Raw Chocolate Pudding

Pudding is not something that a vegan should really crave or try to eat: they're basically egg yolks, starch, and sugar cooked together to make a creamy delight. I am, however, an overwhelming stubborn person. I wanted some damn pudding and I will get some pudding. However, this recipe didn't really come from that craving, it came from me messing attempting to make an avocado drink(don't ask). Enough of my ranting though, here it is:

Almost Raw Chocolate Pudding

2-3 Medium Hass Avocados

2 Tbsp Maple Syrup(to taste)

2-3 Tbsp Raw Cocao Powder(you can also use 1/4-1/3 cup of chocolate chips you melt in a pan)

Water until proper consistency.

This is as easy as it looks: Put the avocado flesh into a blender with the water and syrup. Mix well and add in the cocao/melted chips. Mix well and then add more chocolate or syrup to taste. It'll hold in the fridge for a day or two and is excellent with fresh fruit.

My First Mustard

Goddamn, it has been forever since I've posted. I attribute that to laziness, illness, and an actual dislike of writing(don't ask why I'm writing this, I don't have enough energy to answer). But to get to the point:
Making My Own Mustards!!!

Now, I hadn't eaten mustard in a year, as that was how long it'd been since I realized this whole corn thing. However, mustard is one of my favorite condiments and is very useful in cooking(especially Dijon). I decided to start my adventure with a very basic brown mustard, assuming that it would be hard to mess up. Luckfully, I was correct in the assumption. This mustard is spicy with a slight sweetness to it as well. It mellows out after the initial punch and leaves a delightful aftertaste. A few more comments after the recipe:

Basic Coarse Brown Mustard
1/3 cup Brown Mustard Seeds
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp Raw Apple Cider Vinegar(I use Eden Organic, you could use any safe apple cider vinegar though)
1 clove Garlic, halved3 tbsp water
3 tbsp Raw Honey(I trust Raw honey over processed; the flavor is also far superior)
1/4 tsp Sea Salt
1 pinch ground cinnamon
Mix the seeds, apple cider vinegar, and the garlic together in a cup and let it sit in the fridge for at least two days. This process is called "blooming" and can be done in as little as 36 hours, though the longer you let it sit(though not too long as it just goes bad), the more mellow and nice the flavors will become. If you don't let it bloom at all, it will be pure fire and taste terrible.
Remove the garlic from the mixture and add the rest of it to a food process(or a blender, though the processor is easier). Add the water in as well and blend until somewhat smooth; it will stay fairly coarse even if you process it for a while, so don't worry on that front. Put in the honey, sea salt, and cinnamon and mix well. I know that seems like a large amount of honey, but believe me, you'll need it.
Keep the honey in a tight sealed container and it should store for a while. If you let it sit for a few days you'll notice the flavor changing; that is normal and enjoy the variety.

The finished product:


*I got this recipe from a gardening forum, in case anyone was wondering.

Almond and Pepita Butters

I am in hardcore love with Almond Butter. I honestly eat the stuff every single day, a few tablespoons a day. Now I understand that most people would recoil from that, saying it "has too much fat", but my insistence is that fat is a very good thing. The only reason people really have to fear fat is because either they eat too much processed foods, which mess with your system in a plethora of ways, especially with respect to fat, or they eat too many fatty animal products. Since neither of these apply to me, I really don't care about what the USDA says about my "daily intake"(or pretty much anything else the USDA has to say either, really). Furthermore, nuts are filled with mono and unsaturated fats, which are proving to be good for heart health and proper weight control(Ahh, irony). I made my first pepita(raw pumpkin seed) butter today and I found it excellent spread on fruit. So eat up and enjoy, these butters are amazing:

Almond Butter

1 cup raw almonds(technically almonds from California are not strictly raw, they've been steamed and are ordered by law to be so in order to avoid salmonella outbreaks)

1/2 tsp sea salt(optional)

Put the almonds in a food processor. Chop the almonds for twelve to fifteen minutes until they become a smooth butter, and the following steps of the butter should be seen:

- First the butter should become a meal, and regular scrapping of the outside of the food processor is going to be necessary.

- The meal will begin to stick together and ball up and will stay like this for around half to one minute, it will them break back apart into a meal.

- The meal will quickly turn into a butter but it will need to be processed for a few more minutes to get that proper smoothness and shine that one expects from an almond butter.

This may take as little as 10 minutes, depending upon your food processor and the freshness of your almonds. As a rule, use as fresh as almond as possible because otherwise you'll have to add oil to get the proper smoothness. Do not soak the almonds before making the butter though because it will never get pas the initial meal stage; I learned that the hard way.

This butter is much faster than the almond butter:

Pepita Butter(Raw Pumpkin Seed)

1 cup pumpkin seeds

2-3 tbsp pumpkin oil(I have yet to find raw pumpkin seed oil, so I used refined sunflower oil because it doesn't have a flavor strong enough to effect the butter's flavor)

1/4-1/2 tsp sea salt

Put the pumpkin seeds in a food processor and run on high until they make a fine meal, this will only take a few minutes at most. Slowly add in the oil a tablespoon at a time until the butter becomes nice and smooth. The amount of oil will depend on the moisture content and quality of the seeds. Add the sea salt in once the desired consistency is reached and mix it one last time.

You can use either of these butters anywhere that you use peanut butter for allergy reasons or just to get a new twist to things. I'm currently searching for raw peanuts(fairly difficult to find) and will make a post about peanut butter when I finally find them.

Almond Cheese!

When I went to the Prana Cafe the other day, I had some nut cheese there. It was the first time I'd actually eaten it but I had heard about it before many times. Now if you're being really strict about it, it wouldn't truly constitute a cheese because it doesn't undergo the formal fermentation and separation process(though I have heard of a company in NYC that does make true nut cheeses, they are expensive as hell though). However, I did ferment this cheese for a day to make the flavor a bit more full bodied and complex tasting. The texture is much like a ricotta cheese and the taste, though not like cheese, is quite good and unique. I would recommend giving it a shot for anybody who (occasionally) misses the nice, rich cheese often used in things like ravioli. The basic gist of how to do it:

- Take 1 cup of raw almonds and soak them for at least twelve hours in water at room temperature. This should start them sprouting, which makes the proteins more easy to digest and nutritious. Take the almonds and pinch them to pop off their skin. If the skins won't come off easily and the almonds aren't fairly engorged, then allow them to soak for a longer time until it's easy to pop the skin off.
- Put all the skinned almonds in a blender, they should fill to around the two cup mark. Add water up to the 3.5-4 cup area, and blend the almonds for at least five minutes on high speed(use ice crush in the beginning to chop all the almonds up initially, your blender will thank you). Pour this mixture into a bowl and cover it with a towel or cheesecloth and let it ferment for twelve hours.
- Using either a sprouting sack or cheesecloth, separate the cheese curd from the whey. Let it continue to drain for another twelve hours. It is optional at this point to put the cheese in the fridge; try the curd and see if you like the flavor. If you want it to be a bit more flavorful and sour, let it sit out at room temperature at this point(if it's hot where you are, I would recommend putting it in the fridge regardless. It's be quite sad if it went bad).

That's all. Take the curd off the cheese cloth or out of the sack and eat is however you wish. I've been using it as a spread in wraps, though it is commonly used as a fake cheese in raw pizzas and would be excellent on crackers with fruit. Watch out for how much you eat at one time though, as it is very rich and it could make you feel ill if you eat more than around a quarter cup at a time. It should hold for around five days in the fridge.

As for the whey, it is commonly used in salad dressings or to add a flavor to raw soups. I unfortunately did not know what to do with it and let it it out considerably longer and threw it out due to fear that it went bad. I vow that I will find some tasty use for it though, it seems promising.

This can also be done with other nuts, especially cashews and macadamia nuts due to their high fat contents. I believe you follow the same procedure for cashews but you skip the soaking process for the macadamia nuts; I've heard soaking gives them an odd flavor. You'd want to double check that elsewhere though. Happy Experimenting!

Prana Raw Cafe

This cafe easily made my weekend. It's a Raw Food Cafe located in Newton Center, Massachusetts(around six or so miles outside of Boston) and due to various parts of the Raw Foodist philosophy, they are completely corn free. It has to do with the fact that most corn needs to actually be cooked before it's eaten and it's viewed as a micro-toxin, therefore being unappealing as well.

Anyway, while this cafe is a bit pricier than the average college student place to go, it's well worth it. The total meal cost me around twenty bucks but I got warm Pizza Du Jour with a carrot-beet-apple-ginger juice. My friend got some raw tortillas that were quite excellent as well. While I don't have any pictures(my camera officially died a while ago), there are a few comments:
-Raw Food's version of cheese(all raw food is completely vegan) is by far the best fake cheese I've ever had. It has a fairly high fat content due to it's making out of tree nuts, an excellent creaminess, and the consistency is proper. In other words, it maintains all the pleasant elements of actual cheese without the whole animal product-ness or the weird rubberyness that most vegan cheeses do.
- Their version of bread is still fairly unusual to me, but it's not bad. Raw Foodists don't eat any grains because they require cooking for proper digestion, so their breads are usually dehydrated vegetables of some kind. It gives more variety than one would initially thinks and works excellent for things such as tortillas.
-They have a nut ice cream and a plethora of desserts and while it was my initial intention to get some of these as a fairly belated Birthday treat to myself, I didn't feel like spending quite all the cash I had on me. However, it does give me an excuse to go back :).

The restaurant's website:
www.pranaraw.com