Here is the recipe for our special Valentine's day item we had at the cafes on Wednesday!  If you missed it's one night only appearance at Cafe Gratitude, then try making a special meal with this rawesome recipe here!

Ingredients:

According to the Mayan ethnologist,Dr.Alfredo Barrera Vasquez,the name for this dish is sikil (pumpkin or squash seed) and p'ak (tomato).

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.

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

Remember that game "telephone" that you'd play as a kid?  One person whispers something into the next person's ear, and that person would whisper what they heard to the next person and after 10 kids, you'd have a totally different phrase?  I love how recipes work kind of like that.  Each person translates some version of a dish that they've learned in the past, and then the next person creates their own rendition... over time we've got a beautifully diverse spread of dishes representing various locales, cultural specialties, dietary needs and creative explosions.

I have the awesome luck of living next to Chandra Gilbert, one of my favorite chefs of all time, and our Director of Operations at Cafe Gratitude.  Chandra is one of those people who appreciates every vegetable that comes into season and knows how to rock simple ingredients into a knock-your-socks-off kind of dish that keeps the flavors of the original ingredients roaring.  In Chandra's neverending generosity, she spent an evening showing me this heart-warming and tantilizing soup recipe and introduced me into making the holy trinity of mirepoix- the base for any soup or sauce from scratch.  I share this recipe with you as a sort of rendition of what she showed me that evening. 

Hi,                                   So happy to be home from Hawaii. The workshop on Community building was amazing and we are grateful to be here and getting ready for Spring! We have cabbage in the garden and the tomatoes in the greenhouse are looking strong and healthy!                                                                                 We had a surprise “hail/snow storm” last week! It was warm and beautiful and then all of a sudden it got cold and windy and then windy with thunder and lightning and SNOW!  I am including a picture, as it is hard to imagine.

I am loving not wearing a jacket, first time this morning, when I get up early to feed the chickens. I notice I am starting to feel like tomatoes, and zucchini, and strawberries sound good. I love how my diet choices change with the seasons. I was sharing with Matthew yesterday how wonderful it is to walk about the farm when it is quiet and listen to the sounds of nature and feel my heart connecting with the earth. I wish that feeling for everyone.