Friday, February 18, 2011

Quick! 101


Hola!
Last night I was happy to find a very quick and easy recipe for raw chili on uncooking101.com.
http://uncooking101.com/site/raw-food-recipe/chili-con-corn/
It was fantastic! Flavourful, fresh, exciting and most of all, quick!

This has inspired me to post the very quick raw parsnip apple soup I whipped up the other day. I forgot to take a pic of the final product but you can imagine it looked like a bowl of white soup.

Instant Parsnip Apple Soup

3 large organic parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
1 sweet organic fuji apple, core removed and chopped, skin on
a little bit of white onion, maybe 1/4 or 1/6 of a medium onion
1 cup home made almond milk (4 cups spring water, 1 cup almonds, blend, nut milk bag strain)
a touch of coconut oil, maybe 1 teaspoon, more if you want
some spring water, as much as it takes to get everything flowing but not to dilute too much
2 hefty pinches sea salt

Put everything in a vita mix blender and blend until smooth, adding more water as needed and taste for salt and stuff.

(I can't remember if I put a touch of fresh lemon juice in here, I don't think I did but if you feel the soup 'needs something' try a tiny squeeze

Not going to lie, I had made some almond milk earlier that morning and added a bit of vanilla bean to it, so if you are feeling adventurous add about 1/16 - 1/8 tsp of vanilla bean powder to your soup.

Let me know what you think!

Friday, February 4, 2011

For Cookie Lovers


If you don't like cookies, you can leave. Right now. Go.

Hello cookie lovers!
It has been quite some time since my last post. I've been adventuring in Costa Rica and over the past two weeks since I've been home I have been non-stop graphic designing. I have barely had time to cook for myself! (not complaining, just making blog absence excuses).

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season with fantastic food and full bellies. While I was in Costa Rica I had about 4 coconuts a day, and it was awesome. I also ate many papayas, pineapples, cocoa nibs (visited a chocolate farm!) and perfectly ripe avocados. Um, heaven.

This post has nothing to do with the food I made while in CR but I did make a couple of fun meals down there so I'll devote another post to that later.

Sitting at a computer desk (er kitchen table) doing work all day can make you a bit sluggish, so I decided to re-enter the dehydrator world with some chocolate cookies to add some zip to my design. I just started throwing ingredients together that I thought might make a decent cookie.

Chocolate Lucuma Cookies:

1 cup raw coconut flour
2 tbsp lucuma powder
3 tbsp raw cocoa powder
1/8 tea sea salt
¼ cup + 1 tbsp raw almond butter (I used the awesome Artisana brand butter)
1 tbsp raw coconut syrup (sub agave or other sweetener)
1/8 cup coconut oil, melted (be careful not to heat too much)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 drops plain liquid stevia
2 tbsp ground chia seeds
9-13 tbsp spring water
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Mix together dry ingredients

Mix together wet ingredients except water

Add all to food processor and mix until it forms a big ball of dough, adding the water one tablespoon at a time until the dough sticks together and forms that ball.


Break off pieces and roll into small balls in your palm and flatten with bottom of cup that has been dipped in water so it doesn’t stick.

Lightly press cashews, cocoa nibs or something else (like goji berries, walnuts, etc) into the top of each cookie.

Dehydrate on teflex sheet at 115 until dry. You can also leave a bit moist in the middle if you want a softer cookie. Overnight should be just fine.




I then whipped up a quick batch of chocolate to coat the cookies in. I didn't really measure anything but basically I added equal parts melted cocoa butter and raw cocoa powder with some vanilla, powdered sea salt, coconut syrup, liquid stevia and some flavour in the form of essential oils. I separated the chocolate into 3 parts, adding lavender essential oil to one, orange to another and kept one plain.
I coated the cashew topped cookies in the lavender chocolate, the plain cookies in the orange oil chocolate and the cocoa nib topped cookies in the plain chocolate. What fun!


I then placed the cookies in the freezer until the chocolate was set (less than half hour) and then put them in a covered container on the counter. I know they won't last long in this house, but if you aren't going to eat them all in a couple days, you might want to put them in the fridge (or if you live somewhere warm, put them in the fridge).



I will say that my first batch of raw cookies turned out pretty good. Yay raw cookies!