Monthly Archives: August 2011
Rawgust
‘Rawgust’ is an idea promoted by The Raw Food Institute. It involves taking a pledge to go 100% raw for the entire month of August.
I’ve never been 100% raw and like cooked food way too much to consider it so I haven’t signed this pledge, but eating a lot of raw food is great for our health even if we don’t try to have any specific amount of raw food in our diet, so I try to find ways to add more raw food to our lives during the winter.
Raw snacks, like these mostly raw healthy chocolate truffles from Triumph of the Lentil: Soy-Free Vegan Wholefoods for all Appetites are a tasty way to eat more raw food.
Healthy Chocolate Truffles, from Triumph of the Lentil: Soy-Free Vegan Wholefoods for all Appetites
There are heaps of raw dessert recipes available online. A lot of chocolate ones are based around a combination of dates, nuts and raw cacao. You don’t really need a recipe to make stuff like this, you can just throw things into a food processor and adjust it to taste, but a good way to start is with 1 1/2 cups of walnuts (or other nut), 1/3 cup of raw cacao and 1 cup of dates (around 12 medjool ones). Process the walnuts until very fine, then mix in the cacao. Pit the dates, then add them to the nuts and cacao and process until evenly mixed. You can roll this into balls, shape it into bars or a cake, or just eat it in spoonfuls out of the food processor. Something I like a lot about raw desserts like this one is that they are often ready right away, so can replace shop-bought muesli bars in a healthier way.
Here are some links to delicious looking raw recipes:
Raw Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes with Avocado Frosting
VegWeb Raw Desserts and Treats
There are plenty more around online if you look for them. Some require hard-to-find ingredients and dehydrators, but a lot of them are really quick and easy to make. Triumph of the Lentil: Soy-Free Vegan Wholefoods for all Appetites has easy recipes for a raw black forest slice, and a raw apricot slice, along with the healthy chocolate truffles in the above picture, which use barley malt syrup or maple syrup as a sweetener, but are otherwise raw.
What are your favourite raw recipes?
Homemade Mustard
This recipe is really simple, and tastes even better than the mustard I was buying at the shop.
Ingredients:
6 tablespoons whole mustard seeds (I used all yellow this time. If you add some brown seeds to it, it will be spicier)
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix all the ingredients together in a ceramic or glass bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Add 3-4 tablespoons more water and grind in a food processor or mortar and pestle until it’s the consistency you want. Add extra flavourings if you wish (or some turmeric if you want it to be bright yellow), transfer to a glass or ceramic jar and store in the fridge. It will keep for a few weeks this way.
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