I hope everyone had a great New Year, mine was a relaxing evening enjoying a little berry-loaded bubbly, a couple of movies and one more night to enjoy the Christmas tree before tear-down today. We’ve never been huge celebrators of New Year’s, especially in this area where every happening place to celebrate is literally too packed to enjoy. The few times we did venture out for parties, I can’t say I had a great time due to massive crowds, stress of confirming everyone in the group is getting home safely, etc. Also, I had to work yesterday, concluding a stressful week of limited resources at the office, battling drunk crowds was not tops on my list.
The last couple of weeks, my insides have been on a bit of a roller coaster which I blamed on holiday and work related stress and a little crap eating. I decided to start the New Year off by giving my digestive system a break and maybe a slight detox by letting the Vita-Mix do most of the work today. I had my usual breakfast smoothie loaded with spinach, oranges and berries. For lunch, I tried Gena’s Carrot Avocado Bisque and Butternut Sage Noodles with Brazil nut cheese.
The soup was great, like a thick, sweet smoothie … in a bowl. I used carrot juice from monstrous, organic carrots I juiced in my new Breville juicer and it was very sweet. I also added a little more fresh ginger because I’m becoming addicted to fresh ginger. This would be a great soup for kids as well, it has a great, natural carrot taste with a sweetness.
The butternut sage noodles is a variation of a raw holiday recipe I got from a Whole Foods demonstration, the original recipe was a more decadent, large serving recipe using a lot of olive oil, but conservative on the spicing to appeal to a larger crowd I guess. I decided to try my own, smaller serving version that’s kicked up a bit and conservative with olive oil.
- 1 medium butternut squash
- 2 tbsp. dried sage
- 2 tbsp. olive oil
- 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
- 2 tsp. pink salt
- 1 tsp. pepper
First, cut and skin the neck portion of a butternut squash.
Skinning is not easy because a couple of layers have to come off, the hard external skin and the lined under skin to expose the bright orange meat. Then spiralize it … which my spiral slicer was not thrilled with, the plastic teeth hard a hard time gripping the end and required plenty of force.
Place noodles into a metal or glass bowl and mix with rest of the ingredients.
Place bowl in dehydrator and dry for about 2 hours. Top with Brazil nut cheese and serve, makes about 2 servings.
The strong sage flavor mixed with the vinegar is a pleasant surprise and the longer the noodles are dried, the more of the olive oil flavor comes out and the Brazil nut cheese sticks nicely to the noodles distributing a strong garlic flavor.
