Adventures in Raw Cooking

This weekend we tried a couple of things.


Here's the deal - I don't eat food I don't like. For instance, a half hour ago we made my very favorite chocolate pudding for lunch, only we used arugula rather than a milder tasting green, so let's just say that the flavor combination is NOT my favorite. Aware of all the nutrients that are in this funny tasting smoothie, I'm eating it, but very very slowly. Maybe it's been more like an hour.


The point of that was to say that this raw food change we've made would not be happening if we (read that to be  I) didn't like what we were eating. It has to be delicious, or else I won't stick to it.


So, when we (I) have cravings for random food, I try to make it raw. And this weekend, I tried two things. The first:

source

I don't think I need to say anything more about WHY I wanted to figure this out, right?


So I thought about the ingredients: hazlenuts, oil, milk, chocolate, and a bunch of other stuff that's less important. Ok, I'll try it.


So I soaked some hazlenuts for one day, which turned out to be two days, to get them all soft and blendable.


(I also soaked cashews, which went a little fermented and I vetoed for the nutella, but I DID make a frigging amazing nacho cheese with - what do you think the milk does to make nacho cheese?)


And blended them up with store bought hazlenut milk, cacao, agave, a little stevia, and young coconut meat.


As far as nutella went, it was awful.


Really, it was very very bad. Horrible, in fact. The nuts didn't blend smoothly and it was chunky and not as rich as real nutella.


At the last moment before a trip to the trashcan, T and I noticed that the texture was very Wendy's Frosty-like.


So we put it in the freezer for awhile, and voila: DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM/FROZEN YOGURT STUFF.


Score!


The second thing was the nacho cheese, which I've already discussed. I adapted this guy's recipe by using the fermented cashews instead of macadamia nuts, and I don't know how much lemon juice I added, if any, but it was out and out AWESOME in the end. 


I've tried a cashew ricotta recipe that instructed you to leave the blended cheese mixture out at room temperature overnight, to make it ferment, and it ended up tasting JUST like ricotta, only more flavorful!


So score #2!


And finally, I tried the bread I mentioned a couple posts ago. Made with sun dried tomatoes, herbs, flax seeds and almonds, among other things. And it's dehydrated for an entire 10 hours, but lemme tell you it tastes just like bread!


Score #3.


We've made some staple recipes so far, and want to be finding at least one new delicious recipe each week.


I'm looking forward to living in Portland after the wedding and inviting friends to come stay with us, pig out on delicious albeit strange food, and go home healthier than before! Gonna be good times.


On another note, I'm going to start a gratitude list. It was mentioned today on one of my favorite blogs, which you can read here. It's written by an ex-teacher and current mentor of mine, who's one of the smartest and most compassionate people I know, and who has written two amazing books which you should immediately read - they'll make your life better. And they're short, which makes them all the more readable! Anyway, on the blog today he spoke of organ donors who cultivated a practice of spending 15 minutes a day writing a list of things they were grateful for. They recovered from the donations sooner AND with less complications. I'd be willing to bet that their internal happiness state elevated quite a bit too as a result. 


And as I'm healthy already (haven't donated any organs recently), how much more beneficial would it be?


(the same goes for everyone reading this. And I do think it would also work if you divided it up into three 5 minutes sessions a day, so for those of you sitting at your desks at work reading this, DO IT three times a day. It's 5 minutes. And it'll make you happier and more productive, even at your job. Scribble on a piece of computer paper and keep it in your drawer. Totally doable).


So, I'll be posting it from time to time.


Happy Sunday!