Day 12 of the Raw Food Challenge
Yesterday, on Day 11 of the Raw Food Challenge, I ate:
– 1 cinnamon apple with 1 glass of lemon water (it included half a scoop of calcium/magnesium powder)
– 1 apple sprinkled with cinnamon and ground flaxseed, 1 probiotic capsule, a few potato chips (they were freshly made in the dehydrator, therefore it was necessary to taste them :D), and 2 “cookies” smeared with walnut butter (Am I the only one who sometimes eats two breakfasts?). The “cookie” is essentially the same recipe I posted earlier for granola bars, but I made a few changes.
COOKIE RECIPE TIME! Throw into the food processor 5 dates, a generous handful of sprouted buckwheat (about 1/2 cup), a pile of cinnamon, a pinch of cloves, a sprinkle of ginger, a pinch of sea salt, a few tablespoons of ground flaxseed, some vanilla bean, and a few spoonfuls of orange juice pulp. After it’s all mixed up, toss in a small handful each of raisins and sesame seeds, as well as about 1/4 to 1/2 chopped apple. Blend again. Taste and add more spice or mix-ins as desired. Form into cookie rounds (I made ten) and place in the dehydrator overnight. Yum!
– 1 mug green tea, 1/2 carrot, and 3 mini mandarins. These are so cute and deliciously sweet; each one is tiny, only about an inch in diameter. It’d be so easy to eat the whole box in one sitting, tehe.
– 1 mug green tea and about 1 1/2 potatoes worth of potato chips. I made the potato chips by slicing three potatoes up really thin and then putting them in the dehydrator overnight. I sprinkled sea salt and black pepper on all of the chips, and then for a third of them I added Herbs de Provence, on another third I added rosemary, and for the rest of the potato chips I added cumin. I like the cumin potato chips the best.
– 1 mug green tea, 2 lettuce wraps, and 2 small cookies. The lettuce wraps were so good. It’s such a simple snack/meal, but it’s just like eating a “real” wrap! I took a big leaf of romaine lettuce and piled alfalfa/clover/radish/mustard sprouts, tomato slices, strips of green pepper and carrot, a few smears of avocado, and a crumbled spicy juice pulp patty on top. Then I placed another lettuce leaf over that and ate it wrap-style. Repeat for the second lettuce wrap! I preferred the juice pulp patty when it was crumbled like this. Eating my food in this form also felt more satisfying, too.
– 2 apples and 1 mug green tea. A client brought more cookies (chocolate chocolate chip!) to work and they were torturing me. Figured I’d try to shut up the cookie monster within by feeding it apples.
– 1 lettuce wrap with carrot, tomato, and avocado
– A few tomato slices topped with avocado and a sprinkle of black pepper, plus four mini mandarins on the side. The tomato with avocado was very tasty and would be a wonderful appetizer on a summer day.
Although it sounds like I was filling up on the avocado, this was only about 1/3 of an avocado altogether, for the lettuce wraps and for the tomato slices. I’m still getting used to the texture and taste of avocado (plus I’m rationing it because it’s not so easy to come by!), so I find that only using a small portion at a time does the trick.
– Teensy tiny bowl of soup, a few apple chips, and a teensy tiny cookie plus 1/3 of a banana with a spoonful of walnut butter
– Chocolate banana ice cream studded with raisins. This sounds way better than it was. This was a horrible horrible kitchen experience gone awry and it is going down in history as one of my typical cooktastrophes. What I was trying to do was make chocolate pudding by following a recipe and using 1/2 an avocado, 5 dates, 1/8 cup cacao powder, and a sprinkle of cinnamon plus some vanilla bean. I put them all in the food processor but forgot to pre-soak the dates. So, what happened is that the dates didn’t get mixed in at all. I had a creamy avocado-cacao powder mixture with whole dates sticking out of it. And let me tell you, avocado mixed with cacao powder does not taste good, especially if you don’t particularly enjoy the taste of avocado to begin with *shudder*
After this saddening realization, I figured that maybe if I put the whole mixture into the blender, it would work better than the food processor (my judgment was clouded by the intensity of my chocolate craving. You would have been the same way if you had to stare down a plate of double chocolate cookies all day!). I scraped out as much of the mixture as I could, plopped it in the blender, and almost destroyed the blade with my attempt to blend it. I decided to stop right there because I’ve already broken one blender before and I have no desire to repeat the process.
I took out the dates, trying to wipe the goop of cacao-avocado off of them, and soaked them in water for about 20 minutes before transferring everything to the food processor once more. FAIL! It again didn’t work. Still big chunks of dates. Then I figured I’d add some raisins as they might work better than the dates. FAIL! They didn’t blend at all. Then I remembered the beauty of frozen bananas, and I added one frozen banana to the mixture, turning it into ice cream which sort of tasted something like chocolate. It was smoother, the dates were chopped into slightly smaller pieces, and the sweetness from the banana made if edible. I had just over half of it.
Ultimately, this was a total disaster. By the end of this whole experience, the kitchen was covered in chocolate without my craving being satisfied at all. Using half an avocado was totally unnecessary for the whole thing; I should have just used a banana from the start if this was going to be the end result. So that was terribly disappointing.
– A couple handfuls potato chips and a couple beet chips (not too shabby, but not as good as the potato chips), along with a glass of lemon water.
Lessons learned: a) Always pre-soak dates if a recipe tells you to do so. Or don’t use dates that have been lurking at the back of your pantry for eons; and b) Always have some form of chocolate ready-made in case of cravings so you don’t have to scurry around the kitchen, trailing chocolate behind you in your frantic frenzy to turn an avocado into something sweet.
Hm, yeah, that doesn’t sound appetizing at all. Maybe it’s just because I dislike avocado, too. Hope you fill your chocolate craving today!
Always have some form of chocolate ready to eat – sounds like a good philosophy to live by.
In the summer when I was bringing salads for lunch at work, I would mash and avocado with lime juice and a bit of salt and use that to top my salad. Yum! Add some crushed/minced garlic to that avocado/lime mixture, and you have guacamole. 🙂
You must have different dates in Canada, because mine blend easily… In an emergency you can just mash some banana with a little raw cocoa powder. We sometimes have that as dessert.
Oh no! An unanswered call for chocolate is not pretty! At least you were able to salvage *something* out of it, even if it wasn’t what you intended.
Love this! Very funny. I wish you’d happened to be videoing it….
I love avocados but the thought of blending them with cocoa powder does sound pretty revolting. One great desert we do sometimes is an incredibly simple one which I think would be OK for a raw food challenge: chop up half a banana per person with some chopped soft dried apricots, dates, and cranberries or raisins, and top with a dollop of natural yoghurt and either a drizzle of honey or a little smattering of cinnamon or cocoa powder. Delicious!
I love barhi dates (super soft – no soaking), but they might be regional, I’m not sure, but they are seasonal. I don’t like other dates at all. What kind did you use?
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Tracey- Chocolate-craving free today! Thank goodness.
JavaChick- I HAVE been enjoying a little avocado in salads… it lends something nice to it.
Hanlie- I am absolutely going to be using the banana/cacao method in the future!
Cammy- Not pretty at all, hehe.
Liz- One day. One day, I will set up a video camera and it will automatically start recording every time I enter the kitchen. I could be the star on YouTube. That DOES sound yummy, I can’t do the yogurt but chopping up a banana with some apricots and cinnamon/cacao would be really good! I’m going to have to try that soon.
Carla- The cheapest, no-name brand is the kind of dates that I use 😉 But these were also from a package I found lurking in the back of my pantry, so they might have dried out beyond the extent that dried dates are supposed to be dried. If that makes any sense. I’ve a got a fresh pack of dried dates now, though, so I’m all set! (“fresh pack of dried dates”… hehe).
OMG Sagan – you poor thing! I’m so sorry about your blender issues. Can’t believe you’ve already broken another blender. I am impressed though that you kept going! 😉
Aw, sorry, Sagan, I think I saw your anguished tweet on this, too. A girl should never be deprived of chocolate. At least you had a lesson learned, and a story to tell!
@Sagan – Ah! I never brought them in packs, only in bulk at the farmers market or co-op…I dont think I’ve seen them packaged. I hope things work out next time around!
FatFighterTV- No no, I didn’t break the second blender- I stopped before that happened!
Sophia- IT’S TRUE. A girl SHOULDN’T ever be deprived of chocolate 😀
Carla- I bet they would taste amazing from a farmer’s market.