Tomato, Nut Cheese, & Sprouted Grain Bread

OK. First off, for all of the 100% Raw Food people out there, this is not 100% raw. Our goal is to be raw about 75 – 80% of the time. And, we always have raw foods with every meal. So, with that said, here is an excellent, healthy, and more importantly “quick” meal or snack you can make.

For starters, you will need to have some sort of nut cheese already made. Nut cheeses are always a good thing to have on hand at all times. Especially when you just need that quick little snack to get you going. The flexibility of the cheese and its ability to go with just about anything is what I really like about it.  If you want a good recipes for one, read out other blog post titled: Sunflower Seed Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:

1. Nut cheese
2. 1 organic ripe tomato, sliced
3. Some kind of sprouted grain bread. We prefer the English muffins for this, but any kind will work. These bread are kept frozen, you will need to check there in your local stores. Whole Foods by far has the best selection, from muffins, to bagels, to bread, to tortillas, and others.

Just toast the muffin to get the crispiness you want. I like mine crispy, so I can hear the break cracking as I bite down. Then place enough nut cheese on the bread to cover it. Add the tomato slices to the top, and hit the tomato with a couple dashes of sea salt. That’s it!!

We normally just eat this as a meal, and the kids like it as well.

This a very delightful tasting nut/seed cheese to keep around the house. It goes well with regular chips, on sandwiches, and with raw crackers. The process is very simple to make.

Ingredients:

1. About 1 cup of raw sunflower seeds, soaked for at least 4 hours, drained
2. 1/4 cup of almond milk, or any other nut milk you have on hand
3. 1 Tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar
4. A couple dashes of Sea Salt
5. 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice (this is needed to keep the cheese from turning gray)
6. 1 – 2 cloves of garlic, minced
7. Maybe some extra purified water or almond milk to get the consistency you want

Directions:

1. This step is optional: If you want a whiter cheese, then you will want to remove the skins from the sunflower seeds. After you are done soaking the seeds, drain them. Then, place your hands in the bowl of wet seeds and begin to rub them against each other. This will cause the skins to come off. Once you are done, rinse a few times to wash the seed skins off.
2. Add all ingredients to a food processor and process. You will need to stop a few times to scrape down the sides. If you pulse is a few times before processing continuously, it helps to keep the seeds from flying everywhere in the processor.
3. Add the extra water or almond to get the consistency you want
4. Eat and enjoy

This will keep for about 3 days in an air tight container. If the cheese begins to get gray, don’t worry about it. This is just due to the oxidation of the seeds, sort of like an apple does. It is still OK to eat.

For an added twist, you can add whatever herbs or spices you want at this point. Just use the above recipe as a base for any raw nut cheese recipes.

We actually have her book Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen . I really like this book. She is the one who has given me a bunch of different ways to make the almond milks. We will normally have 4 32 oz mason jars with the different types of milk in the fridge at one time.

While on her site, I came across this video she has, and just thought I would share it.

Fruits And Vegetables

One of the things you might notice when starting this new diet change is the cost of the fruits and vegetables. Many people get what I like to call “sticker shock” on their first visit to the store. And if this is not enough, when you add organic to the picture it only gets worse. But, you must remember, there are other items you are no longer buying. This is where the costs will off set each other.

A good raw diet, say atleast 80% raw, 20% vegetarian (or other), will just about eliminate the need for multivitamins. You can still take them of course, but they are not really needed. Also gone are all of the milk products. This could be 2 gallons of milk, a few packages of cheese, some cheese slices, and don’t forget about the yogurt and cottage cheese that we use to think was so good for us. And, I have not even brought up the meat yet. We know how expensive this is.

Shop at Whole Foods, and you will see why I like to call it “Whole Check”. But, this is one of the best places to get all of the specialty stuff, like the raw nuts. They have every nut you would possibly need, in raw form. And, they have all of the sprouted grain breads (this is where the other 20% of the diet is). And while their produce is excellent, it is expensive. So, where can you go?

I have had no good experience at Wal-Mart. Stay away from there!! But, Target has a very good selection of produce, both regular and organic, and better priced than Whole Foods. This can still hit you pretty hard in the pocket book though. But, I think I finally found the solution: Angel Food Ministries.

I just came across this site/ministry a few weeks ago, and just placed my first order with them. This is one of the best deals yet. And if you are asking why it is so cheap, read some of the stuff on their site. It is a ministry, so they are there to help the people. And, everyone can buy from them. Their site has a zip code locator, which allows you to find the closest location to you. Then, just contact them, and they can get you started.

I am looking forward to this very much. This should help with the cost of the fruits and vegetables. And, this service is year around, so you will only get the fruits and vegetables that are in season. They buy nothing from Mexico, and everything is from the USA. Seems like a good deal to me. Check out the site and find the closest location for you.

Sprouted Wheat Berries

This is a process I learned the hard way. We found a recipe for some banana cookies in the dehydrator, and thought we would give it a shot. One of the items it called for was wheat berries. We had no idea what a wheat berry was, so we headed to Whole Foods (because they have everything

We found a little container of wheat berries, and headed back home. We had no idea you could make cookies on this diet, so we were all in. So, I took the wheat berries, rinsed them, and added them directly in the cookie mix just like that, and in the dehydrator they went. I could not wait for the next morning, and neither could the kids.

The smell was very good that next morning, and we were going to have us some raw banana cookies and almond milk for breakfast. The kids were raring to go. We pulled the cookies out of the dehydrator, and they looked a little odd. But what do we know.

I divied them up to each of us, and away we went. And then we all stopped real quick. The kids looked at us like you had snuck some boiled spinach in their mouth. They each spit it out. Not me though. I kept chewing, and chewing, and was determined not to give up. I was going to chew, and personally crack each wheat berry with my teeth. Except my gums got real tired and I eventually gave up. What went wrong?

After a quick review of the recipe, we noticed a small word next to the wheat berries, SPROUTED!! But, we had not idea about sprouting anything at that point. No nuts, seeds, or anything. We were eating all that stuff raw.

So, the lesson learned is to read recipes and sprout all of your stuff, especially wheat berries. Here is how to do this:

1. Rinse the wheat berries
2. Get a mason jar, like in the picture, and add the wheat berries.
3. Soak overnight at least, 24 hours is better
4. Drain water, and rinse again.
5. Place wheat berries back in jar, drained, and place cheese cloth on the top of it. This will allow the sprouting process to begin.
6. Don’t place these in direct sunlight, but keep it where it is warm.
7. Rinse and drain 2 – 3 times a day.
8. After 3-4 days, you will have a jar full of sprouted wheat berries.

These can actually be eaten just like this. There is a sweet tast to them know, that is much more enjoyable.

Spirulina Powder

Spirulina is a blue-green algae. It is a one celled micro organism that thrives in the heat and in alkaline water, or ponds. Most people would associate something like this with diseases, or germs, or just plain old not good for you. But in fact, spirulina is one of the most sterile foods found in nature.

People are now beginning to call spirulina one of the superfoods. It is the only plant source loaded with vitamin B12. Normally, you can only get this vitamin from animal sources. But spirulina has 2.5 times the RDA in 1 teaspoon. It also has a complete protein structure, meaning it has all of the amino acids required to make a protein.

The fact this superfood can survive in the warm environments is the reason it is very sterile. At these sorts of temperatures, there is no way for other things to live in the ponds that can infect this algae. Also, the fact it can survive in temperatures up to 160F makes it exceptional in terms of producing. It can with stand most of the high heats needed to process this supplement. As we now from a raw food diet, temperature can begin to destroy some of the vital elements of foods. But, this is not the case with spirulina.

The following is the long list of everything spirulina has in it:

8 Essential Amino Acids:

1. Isoleucine
2. Leucine
3. Lysine
4. Methionine
5. Phenylalanine
6. Threonine
7. Tryptophane
8. Valine

Non-Essential Amino Acids:

1. Alanine
2. Arginine
3. Aspartic Acid
4. Cystine
5. Glutamic Acid
6. Glycine
7. Histidine
8. Proline
9. Serine
10. Tyrosine

Minerals:

1. Potassium
2. Calcium
3. Zinc
4. Magnesium
5. Manganese
6. Selenium
7. Iron
8. Phosphorous

Vitamins:

1. B6
2. Biotin
3. B12
4. Pantothenic Acid
5. Folic Acid
6. Inositol
7. Niacin
8. B2
9. B 1
10. Vitamin E

So, as you can see, spirulina has all sorts of good stuff in it. There are even more items I did not list, but with a little more research on it, you will find it.

How do you take it?

This can be done a couple of ways. You can buy a good whole food vitamin that has spirulina in it. This is a good start. It will not give you a very large amount, but a smaller amount is definitely better than no amount.

Another way is to buy it in capsule form. This is a very easy way to take this. Many people not familiar with the taste of spirulina will find taking the supplements by capsule or pill form to be much easier. Just ensure there are no other additives in the spirulina tablets.

The last way is in powder form. This, I believe, is for the more hard core smoothie and health nuts out there (like me). We add a teaspoon or more to each of the smoothies we make. But, here is the thing. The more bland your smoothie ingredients are, the stronger the spirulina will be. Plus, the spirulina turns the entire drink green.

The last way I have found, which makes it very easy for the kids, is to add it to a smoothie. You will need to buy the spirulina powder in order to do it this way. I posted a good recipe for a pineapple hemp seed smoothie which is a good way to get some spirulina into the diet.

Hopefully that give you a pretty good idea about how important spirulina is in a diet, especially a raw food diet.

Pineapple Hemp Smoothie

This was definitely one of the most pleasant surprises thus far in this raw food journey. The kids had been asking to juice the pineapple for days, and I just kept putting it off. To me, I know how sweet a pineapple is already, and I figured juicing it would make it that much sweeter. But I was wrong!!

When you juice it, it almost aerates it. It becomes sort of fluffy, and it was actually less sweet than eating the pineapple slices. I was amazed. So, I then turned this juicing into a smoothie, and this how I got the recipe below. This is a definite keepsake for the recipe book, and the kids loved it. Of course, the pretty much love anything that comes out of the juicer:

Pineapple Hemp Seed Smoothie

• 1 Pineapple, peeled, and cut into long sections. Keep the core in it.
• 2-3 tablespoons of hemp seeds
• 1 teaspoon of spirulina powder (you will never taste this in the smoothie)

Juice the pineapple. Then add all 3 ingredients into the blender (add ice if you want) and blend. Then enjoy.