RAWking Foods without the processing!

Never in a million years would i have thought I'd be taking perfectly good cashews,almonds,sunflower seeds and turning them into AMAZING! raw food dishes.

The Almond milk was so simple i felt silly! It was a great tasting supplement to use over your cereal. If you add a little Agave Nectar then you don't even need sugar.

Next we have one of my favorites, Jalapeno cheese. It's made with soaked cashews,fresh jalapenos, seasonings,etc and is actually fermented.

This was all thanks to Erica Albanese of Schoolofrawk.com, She's fun,knowledgeable and passionate about raw foods. She makes it easy and understandable, I even watched her create a pretty amazing cheesecake!

I may still enjoy my meats and overall cooked foods but I'm looking forward to incorporating more of these types of foods into my diet.

It really makes you look at how our foods are processed, I believe it's not the meat itself as much as the way we mass produce/consume it.

Stay tuned! Please pledge and Join the Cycle!

~Chris Donnelly

Cycling in Wyoming

Many Wyomingites are not fazed by the snow

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I recently became part of the Join the Cycle team, and have been super excited about the trip and the mission. I have been getting out on my bike whenever possible. Last week, true to Wyoming springs, we got over a foot of snow. Even though this storm closed the roads leading out of town, it did not stop me from riding my bike. Instead of a ride out of town, I made loops in town. Cycle on!
~ melissa

Lots of April snow, but now it's melting fast

The busy, busy bakery!

If I haven't blogged much so far, it because I've been whisking, cracking, mixing, slicing, baking and frosting at top speed. 

I work at Dee's One Smart Cookie, a gluten-free, dairy-free bakery in Connecticut. For those of you familiar with gluten-free baked goods, you are probably familiar with dense bricks of so-called "bread" and crumbly, cardboard cookies. Here at Dee's One Smart cookie bread tastes like bread; cookies like chewy, chunky cookies; and cupcakes just like childhood. So I suppose its no wonder that people are driving in from all over New England and beyond to get their gluten-free fix. 

However, we truly can't bake fast enough for the demand. Lines form out the door, bread is handed over still oven hot and sells out early in the morning. Cupcakes fly out of the shop by the dozen. Easter weekend nearly ended us bakers (hint: the office became "the nap room" and baking lasted all night).

While its exciting to be part of this gluten-free circus, I don't have much time for anything else! My bike training so far has been confined to the gym, but I've been sneaking out on really nice afternoons for a quick jaunt in the outdoors.

Speaking of which, I'm still at the bakery after a long day! 

Organic cotton is sexy.

So I must say that after all the hassle of getting ready to print the tee shirts... I never expected that we'd bang them out in about 3 hours! But I do have to send out a huge THANK YOU to my brother-in-law, Shawn, who basically donated his entire day to the project, and to Identity Tattoo, who lent us the shop to work in for the day.

So many problems arose in the preparations for printing... but once we got started things went well, and I have to say that Shawn and I made a great team.
A quick modeling session proved the shirts to be very comfy. (I'm sporting a girl's medium here)
This beautiful design, created by Hannah, is featured on organic cotton american apparel tees, and comes in 7 sizes. (girls: S,M,L unisex: S,M,L,XL) And hopefully a few people will like the sweet warm gray tees [or us!] enough to donate $25 dollars to our project to help us get our wheels spinning!
The shirts should be up on the website by tomorrow or the next day for purchase... so grab one while they last!

A bicycle logging adventure.

What could a bicycle logging adventure be?... you may ask. Well, it is the sort of adventure one might have with my friend John:

John is a carpenter, bicycle enthusiast, and all around fun guy who I volunteer with at Sibley Bike Depot. I have already helped John with a few small building projects at Sibley, and last week we all decided that the bike shop really needs a cool coat rack. (now that winter is almost over) John conveniently knew of a tree that fell this winter in a park in Saint Paul, and got permission for us to go get it.

He brought a freshly sharpened antique two-man saw, and we cut that tree into a ten-foot section. The sawing went surprisingly fast!The next step was to get our new coat rack out of the woods, across the street, and loaded onto the bike trailer. Estimated weight of the log: 350 pounds! (I'm still not sure how we managed this, I guess I'll have to chalk it up to my super-human vegetarian strength!)

The log was secured with recycled inner tubes. (they make great bungee cords!)
Then I pedaled that 350-pound log all the way across Saint Paul to the bike shop!

(Just kidding! John was the real strong man who mastered this tree... I just tried it out for the last few blocks to see what 350 pounds feels like on the back of a bike. It's surprisingly not that bad, although, I didn't have to go uphill! ...The hardest part was reaching John's pedals!)

The funniest part of the day was that someone had to put weight on the bicycle at all times, or it would go flying up in the air from the weight on the trailer, kind of like a see-saw!

When we got to Sibley, thankfully a few friends were there to assist with lifting and securing the log. The next day, John returned and added these recycled bike parts as pegs, and voila! The new shop coat rack that already gets A LOT of use!

stay tuned for the next big bicycle adventure... LA to Boston!

~casey

I'm stressed...

It's hard to believe that we will really be on our bike seats full time in exactly two months... and there is SO MUCH to do! I'm going a little crazy with it all, and really wishing we had 1 or 2 more riders confirmed to share the duties.... but until then it's just me and Hannah.

I think what I really need is a relaxing nap like this one:

This is Kirby, napping on our last road-trip-slash-cross-country-move... it's hard to believe that's the backseat of a car... but I was pretty proud that I fit all that stuff in, and could still see out the back! (..a little)

Kirby passed away this winter after 13 wonderful years, and I am really wishing she was around now for some kitty-induced stress relief!

At least the weather is improving, (we like to talk about the weather a lot in MN) and I have been riding my bike again... it's not warming up very quickly here, but I am getting used to the chill, and it's great to be on the bike!

In the meantime... I made this sweet map of our route for the website:

(yes, 5+ years of art school can buy you mediocre drawing skills!)

So if you live anywhere along this route, and want to get involved... contact us! We'd love to hear from you!

~casey