This recipe is brought to you by Robin Mast, five star chef turned IT director (ours, in fact!).  She delighted us by bringing some into the office the other day, and I must say, it is an absolute show-stopper.

I first experienced the joy of kale massages at a retreat for student food activists on an anarchist farm in Sebastopol, CA, in 2010. Yes, I fell in love with it so head-over-heels that I still remember exactly where I learned it, and who taught it to me (an adorable deadlocked girl from San Luis Obispo named Anna).
Why did she teach me to knead these dark green spiky leaves? When kale gets a massage, it releases oils that help lubricate it and make it delicious to eat raw (untouched and uncooked it can be a bit abrasive). When you add lemon juice and olive oil, these soak into the leaves, since they’ve been punctured by your kneading. This means every bite of kale is covered in flavor!

Ingredients

By Heather Haxo Phillips

Makes 2 cups

·         2 cups almonds

·         1 cup Rejuvelac (or 1 cup water with 2 capsules of probiotic powder)

·         ½ teaspoon salt

·         1 tablespoon lemon juice

·         2 teaspoons miso

·         a pinch of nutmeg

·         dried or fresh herbs and spices to garnish such as  basil, parsley, rosemary or cracked pepper

 Directions:

1. Blanch the almonds by bringing approximately four cups water almost to a boil and turn off the heat. Add the almonds and allow to sit for 3 - 5 minutes. Drain and rinse the almonds in cool water, then slip off the peels.
2. Place the almonds and Rejuvelac in a high-speed blender and process until smooth, adding more Rejuvelac if necessary to form a smooth, creamy texture. 
3. Pour the mixture into a nut milk bag or cheesecloth-lined strainer (such as a strawberry basket or colander). Allow to strain and ferment for 12-36 hours, until desired tartness is achieved. 
4. Remove the cheese from the strainer and add the salt, lemon juice, miso and nutmeg.  Adjust the salt and lemon juice to your liking.
5. To create a typical chevre-style log, place your cheese as a ball in the middle of a large piece of wax paper.  Roll the sides of the wax paper until you have created a tube shape with your cheese.  Place your cheese, in its wax paper, in the refrigerator 8 – 24 hours so that it can set and thicken.  Just before serving, sprinkle the herbs/spices on all sides of the roll until well covered. Then roll it off the wax paper and onto a plate.  Cut and serve as desired.
6. To mold the cheese into a thick chevre-round, place a nutmilk bag or cheesecloth over your favorite round mold.  Firmly push the cheese into the mold.  Refrigerate the cheese until ready to use, 8 – 24 hours is best.  Plate it by turning over the mold and removing your cheesecloth.  Decorate with your herbs and spices.

Stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, the “Chevre” will last for up to one week.

Have you ever found yourself in the position of needing to loose more than 100 pounds?  Have you ever taken a leap of faith from a secure, successful career to choose your own freedom and fulfillment?  Do you know what it is like to loose the weight, leave the job, and learn to fly?

Well, Alison Ottaway does.  As far as miracle stories go, I believe Alison has lived through 3 or 4 of them, and is still going strong.  It all began in her early twenties, when she refused some chocolate raisins offered her by a friend.  One small step gave her the courage to become the woman she knew she was meant to be, exercising at home, shifting her diet, and ultimately loosing over 140lbs.  A year and a half later, she felt like a new person, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

By her late twenties, she was leading a life that by most accounts could be termed 'successful.' She had a stable marriage, a mortgage, and a highly lucrative job at Microsoft. However, her BMW, expensive lifestyle, and nights spent out drinking did not satisfy her, and she found inside herself a growing desire to feel vibrantly free and alive. Again, it was time for

At culinary school the 2nd class in the curriculum was "food science".  The wonders of this worldly culinary creation (emulsions) can be explained down to straight science without the usual northern california slang & no Frenchy fancy words.

Every cook's gotta know their emulsions. From Harold Mcgee's On Food & Cooking, the bible of foodies, an emulsion is defined as "Such a mixture of two incompatible liquids, with droplets of one liquid dispersed in a continuous phase of the other. The term comes from the Latin word for 'milk', which is just such a mixture"