I Am Grateful Recipes and Lifestyle of Café Gratitude

Terces Engelhart and Orchid
From the founder of the popular Café Gratitude restaurants

Retail Price: $24.95
Online Price: $19.96
ISBN: 1556436475
Trade Paper, 7 x 9.25, 200 pp.
Health / Nutrition
North Atlantic Books

Description:
With locations in San Francisco, Berkeley, Marin, and Los Angeles, Café Gratitude is well known for its inspiring environment and flavorful organic foods. In I Am Grateful, founder Terces Engelhart presents the personal and business philosophies she shares with her husband and cofounder Matthew. She tells the story of her own path to healing and recovery from eating disorders, and explains the benefits of a raw-food diet. Gorgeous color photographs accompany easy-to-follow recipes for the café’s most popular items, making it easy for readers to prepare live foods at home. Recipes include café favorites such as the "I Am Luscious" raw chocolate smoothie, "I Am Bountiful" bruschetta, "I Am Elated" spicy rolled enchiladas, and "I Am Amazing" lemon meringue pie with macadamia nut crust.

Author Biography:

Terces Engelhart has been preparing and serving flavorful food and delicious meals since her childhood. She is interested in the healing power of food to help people who suffer from diet-based diseases, as she did. Engelhart and her husband, Matthew, opened the first location of their popular Café Gratitude 2004 in San Francisco, California. They have opened a second restaurant in San Francisco as well ones in Berkeley, Marin, and Los Angeles. The Café, which support local farmers, sustainable agriculture, and environmentally friendly products, serve living, organic food made with the freshest ingredients possible.The Engelharts published The Abounding River Logbook as well as The Abounding River board game, both of which focus on their practice of being in abundance. In addition, they lead monthly workshops on this topic and are often asked to be guests on radio and TV shows. The Engelharts live with two of their five children in San Francisco.

Orchid Slayen has studied food and cooking in such exotic places as Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, Central America, and Mexico. He specializes in creating fabulous meals designed to delight the senses and nourish the body. Orchid currently resides in San Francisco, California and Liberty, Tennessee, seducing the palates of private clients as well as the community at Café Gratitude.

PURCHASING
North Atlantic Books


Success Through Play™ comments:
We are very excited to bring you our first recipe book feature today! A few months ago, we headed to San Francisco, California and stumbled upon a restaurant by the name of "Cafe Gratitude".


We hadn't heard of it before, but since we were famished and have a spirit of adventure, we thought lets give it a try. The evening was upon us and we needed a place to rest our legs and recharge our energy. We hadn't known at the time that we had stumbled upon the perfect place to do just this! We were immediately struck with the interior decor and warm and friendly staff and sensed that we were in for a real treat that night. A waiter soon arrived and introduced us to the restaurant, concept and menu. He explained that the menu list was in the form of affirmations, so when we order we would order "the affirmation". To view the menu, please click here. Cafe Gratitude is a raw foods, organic restaurant. All the food served here is vegan and the restaurant attracts a wide variety of culinary taste buds daily. We were new to the "raw foods movement" and were very excited to taste the food. We were very impressed with the wonderful flavors and textures of the food and vowed to return!

We later found out that the restaurant would be publishing a selection of the recipes and we knew straightaway that we were interested in featuring the recipe book. We would like to thank North Atlantic Books for sending us a review copy as well as the staff at Cafe Gratitude for their culinary support and guidance! Raw food recipes in general call for a dehydrator, but we never had one available and used our oven on the lowest setting instead. The dishes would have been considerably easier to prepare should we have purchased one. Some of the dessert ingredients were particularly hard to find (Irish Moss which is listed as a key ingredient), so perhaps in future editions, the authors can suggest a suitable replacement which may be more readily available. Almost every recipe requires that the ingredients are soaked for several hours and a good quality mixer such as a Vita-Mix is essential for blending the soaked ingredients!


We were eager to get started and decided to prepare the following 6 dishes and lined up a team of eager taste testers:

I am Relishing (Buckwheat Crackers)

One really needs to have a dehydrator to make these crackers! Ours took quite a while to set up in the oven, but the end result was worth it. We ended up with a delicious tasting vegetable cracker! Yum.

I am Cheerful (Sun Burgers)

The entire family enjoyed these Burgers which tasted fresh and flavorful.

Almond or Hemp Seed Pesto over Quinoa

This pesto was simple and fast to prepare and served over Quinoa, became the new favorite way to eat Quinoa.

I am Youthful (Almond Milk)

This was our first attempt at making Almond Milk. It was more time consuming then we thought that it would be, but well worth the effort. The taste of fresh almond milk is simply heavenly and nothing like the store bought variety! We must invest in nut milk bags plus a good mixer which will save us time!

Vanilla Hazelnut Ice Cream

This ice-cream is truly delicious and refreshing and the rich creamy flavor won over our panel.

I am Thrilled (Cinnamon Rolls)

This recipe received the top award from our panel of taste testers and we were thrilled that we were able to use the oven successfully to prepare them! The taste and texture of these cinnamon buns will leave you satisfied and you can rest assured knowing that they are heart healthy.

If you are interested in adding more high fibre foods to your diet and generally preparing healthy foods, this recipe book is for you. The book features beautiful photographs which tantalize and invite the reader to try out the recipes! We are looking forward to trying more recipes from this book!