Recipes from Choosing Raw, Ani Phyo and Douglas McNish

First up, some ‘Ani Phyo 15-Day Fat Blast’ recipe reviews from the past few days.  I made the Simple Strawberry Shake from Ani’s 15-Day Fat Blast.  Rating (of my modified version) 4/5:

– made with strawberries, coconut oil, water, vanilla.  The recipe calls for cashews or walnuts but I left those out and threw in a banana instead.  If I’m having coconut oil in there, I’m happy to leave out the nuts. I also left out the suggested sweetener of choice as the banana makes it sweet and I also added in the matcha ‘squeaky cleaner’ option.  It wasn’t very sweet, but just right for me.

I was determined to try another soup recipe and Day 3 called for the Curry Coconut Soup.  I was surprised that I really liked this and would make it again, giving it a rating of 5/5:

– made with water (I used half the amount listed as I wanted it thicker), tomato, avocado, garlic, coconut oil, cilantro/coriander (which I didn’t have).  This is one soup I’d happily have straight from the fridge on a hot day.

One of the breakfast shakes was the Pear Power Shake.  I gave this a 0/5:

– made with kale (though I used spinach), pear, water, vanilla with the optional extra of chlorella.  I knew I’d have a hard time drinking this so I added a small date. I used half a teaspoon of chlorella (the recipe says one teaspoon) but for me the smell and taste of chlorella is way too strong.  Usually I can get around that depending on the ingredients (and holding my nose or using my straw) but in this smoothie, there was no getting around it.  After a few mouthfuls I tipped it down the sink.

I made the Ginger Mango Shake and added a bunch of spinach.  I left out the coconut oil/nuts and added the ground flax.  Rating 5/5:

– I added a banana to mine and the ginger gave it a nice zing.  My mango was frozen so this was lovely and cold on a stinking hot day.

Another raw book I really like is ‘Eat Raw, Eat Well’ by Douglas McNish.  I love the Cake Batter Smoothie.  Rating 5/5!

– I made this smoothie with almond milk, orange, avocado, a date, banana, lemon juice, vanilla.  The recipe lists cashew milk, which I didn’t have, and agave which I don’t use.  The agave would have made it too sweet for me anyway.

For a lunch meal I spiralised some raw zucchini.  On top of it I added some tomato and mushroom sprinkled with nutritional yeast.  The star of the show was the walnut mince.  For this, I use the Walnut Mince recipe.  Rating 5/5:

– the mince made with walnuts, cumin, tamari, EVOO all in a food processor.  I have made this before and found the recipe too salty, so I left out the suggested salt and just used the tamari. I went easy on the amount of mince I served myself, it’s really easy for me to just inhale it all.

 

Choosing Raw was the first raw vegan website I read and certainly helped make things easy for me.  Gena’s recipes are simple and nutrient dense and easy to prepare.  One of my favourite blog posts there is How To Build A Meal Sized Salad. As I’m keeping an eye on my iron, I made these raw iron boosting balls and the raw sunflower seed and carrot pate.

I’ve started adding some blackstrap molasses to my protein shake smoothies (banana, plant milk, protein powder, pumpkin seeds, blackstrap molasses) to increase the iron content.  I don’t particularly enjoy the taste of it to be honest but it isn’t unpleasant enough to make faces when I have it (like chlorella, which involves my about-to-barf face):

I also made Gena’s Raw Strawberry Vanilla Pudding. I added a banana because I wanted Arthur and DeeW to have some too.  Arthur liked it but DeeW doesn’t go for pudding-y textures.  I really think avocado is such a star in dishes like this, though Arthur did comment there was a ‘weird’ feeling to it even though the taste was okay. I’ll still be making these kinds of puddings, using Choosing Raw recipes because they’ve worked well for me in the past:

One of my guilty pleasure foods (because I try to avoid anything bread-y but like bread too much) is my usual pizza ‘zocaccia’ from Zaatar in Coburg. I get the zaatar bread base topped with capsicum, tomato, cucumber, onion, olives and mint.  This is my downfall so I thought I better try and replicate it in a healthier bread-less way.  I’m planning on making some flat bread and crackers in the dehydrator but for now I put a whole lot of zaatar spice on top of raw veggies, with some of the sunflower seed carrot pate to round it out a bit.  If I had hemp seeds I would have had those too but this time I used pumpkin seed:

I also made my regular protein shake, consisting of plant milk, a protein powder, banana and pumpkin seeds.  It’s kinda my “can’t be bothered being really creative” go-to smoothie:

 

It was love at first site when I saw this recipe for Honey Gold Mango and Nectarine Salsa-Salad over at Appetite Affliction. I was hungry after dinner and bedtime was ages off.  So I cut up the mango and nectarines (but no tomato or avocado) and followed the rest of the recipe.  This is a fantastic dish and one I will absolutely make again with the tomato and avocado:

Now for the non-raw dish.  I’ll admit I was getting a bit sick of raw everything and I had a sudden longing for a stir fry.  So I used a teensy amount of coconut oil, then water when required, to stir fry up all these veggies and mixed in some rice noodles, soy sauce, garlic and ginger.  And then something really strange happened you guys.  As I sat down to eat it– remember, I felt quite over raw eating by now– I had a sudden wave of “I don’t think I want to eat this”.  I KNOW, RIGHT???  I had three forkfuls and felt like the food had turned in to a rock down in my belly.  Not a feeling I have when eating raw. I ate the veggies because I didn’t want them to go to waste but I binned the noodles.  I literally couldn’t stomach them:

 

Is this the end?!

I’m going out for a meal tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see how I feel afterwards!  So tune in to channel Veganopoulous to see if I barf.

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Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 7. Australia votes!

Today Australians queued up all over the nation to vote.  No, we’re not voting for the worst food photography example on the Veganopoulous blog because that would be one massive ballot paper.  It’s federal election day.  Husband was stationed at the polling booth up the road, handing out How To Vote cards and he always comes back with classic tales.  Like the one time when he saw people from the Labor and Liberal camps getting in to a punch up.  No, not voters– the people handing out the HTV cards.

Right.  Okay.  Raw breakfast!!! Today I got a bit more organised with soaking stuff in preparation for the Pear and Pumpkin Porridge from ‘Eat Raw, Eat Well’.  Before becoming vegan I never knew you could eat pumpkin uncooked.  This recipe is one I’ve wanted to try for a while, even though the thought of eating raw pumpkin doesn’t appeal much, to be honest.  Still, MoFo is all about trying new things and eating more raw is one of my MoFo goals.  So here ’tis (picture shows two servings):

The recipe involves soaking buckwheat, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds (which I didn’t have), and raw cashews for up to an hour.  Grate some pumpkin, throw in some pear, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt and maple syrup (recipe says agave but Arthur is allergic so we avoid having it in the house), and non dairy milk, whiz it in the food processor and that’s it.  I made it less sweet than what the recipe said which turned out to be a good choice.  i also halved the recipe. This was tasty and filling though I do admit it’s rather ‘different’ and something I have to get used to but overall I’m happy with how it turned out.

Foody bits and pieces this week

What a week!  Lots of social events, visiting people, catching up.  I have the day at home today and boy do I need it.  House to clean, crumble to cook, my frizzy boofhead to manage before I head off to a vegan ‘do tonight.

This week DeeW turned 5, without my permission I might add.  She chose to have her ‘party’ at the Icehouse, which is an indoor ice skating venue in Melbourne.  We met up with some other homeschooling families.  I don’t skate at all and if I tried you can bet I wouldn’t take my hands off that metal helper thingy:

(I picked this dress up for a few bucks from Savers last week, hand made, looked unworn).

I made practice pineapple-mango upside down cakes as she requested this for her  birthday.  The practice cakes were great.  The actual birthday cake didn’t turn out at all and was quite awful.  Whoops.  Oh well, the kids stuffed themselves on strawberries and some liked the Christmas stollen I bought from Aldi.  And my vegan sausage rolls were a hit with two of the guests who were walking around with their little squirrel cheeks all bulging out with sausage roll.

At my mum’s house, I had her Greek pilafi rice (she makes it vegan now, yay!) and a Greek style peas and potatoes dish.  Hopefully I’ll get the recipe up soon:

Here’s a raw smoothie from Brendan Brazier’s “Thrive” book.  It’s made with pomegranate, hemp protein and banana with a pinch of cayenne pepper:

More Not-Butter-Chicken from The Kind Cook.  Yes, this is a dreadful photo:

Cauliflower ‘popcorn’ from Eat Raw, Eat Well.  I think I way over dehydrated this but it’s so delicious.  You toss cauli florets in some olive oil, nooch and a bit of salt then dehydrate:

Pecan Banana Cookies also from Eat Raw, Eat Well:

And we put up the Christmas tree.   It’s rather lopsided.  I prefer to say it’s really chilling out.  This is what a tree looks like when kids decorate it:

Some gorgeous vintage kitchen stuff I picked up for next to nothing.  LOOK AT THE HANDLES YOU GUYS!

I tried a packet mix of a mock meat rendang curry and added some potato.  Yum:

Banana bread-cake for playgroup yesterday, where we discussed the merits of dipping cake in to tea/coffee.  I’m a dipper/dunker:

And speaking of tea, I’m outta here.  I have the house to myself so today’s music selection is Tori Amos and G’n’R.  Yeah!