An Introduction to Sea Spaghetti: Another Healthy Raw Food Snack

Do you wish there could be an all-raw, all-natural, all-nutritious alternative to pasta? If so, read on.

There is now a wide variety of raw food products which try to fill the gap left by processed, hard to digest wheat pasta. Many people love zucchini, a vegetable that is easy to slice into long pasta strands, and some also enjoy spiral slicing carrots, beets, turnips and more. Many are also enthusiastic about kelp noodles, as they can be stored for a much longer time than zucchini and other veggies, but more than a few people deplore their crunchy texture or their sometimes off-putting smell.

Few raw pasta lovers are aware of yet another pasta substitute, one without a chemical aroma, a crunchy texture, or a short shelf life: sea spaghetti. Sea spaghetti (Himanthalia elongata) is another seaweed wonder. It grows in the natural seaweed fields of Brittany, and unlike kelp noodles, it actually looks like pasta right out of the water!

Processing and Color

Like most sea vegetables, sea spaghetti is a natural dark purple color, and a rich source of chlorophyll and minerals. In comparison, kelp noodles are transparent, as the outer skin is removed. This may seem natural at first, but, if you take a piece of kelp and try to remove the outer skin, you will find that it is not always easy to do so, and you will not end up with the final kelp noodle product.

Packaged kelp noodles have gone through a certain amount of processing, while sea spaghetti is an all-natural, unprocessed, unheated and nutritious product. After harvesting, sea spaghetti is gently dehydrated in a drying cupboard in Brittany and doesn’t ever reach 115 degrees.

Texture

Being the natural sea product that they are, sea spaghetti thrive in a cool, water rich environment and will fully saturate in it, yielding long, soft linguine like strands.

Nutrition

Sea spaghetti is more nutritious than kelp noodles, just like unprocessed kelp is more nutritious than kelp noodles. Consider the following numbers:

In a 4 ounce serving, kelp noodles contain dietary fiber (4%), calcium (15%) and iron (4%). The nutrition facts label says little else.

In a 4 ounce serving, sea spaghetti contains dietary fiber (5%), vitamin C (400%), potassium (40%), magnesium (29%), calcium (25%) and iodine (56%). Sea spaghetti is by far one of the most nutritious raw pasta replacement available, and when you consider that each sea spaghetti package contains more than 10 times the above serving size, it really is a bargain!

Taste

Sea spaghetti are no different from other types of seaweed, with a pleasant, fresh taste of the sea. Rinsing will help remove much of the salty flavor, yielding a milder noodle.

Sea spaghetti is delightful in a cashew based tomato-cream sauce with crushed red pepper, or in a fra diavolo-type sauce rich in fresh tomatoes, garlic and parsley. No shrimps needed here! Creamy pesto sauces are also delightful tossed with soft, long stranded sea spaghetti.

Storage

Unlike fresh vegetables and kelp noodles, which need to be refrigerated, sea spaghetti is low temperature dried and shelf stable. You can stock as many packages as you’d like and keep them in a dark, dry cupboard for at least 3 years!

If you’ve been longing for the long soft strands of grain based pasta and are looking for an easy to digest, nutritious and delicious alternative, you will love sea spaghetti! Kate Magic recommends you “just soak it in the morning & serve it in the evening,” and in her book Evie’s Kitchen, Shazzie writes: “I (…) love sea spaghetti, which comes in long strands of tagliatelle-style seaweed. After soaking in water for an hour, it makes the base of one of the most satiating raw meals on the planet.”

I like to soak an entire package of sea spaghetti in a large covered container and keep it in the fridge, changing the water every couple of days. Then, I just whip up a quick sauce, toss in a few cups of soaked sea spaghetti, and I’ve got one of the fastest, most nutritious foods possible!

Tagliatelle Al Pesto

When soaked, sea spaghetti becomes large and soft like tagliatelle noodles, and when coated in a delicious raw pesto sauce, it is so similar to real pasta you won’t believe your taste buds!

Ingredients:

• 1 package raw sea spaghetti
• 2 ounces fresh basil
• 1/2 cup raw pine nuts
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 T nutritional yeast (optional, but yummy and rich in B vitamins!)
• 1/4 cup olive oil, and more as needed
• 1/4 t salt, or to taste

Directions:

• Soak the sea spaghetti overnight in the fridge. Rinse, if desired, and set aside.
• In a food processor, blend all the other ingredients to make pesto. Add a little more olive oil if it’s too dry.
• Toss the sea spaghetti with the pesto, arrange on a serving plate, and enjoy!

Garlic & Butter Sea Spaghetti

A quick and easy meal which can be ready in seconds if you have pre-soaked sea spaghetti.

Ingredients

• 1 cup soaked sea spaghetti
• 1 clove garlic, mashed until creamy
• 1 t- 1 T olive oil (or less, just to coat the spaghetti)
• Ground black pepper, to taste
• Chopped fresh parsley, or a few pinches dried
• 1 T pine nuts
• 1 T hemp seeds

Directions

• Mix the garlic, olive oil, pepper and parsley together.
• Toss with the sea spaghetti, and arrange on a plate.
• Sprinkle the pine nuts and hemp seeds on top, and serve.

Recipes courtesy of Sirova Raw Foods (http://www.sirova.com) where you can purchase sea spaghetti in the US. To purchase sea spaghetti in the UK, please visit www.rawliving.eu.

Mom-and-Son Obstacle Course

“On your mark, get set, go!” my son called out to me as I stood in a slightly bent position in anticipation of an obstacle course he had just created along a pier. The calm river was my audience.

This activity took place last weekend after Caleb and I rode our bikes a few miles to a lovely boardwalk and pier that overlooks the St. Johns River. This new nature haven of mine is located so close to home, yet I just learned about it when my neighbor and I were out walking the day before my adventure with Caleb.

After Caleb and I peddled across the pier shown in the picture, he hopped off his bike and said, “I’ve got to explore” as he began browsing the many sections of the pier while noticing lots of spider webs.

Because the location is such a perfect spot for doing yoga, I suggested we do that, to which Caleb replied: “All you want to do is yoga,” assuming I was merely talking about some general yoga stretches (and I was)! However, it was clear that he wanted to exert tremendous energy right from the get-go! I guess the bike ride to the pier was enough of a warm-up for him.

I, therefore, suggested an obstacle course — (which, as I’m typing, has given me the idea to do Obstacle-course yoga in one of my upcoming children’s classes or next time we’re out on the pier). Caleb ended up creating the majority of the course after telling me I was lacking imagination at the time. The nerve of him! Does he not realize I was the one who added the component to his obstacle course that turned out to be the most challenging part of all?

When Caleb demonstrated the course, for one part he hopped up on a bench and ran across it before running down to a plank and hopping across with one foot. “Instead of just running across the bench, let’s jump up like this,” I suggested as I showed how we could hop up on the bench with two feet (which calls for more leg strength) and then jump down and up again, etc. It would turn out to be about five sets of jumps!

It all sounded good at first, but after having to do it five times, well, that ended up being the part of the course that ate up most of my time as Caleb counted, “….five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi….,” and so on. Of course, athletic Caleb could just instantly hop up with two feet, repeating each up-and-down jump five times as if he was simply gulping a glass of water. However, I had to do a little double bounce with my feet prior to each take-off for added momentum. “I knew I should have had more than a few sips of that green smoothie earlier this morning,” I thought as I approached one of the jumps.

Although I didn’t do the jump portion of the obstacle course as quickly as my son (since it was a competition), turns out, that little drill sargeant of mine was still quite impressed with Mommy’s gross motor skills. “Good job,” Sargeant Caleb said to me as he embraced my hand with a high-five upon completing the drills, twice. He ran the obstacle course a few more times than I did….merely out of a desire to set a new record for himself each time.

As we exited the boardwalk on our bikes, I pointed out a tree in the shape of a cross that I had noticed the day before. The moss that hung from it made the tree look as if it was enrobed, and the branches on the top of it were clearly shaped like a crown of thorns. That tree has now become quite special to me.

At “my Jesus tree” I read a poem, aloud, from Maya Angelou’s book, On the Pulse of Morning. As synchronicity goes, my hand had landed on this book and specific poem before we left home that morning. I figured we’d blend some reading into our pier outing. And, next to that tree that morning, this was the perfect poem to read! (Thanks, Maya Angelou!)

“Here root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree

I am yours–your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes

Upon this day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.”

Peace & Love,

Penny