Its Meat Free Monday and we’re off across the sea to Ireland for some warming pumpkin and tomato soup for these and any of Jenny Littman’s amazing recipes for raw or vegan food see the ReSource Me website.
An overnight business trip to Dublin has given us the opportunity not only to have a night on the town and enjoy some great traditional music, and pay our respects to literature but also check out the city’s first raw food restaurant.We had a great time listening to The Jeremiahs, crammed in with the musicians in a corner O’Donoghue’s pub, where the Dubliners first played. We had room to tap our feet and get lost in the lilting stream of music, not tearing ourselves away till the small hours. They’re great – find them on The Jeremiahs in O’Donoghues
After a later start than planned, we got in a visit to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, one of the earliest works in the written word and certainly one of the most beautiful – which I had never managed to get to in previous visits. We later also got to see the Irish Museum of Writers, with fascinating accounts of all the many great writers in English who were born or lived in Ireland. Patrick Kavanagh has said that ‘the standing army of Irish poets is never less than 15,000’ and music and poetry have certainly flowed from this island around the world in a constant stream, despite the many sufferings of its people.
Trinity was worth a bit of a queue – we had to give way to visiting Draculas and their devilish spawn, aka families taking part in a Bram Stoker treasure hunt in full Halloween regalia. We were especially stunned by the Old Library – Hogwarts eat your heart out! The leatherbound volumes reach cathedral high, and imagining the millions of thoughts and words made us quite dizzy. 
After that we were very happy to have a very grounding and enlivening lunch in a bright modern and busy restaurant. It was easy to be seduced by the wonderful raw food – the restaurant of that name(www.sseduced.com) has only been open a few weeks, and was so full they were having to turn people away (its worth making a booking). Raw food does take time to prepare as it is all done freshly. We had a delicious raw cacao and almond milk hot chocolate while we waited for our friend Abi to join us. We first met Abi in Gozo in the summer, and are now working with his girlfriend Edel on the Gozo retreat we are organising. In fact, we gave Abi and Edel their first raw food meal!
Robin loved his raw food pizza, the gluten-free base made with dehydrated linseeds and sprouted buckwheat, topped with nut cheese and tomatoes and olives, served with delicious salads. I had a sprouted wild rice risotto with spinach, spring onions and chopped tomatoes with a lovely sauce with coconut milk, while Abi described his celery soup as creamy and refreshing, which with a salad and warm onion bread made a filling meal. From the picture I think you can see he enjoyed it!
As Halloween is approaching we were inspired by the seduced soups to have a go at creating a Raw Pumpkin Soup. We made ours with tomato as well. Here’s the recipe:
Pumpkin and Tomato soup
Ingredients
2 cups tomatoes
1 cup of raw chopped pumpkin flesh
1 cup of almond milk
Half a pack of miso
1 tsp lemon juice
Handful of fresh herbs
¼ tsp cumin
1 tsp ginger
Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
Method
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend till smooth. Put in a saucepan on the lowest heat possible until just warmed. Serve with onion bread.
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