma yet.

I have fond memories of almond croissants at a no name coffee shop in New Orleans. Delicious and as big as my head. This one was very close to that.

I had to window shop through the other cases, too.

On instagram, my friend Suzie said of this next photo, “That right there is what Heaven will look like.” I think she’s right. As long as there’s a coffee pot somewhere in the area. 🙂

All in all, this was a great place to visit. The food (and coffee!), service and company were all top notch. You know my main goal in being on twitter is to meet people to have coffee with and it was good to share a cup with Jay. 🙂

How to Get Rid of Dead Bananas and Avocados

Leave a reply

The other day when we were dropping the glambaby back home, my daughter-in-love, Nikki, asked if I wanted four avocados. They were pretty ripe and she wasn’t going to use them. I love avocados so I said sure.

I needed to use them right away, though, four of them. They were very ripe. That’s a lot of avocado for me to eat alone. I remembered seeing a chocolate avocado pudding recipe so I searched for it. Since I also had some dead bananas, it was a perfect thing to use the avocados for.

I thought, just maybe, that if it was good enough, David would eat it. And he did. He said it had an unusual flavor but he liked it. Awesome!

So today, I still had two very ripe avocados and two very ripe bananas left. On Tuesday, Nikki had given me some dates so I decided that I would make a chocolate pie with these things. I made the chocolate avocado pudding I made last night and then made Fudge Babies into a pie crust.

I’m really looking forward to trying this after dinner. It looks delish! The best part is, it’s healthy and has no sugar in it. 🙂

Special Sauce

2 Replies

I was reading Gini Dietrich’s new book and in it she says that even if you give someone your recipe, they will never be able to make it like you do. She was using a cooking analogy for why it’s okay to let people know how you do your business but it’s really true.

I am known all over the world for My Cookies (a.k.a. Lauri’s Cookies). I give the recipe out freely and it’s a really precise recipe. And, yet, I still get people asking if I left something out or changed it so no one could make them like I do. The answer to that is no. Because you will never be able to make them like I do so I don’t have to. 🙂

Back when we lived in Clearwater, the Tampa Tribune interviewed me. I gave them the recipe for my cookies and for my Kahlua Fudge Poundcake (which is extremely photogenic, by the way). Being a Rottmayer in the day of phone books, it was hard to hide and when my cookie recipe didn’t turn out, my phone rang off the hook with people wanting to know why. I give pretty detailed instructions so I couldn’t give them an answer. I could only ask, “Did you follow the recipe exactly?”

In the facebook group for Gini’s book, I left this info about the cookies to confirm what Gini had written. This had Gini and others ask for the recipe. A quick search of my blog showed that I have NEVER put this recipe here. I couldn’t believe it. So here it is.

My Cookies (a.k.a. Lauri's Cookies)

2014-03-05 14:37:36

Yields 3

My famous cookie recipe

Write a review

Save Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup Butter; (I mean the real stuff. Land O'Lakes unsalted preferred)
½ cup Light brown sugar (C&H)
½ cup Sugar (C&H)
1½ tsp Pure vanilla extract; (NOT imitation)
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 Egg
1.5 cups Gold Medal flour
2½ cup Old fashioned Quaker Oats; (not the quick sawdust stuff)
6 ounces Semi-sweet chocolate chips (I prefer Guittard)

Instructions

Melt butter in microwave. Stir in sugars, vanilla and soda and mix well.
Mix in egg. Add flour until smooth. Add oats and chocolate chips.
Drop by scoops onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350* for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on rack until the next sheet comes out of the oven, then remove to rack or platter.
Makes approximately 3½ dozen awesome cookies

By Lauri Rottmayer

Lauri Rottmayer https://www.rottitude.com/

Please let me know if you try them. If it doesn’t work out for you, please don’t call. 😉