Weird Hippie Dishes

I was never really a cooked pizza fan.  It might all stem from the day long ago when my sister puked in Pay 'n' Save after eating at Pizza Hut.  The image of miles of gooey, greasy mozzarella encasing the shelf of Barbie corvettes is permanently etched in my memory.  

Raw pizza, however, I do enjoy quite a bit.  Without all that cheese you can actually taste the separate flavors.  This evening I pulled out one of my frozen crusts and topped it with tomato sauce (leftover from the zucchini pasta dish), cheeze, spinach, and finally veggies and olives marinated in nama shoyu, olive oil and garlic.  A brief stint in the D and mmmmmm.  It may look like one of those weird hippie dishes, but it's the real deal. 

All pizza ingredient recipes from Delightfully Raw

I made TH a vegan cauliflower slow cooker curry that smelled amazing.  (I adapted the recipe from here).  This also looks like something I would have been embarrassed to bring to lunch in middle school, but TH likes it. 

My evening chocolate fix (brownie from The Raw Dessert, coconut whipped cream from Delightfully Raw):

I went a little big on the coconut whipped cream

Question:  Does anyone have any good slow cooker recipes?  I don't eat much cooked food, but I love to throw a bunch of random ingredients in the slow cooker and come home to lovely smells in the cabin. So much easier than cooking for TH after work.  

Raw Curry

Eating raw in the winter doesn't appeal to some people because they believe that eating raw means always eating cold food.  This is so not the case!  When I have a hankering for a comforting,  soul-warming dish I simply put my lunch/dinner plate in the D and pull it out when it's warm all the way through.  For example, this weekend TH and I enjoyed an outstanding curry with kelp noodles.  I used my leftover kale chip curry sauce from Delightfully Raw and mixed zucchini, cabbage and broccoli in with the kelp noodles. The combination of creamy sauce and the D helped the noodles lose their crunchy texture.  It was flippin' fantastic.

We followed the curry with a little raw cheesecake from, once again, Delightfully Raw.  This meal was pure bliss.  

Damn, I have a crush on that recipe book.  I love that I can confidently make any recipe, secure in the fact that I will not be wasting hard to come by ingredients.  I have one raw food recipe book, which will go unnamed, that I had to stop using because every recipe I tried tasted like it had been dug out of the litter box in a demented cat lady's house.  In fact, I just found several jars filled with brown substances of varying consistencies in the freezer, thanks to the afore mentioned recipe book.   I remember thinking, "I can't throw this away.  Maybe I will like it later."  Still not liking it.  

Question:  Do you have a favorite always reliable recipe book?

Kale Chips for Breakfast

This morning the D offered up curry kale chips (recipe from Delightfully Raw).  If you are a kale chip fan, you must try these!  The sauce is sweet and a just a tiny bit spicy.  I had to do some substituting as organic red peppers are nearly impossible to find this time of year.  I replaced the red pepper with extra carrots and some zucchini.  Scrumptious curry sauce made from veggies?  Hell yeah.

I also made the (imo, better than cooked) pasta sauce from Delightfully Raw.  It has been so much fun to uncook my way through that book! 

I couldn't find my mandolin to make pretty noodles (I must have given it away after shredding my fingers one too many times) so I peeled a few zukes for the noodles and topped the sauce with:   

Brazil Nut "Parmesan" 

2 cups Brazil nuts, soaked for a few hours

juice from 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp (+?) salt

2 tbs nutritional yeast 

Blend* ingredients and then crumble onto dehydrator tray. Leave in the D at 105 overnight. 

*Food processing might be easier, I just didn't relish the idea of cleaning the f.p. afterwards. 

The parmesan added a nice tangy, salty, crunchy texture.  Of course, TH had to mention that it tasted nothing like the real thing, but whatever. 

A little post lunch dessert:

I used real vanilla beans in the cheesecake and I think it made a difference in flavor.   The outsides look like dried up worms, but inside there are thousands of tiny, aromatic seeds.  It's kind of a hassle to scrape out the seeds, but your fingers will smell great afterwards!

Question:  Has anyone ever blended the entire vanilla bean, pod and all, into a dessert?

Raw Honey Time

When I opened up our Full Circle Farm boxes today I was pleased to remember that I had ordered this raw honey along with my weekly produce:

After a little spoon licking I knew I needed to put it to good use. First, I tried it out in my mid-morning power pudding. 

1/8 cup chia seeds

6/8 cup water

sweetener to taste (I used a teaspoon of honey)

gogi berries

pomegranate seeds

Chia seeds, according to Dr. Weil at www.drweil.com, are higher in omega-3 fatty acids than flaxseeds. They are also full of antioxidants and other goodies like fiber and calcium.  I love them because of the fun goo that develops with soaking.   

Mexi Mountains for lunch (guac on raw crackers, a little salsa and hot sauce drizzled on top):

I had the counter rocking with my wimpy food processor as I put together a cheesecake crust (almonds, dates, vanilla and salt) and then tried my raw honey and new sunflower lecithin in a cheesecake filling recipe from Delightfully Raw.  It had an amazing texture and a rich, decadent flavor.  

Can't wait to have one of these lovelies for dessert: 

"cheese"cake tart with blackberry sauce

Keeping it Simple

When I have time on the weekends I like to play with somewhat complicated raw food recipes.   During the workweek, however, I like to keep things quick and easy.

Breakfast is always a green smoothie, which I carry to work in a mason jar (inducing the gag reflex in my first period class).

Lunch is veggies and some kind of dip that I've prepared in bulk over the weekend. This week's dip is Ani Phyo's raw Red Pepper Hummus.  

In the afternoons I snack on fruit and nuts or raw cereal and nut milk. 

Weekday dinners are always a gigantic salad with EVOO and ACV, or a dressing made over the weekend, like this yummy ranch from Sunny Raw Kitchen.

TH always has a smaller salad, then I usually make him something cooked.  This evening I had some extra squash and zucchini kicking around so I sauteed it in olive oil, sea salt and pepper.  TH enjoyed it in a tortilla with beans and goat cheese.  It smelled lovely.

Dessert is often some kind of chocolatey goodness.  Before eating high raw I always craved dessert, but rarely let myself eat it.  Now I eat dessert every night that I want it.  It's so fun to eat something this delicious on a regular basis and not gain weight or feel yucky after eating it.  

Sunflower Lecithin

Many raw food recipes call for soy lecithin, an emulsifier that makes goodies like chocolate and ice cream smooth and creamy.  I generally avoid soy, which is why I was curious about this guy:

(You can read more about sunflower lecithin here.)

Alone, it has a mild taste and interesting texture, kind of like molasses, but stickier, and it seemed to coat my teeth and tongue before melting in my mouth.  

I decided to try this first in hemp milk.  Viv blended up 3 cups water, 1 cup hemp seeds, a little agave, a dash of vanilla, a pinch of salt and a spoonful of lecithin. 

I was a little worried about the brown color of the lecithin dirtying up the milk, but it actually remained fairly white.  

It was creamily delish with raw buckwheat cereal. 

I then tried it in place of the soy lecithin for the coconut cream from Sunny Raw Kitchen.  The result was a little tan in color, but it made a fantastic topping for a raw brownie from The Raw Dessert.  Wow, this was amazing!  I can't imagine choosing a cooked dessert over a delectable treat like this!  

I can't wait to try the sunflower lecithin in other dessert recipes.  

Question:  Anyone done any experimenting with soy lecithin substitutes?  

Package Delights

I love getting packages at the PO, and this weekend's delivery from The Raw Food World was extra exciting because along with my standard order I purchased some new goodies to play with. 

Standard order:  

New to me: 

Soy lecithin and irish moss are ingredients in many raw recipes, but I try to avoid soy and I've been totally intimidated by irish moss shenanigans.  I'm going to try the sunflower lecithin as a replacement emulsifier for soy, and face my fears with the moss.  I hope to have experimentation pictures to post before long.

Eats:

Curry Corn Chowder from Delightfully Raw

TH is having crockpot barbeque moose (not the ones from our yard!) with veggies.  I also made his favorite ranch dressing from Sunny Raw Kitchen.  This dressing is insane.  I started substituting all the spices (except for the salt and fresh garlic) for two tablespoons of Costco's organic no-salt seasoning, because I'm lazy.  Sooooo good.  

Think I'll have leftover raw pecan pie for dessert. The chocolate sauce is raw cacao, coconut oil, agave, sea salt and cinnamon.  

Question:  Has anyone used sunflower lecithin with success?  What kinds of recipes did you try?