Tuesday, May 1, 2012

A Couple Raw Favorites & a cooked oddball

Tonight we are going to use a raw recipe that has become one of my ultimate favorites. Raw, vegan taco "meat". It's super nummy and pretty easy. As long as you have a dehydrator that is. If you don't have one, I think you can turn your oven down to it's lowest setting and dehydrate a bit that way. Not sure how that changes the cooking time or if it kills the living enzymes in the food or not. We have an Excalibur dehydrator and really love it. This recipe is adapted from Going Raw by Judita Wignall. Lots of her recipes use mushrooms which we can't have so I had to adopt it a bit. If you eat meat you can still make this and serve it up with your meat. Why not? It tastes taco-y and has lots of veggies in it.

Taco Seasoned Veggie Meat
2 cups unsoaked raw brazil nuts
4 cups finely diced zucchini
1/2 cup minced onion
1/2 minced celery
1/2 cup chili powder
1/4 cup lemon juice
1-2 tsp. sea salt. Make sure to use less if there is salt in your chili powder
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Place nuts in food processor and grind into a flour. Combine nut flour with rest of ingredients. Spread mixture onto 2 dehydrator trays with non stick sheets. Dry at 110F for 1 1/2 hrs. Transfer to mesh dehydrator sheet and dry for another hour. Do not over dry. Enjoy!

We use this in flax taco shells, in a taco salad, for nachos, whatever. Tonight we are being non-raw, non-vegans and I am breaking out the eggs for the kids and we are making a super veggie scramble, mostly veggies, little egg, combining that with our "taco meat" and wrapping it all in a homemade raw red pepper wrap with some salsa. MMM. I'm not sure on the rules of posting recipes straight out of cookbooks, that you don't alter or change in anyway, so I'm not posting the wrap recipe today.

One of our favorites desserts these days is a raw apple cobbler with maple cream. We alter it a bit to be consistent with our dietary guidelines and tastes. If you are reading this as a raw food interested party, I'm hoping it'll have enough sweetness for you. We go easy on the sweets around here. If you are an anti-fungal interested party, this is kind of phase 2 friendly. Raisins and dates aren't allowed. But we figure if we eat it once every couple months and don't cheat otherwise at least both raisins and dates are a whole food instead of empty sugar. Plus, we all gotta live a little. I'll post our version here. If you'd like the original, which includes more sweetness and uses can sugar, please refer to Judita's cookbook.

Topping
1 cup pecans, soaked 2-4 hours
2 Tbsp xylitol
2 Tbsp raisins
2 Tbsp Medjool dates
1/8 tsp salt

Filling
1 Tbsp agave nectar (raw preferred)
1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
3 cups (2-3 large) apples, cored and thinly sliced (We like the peels since we feel they have a lot of nutrition in them. Feel free to peel if you don't like them).

Maple cream (we use this very, very sparingly)
1 cup cashews, soaked 2 hours
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup water
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped

Topping: Combine pecans with xylitol in a food processor and process till you get a course meal. Add raisins, dates and process until it all kind of sticks together. Don't over process or it'll become too oily.

Filling: Combine nectar, lemon juice and pumpkin pie spice. Toss apples in the mixture.

Maple Cream: Process all ingredients in a high speed blender till smooth.

Assemble: Put apples in a 9 inch round pie dish or 1 qt. baking dish. Place apples in dish and sprinkle with topping. Warm in dehydrator at 145 for 1 hour. Top each serving with a touch of maple cream and enjoy.

Store cobbler and cream separate in refrigerator. Cobbler will keep for 3 days. Cream will keep for 2 weeks. Our kids like to use leftover cream as apple dip.


Lastly, I kind of sort of made up a recipe for a phase 1 friendly stir fry, cooked. If you have no idea what I mean by phase 1 and phase 2 and such, pay no attention to it. Either way, this is nummy and pretty healthy. This is also extremely versatile. Everyone likes more sauce or less sauce, more salt or less salt. So please just use this as a base and go from there. Take a look at how many ingredients go into something and then assess how much you need to make for your family. I'll post the actual recipe for the sauce and just give you serving suggestions for the rest.

Sauce:
2 Tbsp unrefined cold pressed coconut oil (you can use butter if you eat it)
Dash of salt (omit if using salted butter)
2 cloves garlic
3 Tbsp coconut aminos
1 Tbsp xylitol
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 Tbsp-1/4 cup cashews

Melt coconut oil in small sauce pan. Add 2 cloves of garlic and cook slightly. Add rest of ingredients besides cashews and whisk together. Cook long enough to heat through. Add cashews just before serving.

Serving suggestions: Steam broccoli, carrots, asparagus, etc. Serve veggies over bed of quinoa cooked with 1/2 water, 1/2 veggie broth (make sure it's MSG and icky stuff free. Either make it yourself or actually find a good brand without all the gross crap in it), 2 cloves garlic, & parsley. Fresh parsley is best, but dried works fine too. Start with 1-2 Tbsp fresh or 1-2 tsp dried. Follow liquid directions specific to your brand of quinoa and how much you are making. Drizzle sauce over veggies and quinoa, enjoy! If you eat meat feel free to add some chicken or whatever you would like with it.

I'm the kind of cook that always looks a recipe and alters it to my liking. So for the recipe above I just make as much as I feel we are going to use for the night. My kids don't eat stir fry. So cooking up the amount stated is more than enough sauce for us. But if your whole family is going to partake, you might want to double it.

Well, off to make my veggie meat. If you have any recipes to share, please let me know! Or if you think some of these suck or are amazing, please feel free to also let me know. :)