Raw Taco Salad

This taco salad was amazingly delicious and very filling. It's made with a lettuce mix, red cabbage, sliced jicama, sprouts, diced red peppers, homemade salsa, cashew cheddar cheese, sunflower taco meat and raw tortilla chips. I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I made this, but I was able to finish the whole thing.

The salsa recipe is from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, and it's made with fresh corn, diced tomatoes, chopped bell and jalapeno peppers, minced garlic and a splash of lemon juice. The sunflower taco meat was super simple to make: Soak one cup of sunflower seeds and 6 sundried tomato halves in water for two hours and drain. Process in a food processor with two tablespoons of taco seasoning until well ground. The chips were made in the dehydrator with corn and flax seeds. All of the components of this salad do take a little bit of time to make, but I didn't do it all at once. I made the tortillas and cheese a few days ago and have been nibbling on them here and there throughout the week. The sunflower seeds and sundried tomatoes were soaking while I was at work today so all I had to do when I got home was grind them with the spices in the food processor. I made the salsa while I was making the salad, but that was no big deal because I was already chopping veggies. And the beauty of all this is that I have enough of everything leftover to be able to have another taco salad for lunch tomorrow!

On another note, I'm starting to wonder if I may be allergic to sunflower seeds, because I've been eating quite a bit of them lately and my eyes have started to itch again. (If your eyes itch in the inner corners, it's highly likely that you have a food allergy.) I'll to try an elimination test and see what happens. After I finish off the rest of the taco meat, of course!


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Strawberries and Cream

My friend Joyce brought strawberries to my birthday party potluck on Saturday and there were some left over, and I decided to make a yummy dessert with them. I cut them up and then drizzled on some of the whipped cream and chocolate sauce left over from the raw ice cream cake I made. The whipped cream is made with cashews, coconut milk and agave, and the chocolate sauce is made with cacao powder, agave and coconut oil. This wasn't quite as good as the ice cream cake, but it was still pretty tasty!


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Raw Ice Cream Cake

It's my birthday week! To kick it off, I had a few friends over for a vegan potluck party. I made my own birthday cake - a raw ice cream cake! I purchased the a raw ice cream recipe booklet from SweetlyRaw.com. The cake was made mainly with cashews. It was rich and creamy and tasted fresh, not preserved and full of chemicals, like store bought ice cream cakes do.

The cake was extremely time consuming, but it was well worth it. Everyone loved it and some of my friends even said I should go into business and sell raw cakes! I fear I may have set a new standard to which my potluck offerings must live up to now.

First I made chocolate ice cream. The ingredients are blended together and then churned in an ice cream maker.

The ice cream is poured into a spring form pan. I also made little brownie bites and mixed them in to the ice cream. The layer had to freeze before the next one could be place on top.

Then I made chocolate buckwheat cruchies, which go in between the cake's layers.

Next up is the vanilla layer!

The vanilla layer is poured over the chocolate crunchies.

I also made chocolate syrup, which I swirled on top of the vanilla ice cream.

I used a knife to make pretty swirls with the syrup.

The vanilla swirl layer had to freeze before the top could be decorated.

I made whipped cream to decorate the top with, but I couldn't get it thick enough to stay in any kind of shape. So I blobbed it on and decorated it with cherries.

After a few hours in the freezer I let it thaw for a few minutes and removed it from the spring form pan.

The dessert spread was pretty amazing. Along with my cake, there was raw tiramisu that Agatha made, truffles that Jessica made and a strawberry pie that Alisha made. The pretty flowers are were a gift from my friend Ruthie.

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Jicama Perogies

This is another recipe from RAWvolution. It's pretty simple and really delicious. It's as easy as slicing jicama very thin on a mandolin slicer and mixing up a batch of cashew cheese in a food processor! A dollop of cheese is placed in the center of a slice, and then another slice of jicama is placed on top. Voila! Raw Perogies!

Jicama is a root vegetable that is used a lot in Mexican and Asian cooking. It has a crisp texture that resembles a raw potato or a pear. It is sweet and starchy, reminiscent of apples or raw green beans. It is usually eaten raw and is often paired with chilis and lime juice. Jicama is high in dietary fiber, potassium, folic acid, B vitamins and vitamin C. It's also low in calories and fat free.

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Nori Wraps

This recipe is from RAWvolution. It's a raw nori sheet, with a collard leaf placed over it to keep the nori from getting wet from the veggies. Then shredded carrots, daikon radishes, red peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, avocados, scallions and sprouts are piled on top and the whole thing is rolled up tightly. I used a little bit of sunflower seed cheese as "glue" to hold it all together. I used nama shoyu as a dipping sauce and served the rolls with kale chips. Nori wraps are super simple to make and you can use whatever veggies you have on hand to fill them with. They're the perfect meal for a warm summer afternoon!


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Mac and Cheese

The weather has been so erratic here in New Jersey. Yesterday it was about 60 degrees and rainy, so I was in the mood for something warm and comforting. So I decided I need a little mac and cheese.

This is very, very similar to the chickpea helper I made in January. I did use the same cheese sauce made with nutritional yeast, but I didn't cook the chickpeas and pasta together they way they are made in chickpea helper. This was really delicious and really warmed me up on the cold and dreary day.



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Zucchini Pappardelle with White Bean Alfredo

Like I said yesterday, I'm eating mainly raw food this summer, and I had to try this great semi-raw recipe from HKitchen. The noodles are made with zucchini, but the Alfredo sauce is made with cooked navy beans. The sauce was so nice and creamy that no one would have ever known that it was made with beans, and not dairy cream. The recipe called for tahini, but I had just used the last of mine on a batch of kale chips, so I used raw sesame seeds instead, which worked really well because my Vitamix was able to blend them. I omitted the walnuts and sprinkled the dish with nutritional yeast. Instead of cutting the zucchini with a mandolin slicer, I used my spiralizer to turn them into noodles. This dish was really delicious, and I will definitely make it again!

Beans a great way to add high-quality, plant-based protein to your diet. In addition to protein, they are high in iron, B vitamins and fiber. And they are so versatile that you may never tire of them!

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